Mishkeegogamang faces bed bug infestation

Mishkeegogamang’s overcrowded housing conditions have a new wrinkle: bed bugs.
Bed bugs have been found in six homes since the insects were first discovered in the community last summer.
Now overcrowded houses and a lack of homes for affected families have the First Nation’s chief concerned about an outbreak.
“We’ve come to realize that dealing with this bed bug issue is going to be a real challenge because I now have identified five other homes that have bed bugs,” Mishkeegogamang Chief Connie Gray-McKay said. “A lot of those homes have little children; one of them has an autistic child.”
Gray-McKay said bed bugs were first discovered in a house at Eric Lake, one of the reserve’s many communities.
“We had the family move out,” Gray-McKay said. “Luckily it was during the summer and we totally gutted the house.”
But after the family moved back into the renovated house, so did the bed bugs.
“You can either freeze them to death or you can boil them to death,” said Gray-McKay about getting rid of bed bugs. “Right now you have to freeze them to death.”
Gray-McKay said everything in the house has to be removed and placed in large metal containers for two weeks before the homes are sprayed with pesticides.
“If you’re in there already, you might as well do a renovation of the house as well,” Gray-McKay said. “Some houses will have to be vacated for a month, a month and a half, depending on the severity of the renovations required.”
But due to the overcrowded housing conditions in the community of about 900 band members, there are currently no available accommodations for the families from the affected homes.
“Where do I put all these people that are going to have their houses renovated?” Gray-McKay said. “The other thing too is we have to contain it. The last thing I need is to have 112 houses infested with bed bugs. Then we’re going to have a real crisis.”
Gray-McKay is considering using one of the community’s new modular homes, once it is connected to the hydro grid, to accommodate the affected families while their homes are sprayed and renovated.
“It’s a matter of planning it properly so we are not displacing people and stressing them out,” Gray-McKay said.
Gray-McKay also emphasized the financial hardship the situation places on families who are earning low incomes.
“If you are making $10 an hour or $12 an hour, how do you replace the mattresses for your family of eight,” Gray-McKay said. “We had that situation with the first family — they had to get rid of everything.”
Gray-McKay said families on Ontario Works would receive assistance to replace items that had to be thrown away due to the bed bugs, but those not on Ontario Works would have to replace items on their own.
“I’m not going to let families go without benefits, but at the same time, what budget do I use,” Gray-McKay said. “I don’t have a budget to deal with bed bugs. I’ll have to find it somewhere.”
Gray-McKay said the community has already purchased three machines for spraying bed bugs and is currently looking at having community members trained to use the machines.