Three tenants of Presidential Towers, the West Loop high-rise, yesterday filed a lawsuit claiming they’ve had bedbugs since last fall, according to the Chicago Tribune. Bedbugs in Chicago? In one of the city’s ritziest rentals, no less?
Actually, we shouldn’t be shocked at these accusations; according to this story in Budget Travel, these tiny bloodsuckers rarely discriminate between dives and top-notch resorts. Still – gross! Some of us here at the Yo have lived in New York, the bedbug capital of America, and while we haven’t battled the critters ourselves, some of our friends have. For the uninitiated: you don’t just go in and spray a little bit here and there and the bedbugs go away. Some one we know had to throw out her bed and pretty much everything in her apartment with a porous surface, then move out for a week.
It appears that Presidential Towers hasn’t taken those kinds of drastic measures yet. According to the Trib, the suit alleges that the management has sent in exterminators, but it hasn’t helped. If there are in fact bedbugs in Presidential Towers, getting them out is going to require some major upheaval. And since vermin usually spread throughout a building, one wonders if there are bedbugs any more of the building’s roughly 2,600 units.