MAUMEE, OH (Toledo News Now) - One renter is fed up with her landlord after she says her entire apartment building became infested with bed bugs. She spoke exclusively to WTOL about the problem.
Evie Colyer says her landlord isn't doing anything to fix the problem, and now they've been forced to move out and leave all their things behind.
"I'm stressed out, I'm frustrated. I don't know what to do," said Evie Colyer.
Colyer and her husband moved in to an apartment building on East Broadway in Maumee back in April, but a few weeks ago she said things took a turn for the worst.
"We noticed that the bottom, downstairs was getting infested, and all of a sudden we started getting bed bugs," said Colyer. "As soon as we noticed it, like a day later, it was all over; all over our bed; all over our clothes; all over our furniture."
She says the bug bites bit her chest and body and her husbands legs, so they abandoned their stuff and left.
"We chipped in a little bit of money to go stay at a hotel for two nights and three days. And now we're pretty much living house-to-house, homeless," said Colyer.
She says the landlord sent a letter to her and the four other tenants on how to handle the creepy, crawly problem. However, when they reached out to the landlord for some answers on fixing the issue and additional help, he hung up on them.
"Hoping really to get our security deposit back. That's what I'm really hoping for," said Colyer.
Colyer's mother, Lisa Rhoades, agrees.
"Get a hold of the landlord and have the landlord do something about the house, because it really needs to be cleaned or condemned or do something," said Rhoades. "I mean these attendants don't need to be living like this. It's really bad."
Toledo News Now reached out the landlord, who lives in Florida, but he did not return the message.
As for the Lucas County Health Department, they said it's an issue between the landlord and the tenants.
The health department does plan to check out the property to see if the critters made their way to the common areas of the building. If so the department will help the landlord figure out the best way to remove them.
