Bedbug complaints up, actual violations down

New Yorkers are still complaining about bedbugs, but it seems the impact of the blood-sucking pests is actually on the decline. According to the Wall Street Journal, city agencies said that while bedbug-related complaints from residents rose to 13,140 in the last fiscal year, from 12,768 complaints in 2010, the number of violations issued by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development dropped to 4,481, from 4,808 last year. Data from the city’s 311 hot line shows a record 34,044 bedbug-related calls for the year that ended June 30, but that’s because calls to the hotline surged overall; as a proportion of the total 311 traffic, bedbug-related calls declined year-over-year and represent less than 1 percent of all incoming calls. Still, the pest-control companies that profited from last summer’s citywide bedbug panic say business hasn’t slowed, and that the suburbs, too, have gotten their share of the problem. [WSJ]

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