Apartment living favors bed bugs in quite a number of ways. If you are providing services for an apartment community — or even for condominiums — several factors may complicate your efforts, should you choose to ignore them.

People with bed bugs frequently discard their beds and their furniture as soon as they are aware that the bed bugs live there. In an apartment community, the discarded furniture ends up at a common collection point: the trash area. If the community at large is unaware that bed bugs are a problem, they may see a matching couch and love seat left by the dumpster as an opportunity for a home décor upgrade. This will turn an isolated bed bug incident into an epidemic in short order.

The worst-case scenario is a particularly nice piece being discarded and “salvaged” on successive occasions, spreading bed bug infestations as it goes.

In communities where members of the same family live in different units around the complex, you can have one uncomplaining unit re-infesting several other units. Remember that many people either react lightly or do not react at all to bed bug bites, and can live quite happily with tremendous populations of bed bugs in their apartment. Regular visits and overnight stays from relatives can drive the community’s bed bug problem. Even when one member of the family speaks up and has his or her unit treated, all the other infested units must be dealt with in a short timeframe or all the work can quickly come undone.

In communities with many children, there will be groups and networks of friends who play together. Frequently, this involves bringing game consoles, controllers and similar electronic toys that can also bring bed bugs to the friend’s apartment — little Nintendo Trojan horses, if you will. Children frequently spend the night at a friend’s home or have a group of friends in for the night, giving ample opportunity for hitchhiking bed bugs to set up house in a new environment.

Of no less importance are those who move among the community for less formal reasons. In one community we helped, it was the local lothario who was the conduit through which the bed bugs flowed. This gentleman caller had a series of lady friends, all of whom had bed bugs. Apparently, the drama was high as he declared his innocence — until the weight of evidence and the presence of bed bugs at his apartment could no longer be denied. If there is a common factor in a tight-knit community, you must find it before you will solve the problems.

In some communities, there are individuals who visit large numbers of units in the course of their work. In one senior citizen community, for example, the ongoing problem was not solved until it was discovered that the apartment of the woman who delivered meals to shut-ins was badly infested, as was her cart. She delivered more than a warm meal on too many occasions. There are social workers and volunteers of all sorts who may have occasion to visit multiple locations within a community.

To perform effective bed bug control in the face of all these difficulties, you must have a coordinated effort with property management. A savvy property manager can be invaluable in setting up programs that work to find and encompass all the networks, families and friendships that facilitate the move of bed bugs across a community. Some of the strategies for building working bed bug programs in apartment communities are as follows:

• DO NOT try to keep it quiet. Communicate with the tenants and educate them regarding bed bugs so they know how to identify them, how to avoid getting them, and what to do if they find them.

• Set up “help programs” for those who need help. This is especially important in senor communities, where tenants may need assistance in preparing for the technician's visit.

• Implement furniture discard programs that allow beds, couches, etc., to be removed without dropping bed bugs up and down the hall. I know a very competent property manager who suggests using zip-up mattress covers from the dollar store, as they make quite serviceable “body bags” for infested mattresses. They are only good for one use, but that is all you need from them.

• Learn the relationships and networks of family and friends within the community. This can be instrumental in coordinating treatment, to deal with the bed bugs in all the related units as quickly as possible.

• Identify regular visitors to residents of the community and reach out to them to ensure they are not re-infesting the units they visit. These include representatives of your local senior services and social services organizations. You may find the local municipal department on aging already knows where the bed bugs are and who visits them regularly.