Part 3: Bedbugs

This is the third part of a series we are running on Gartea Property Management. Alice has been dealing with Bonnie Van Beek, the property manager. In the second part we looked at how property managers keep tenants browbeaten. In this part, we are reveal how property managers avoid their statutory duty to provide health and safe properties.

Under s 185 of the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2008 (Qld), landlords must ensure that premises are fit for tenants to live in, and not in breach of health and safety laws.

Here are some of the photos of how we have been affected by the bed bugs. These are the bites me and my baby received. This was the first time she paid for the Pest control professional to come in.

 

The landlord paid for the first few times for the pest control guy to come in but now refuses to pay for it anymore and says that it is my responsibility. The bed bugs have not completely gone and now my furniture is infected which I will have to get rid of when I move out. I have spoken to neighbours, who have said, the previous tenant before me complained of bedbugs. I also spoke to the previous tenants from the unit adjoined to us, and they also complained about bed bugs. The landlord refuses to believe it and said that I must have brought them here. I have never, ever had bed bugs. I have been told by the pest control professional that it definitely is bedbug excrement and I have the photo’s to prove that it.

 

She has also refused to pay the pest control guy again for taking care of the bed bug problem even though it was here before I moved in, and so now I will be put out of pocket because I am paying for a problem that was never mine. I will get the pest control guy to come in myself (because the landlord will not pay for it) and I will get him to write a statement to say that it is bed bugs. She also tried to say that it was my responsibility for all pest control because of the by-laws but she left out the parts where it says that it is only if it is in a pest free state before moving in.

 

Residents are usually unable to contact former tenants to confirm whether the bedbug infestation existed before they moved in. Property managers are unlikely to provide contact details to tenants because this would support their case. Alice was lucky because the previous tenants had spoken to their neighbours. Including special contractual clauses making pests the tenant's responsibility is a deliberate strategy. It often confuses tenants who might be unaware of their rights under the Act.

Postscript. Ms Van Beek claims this photos is evidence that the bedbugs came from the tenant's furniture. Somehow we doubt that very much. All we see is an old torn mattress.