How to Get Building-Wide Cooperation Battling Roaches If a building at your site is infested with cockroaches or other such pests, getting all residents to cooperate with your efforts to control the problem is essential to your building’s well-being. Cockroaches are among the most widespread and persistent of all pest problems. In fact, in a list of the most cited deficiencies in public housing, insect or roach infestations ranked 17 out of 25.

1. How to Get Building-Wide
Cooperation Battling Roaches
If a buildingat your site is infestedwith cockroaches or other such pests, getting all residents to
cooperate with your efforts to control the problem is essential to your building’swell-being.
Cockroaches are among the most widespread and persistent of all pest problems. In fact, in a listof
the most cited deficiencies inpublic housing, insect or roach infestationsranked 17 out of 25.
A roach infestation doesn’t always indicate untidinessor dirt. And due to where they hide and how
they move, your residents can quickly become victims to their neighbors’ inaction. This is because
roaches can travel between apartments, moving easilyamong floors and rooms through hollow
walls, electrical and plumbing access holes, conduits, and garbage chutes. It takes only a handful of
residents who are negligent in keepingtheir apartments clean to cause a building-wide infestation.
Because of this possibility,if you start getting complaints of roaches or other such pests, it’s
important to act quickly and to communicate to your residents the steps that need to be taken. In
addition to systematically enlistingevery resident’s cooperation and insisting on servicing
apartments at one appointed time, HUD and the Office of Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control
recommend using integrated pest management (IPM) as a way to remove pests such as roaches.
IPM is a method that focuses on knowing the pest in order to prevent pests from getting out of
control. IPM is safer because it doesn’t use as many harmful pesticidesas traditional pest control
and because it places a greater importance on addressing the cause of the problem.
We’ll go over IPM methodology with respect to cockroaches and provide a Model Extermination
Checklist and two Model Letters you can send to residents.
Prevention and Treatment
Cockroaches are strongly attracted to food and water. Although they can survive many days
without food, they must have frequent access to water. Newly hatched cockroaches die in three
days without water, and although adult cockroaches may live 20 to 30 days without it, during that
time they are unable to reproduce. Because of the wide range of food available to cockroaches,
they cannot be starved out of a building,but good sanitation and cleanliness may prevent
cockroach populations from increasing.

2. Monitoring and establishing baselines. Book 7 of the Public and Indian Housing Maintenance
Guidebooks covers cockroach control, and it recommends monitoring through the use of sticky
traps to determine approximate insect numbers and to provide pre-treatment data for evaluation
of the effectivenessof control measures. Numbering traps and analyzing their locations and
captures, which should be indicated on room-diagram maps, helps identifycockroach livingareas
and needs for addition attention to sanitation measures, exclusion, or chemical treatment. HUD
recommends additional follow-up monitoring with sticky traps placed strategically in rooms five to
seven weeksafter the first monitoring session to see if your cockroaches are still hatching.
Building maintenance and denying roaches access to buildings. You should pay attention to how
roaches may enter a building.The PIH Maintenance Guidebook says good buildingmaintenance is
mandatory if cockroaches are to be deniedaccess to dwellings.This requires eliminatingholes and
cracks used by cockroaches to gain entry into buildings through the followingmeasures:
 Installation of tight-fitting windows, doors, screens, and door sweeps;
 Caulking of all exterior cracks and holes in foundations, walls,sills,floors, splashboards, and
water, heating, and electrical-service chases;
 Repair of leaking plumbing fixturesand removal of other sources of moisture.
HUD’s maintenance guidebook also notes that you should inspect areas surrounding the building
for conditions that attract or provide livingareas for cockroaches. These can include stacks of
firewood, dead tree stumps and branches, vinesand other vegetation on or next to the building,
pilesof bricks, stones, wood, and leaf litter.
Getting Ready
Once steps have beenmade to adequately seal and secure your buildingagainst cockroach entry,
you can start familiarizing residents of upcoming professional pest control programs and the need
for sanitation measures to keepcockroaches out of individual apartments. The followingsteps will
help you prepare your residents for pest control.
Send explanatory letter. Residents can be apprehensive about the toxicity and odors caused by
pesticides.To counter these concerns, have your commercial pest-control company draft a letter to
the residents explainingthe method of extermination being used. Your pest control company can
adapt our Model Letter: Have Pest Control Company Communicate to Residents,for this purpose.
Slip the letter under residents’ doors or in their mailboxes three weeks before your professional
exterminator starts applying pesticides. Post copies in the common areas. Make sure your residents
know what they have to do to prepare for the exterminator and why these measures are essential.
Include pre-extermination checklist with letter. To get the most mileage out of the extermination
program, and to maximize its effectiveness,send a checklist to your residents to help them organize
and to remind them of the things they must do before the exterminator comes. You can adapt and
use our Model Checklist: Give Residents a Pre-Extermination Checklist, for this purpose.

3. Send follow-up letter. Send a follow-upletter one week before extermination is scheduled to begin.
Make sure residents understand that the pest-control treatment is effective only if all apartments
are serviced. Encourage residents to call the management office if they have a problem with
preparing. You can adapt and use our Model Letter: Send Follow-Up Letter to Residents,for this
purpose.
Post reminder notice. The day before the pest-control program begins, post a notice in the elevator
and the lobby reminding all residents of the program. You can post a sign that reads: “Notice to all
residents: Tomorrow is the day on which pest control technicians will begin our clean-out
treatment.”
Don’t give your residents the opportunity to forget about a service that’s a benefit—notonly for
you, but also for them.
Further reading: For more on IPM and how to make it part of a larger sustainability plan at
your site,see Section 3 of the Insider’s new eBook, Sustainable Affordable Housing
Management
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