'Disturbing' find in hoarder's flat teeming with 100,000 bed bugs

Horrified residents have told how more than 100,000bed bugs have infested a neighbour’s home and they are spreading to other properties.

People have been left angered that action has not been taken quicker to force the clean-up of an apartment reportedly belonging to an elderly woman with mental health issues who has beenhoarding. The state of the property has been described as “deplorable” and it has been given a “condemnation order” by local authorities.

Neighbours at the condominium in Brookline, Massachusetts, have taken to cleaning out their own flats and thrown away anything contaminated by bed bugs while others have even moved out.

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Richard Rubin, who lives on the fourth floor of Concorde Condominiums told NBC10 that it was “disturbing” with the local health authority saying the infestation of more than 100,000 bed bugs is one of the worst cases it has seen.

Another resident, who had been bitten by a bedbug, said: “Just sleeping at night knowing you’re getting eaten alive is unsettling.”

The apartment was immediately condemned after it was inspected back in May, with the local authority reportedly saying that the "unit is unfit for human habitation. The danger to the life or health of any occupants is so immediate that immediate condemnation is ordered."

Inspectors found bed bugs on paper, doors, walls, ceilings, hallways and floors. At the same time they couldn’t even reach the kitchen and bathroom due to piles of rubbish.

“Conditions are best described as deplorable,” an entomologist with the service wrote, according to Brookline News. “Most inspectable surfaces and items in the unit have been heavily contaminated by bedbugs and their feces.”

Sigalle Reiss, Brookline’s director of public health and human services, said the case was one of the worst she has seen during 23 years working in the area. “It’s difficult enough to treat bed bugs in normal situations. It’s even harder when there’s this amount of debris,” she reportedly said. “Until this is remediated it’s going to be a real struggle.”

The management company for the condominium got a court order for the woman to clean up the apartment and now that the deadline has passed, they can go in and sort the property out.

It is not clear what will happen to the woman afterwards and if she will receive help from social services. There are believed to be at least seven other properties which now have bedbug infestations as a result.

"It's very frustrating to a lot of tenants, and it causes a lot of aggravation," Rubin said. "Two people moved out because of this." He also stated: “As a building, we cannot get social services to go in and do anything. We don’t have the power.”