An infestation of bedbugs at a local homeless shelter has officials scratching their heads about how the pesky bloodsuckers got there — and how they can afford to get rid of them.

“We don’t know how it got here,” Rich Kirk, director of Community House on Broadway, said Thursday. The most likely scenarios, he said, are that “clients came in with them or maybe on donated clothes or on donated mattresses.”

About one-fourth of the 82 residents at the Longview shelter have bedbug bites, Kirk said. The bugs were discovered a couple of weeks ago. This is the first time in 20 years the shelter has had a problem with the pests, he said. The bulk of the infestation appears to be confined to the 22 rooms on the third floor, Kirk said.

So far the shelter has not shut down any rooms, at least for long.

“We’re trying to bomb the rooms and are having clients all do their laundry,” he said. “We’re getting estimates from pest control people. In the meantime, we’re trying to provide calamine lotion to our residents.”

Kirk said infested mattress have been replaced. The shelter plans to order special bug-proof plastic covers that zip up and kill the bugs. It will cost about $1,200 to get them for all 150 mattresses and box springs, Kirk said.

“That would take care of the mattresses, but the problem with the bugs is they can live in walls,” he said. Community House, located at the corner of Broadway and 11th Avenue, “is one of the oldest buildings in the area, with nooks and crannies everywhere. It’ll probably be an ongoing problem for many months.”

Treatment to get rid of the insects could more than $10,000, he said, “and we just don’t have thousands of dollars laying around to take care of the situation.”

Adult bedbugs are about an eighth-of-an inch long with reddish-brown flat bodies. They’re sometimes mistaken for ticks or small cockroaches. Bedbugs feed by sucking blood from humans or animals. The bites can resemble mosquito or flea bites.

Though more prevalent in temperate climates, bedbug infestations are becoming more common in the Northwest, said Bruce Head, customer service representative for Pioneer Pest Management of Vancouver. “Five years ago, we might get two calls a year,” he said. “Now, we get 15 to 20 calls a week.”

Bedbugs are the most difficult pest to eliminate, and treatment can be costly, Head said.

“They can harbor in areas very reclusive and are especially difficult to handle once they’re established,” Head said. “One service (treatment) is not going to handle the problem.”

The Cowlitz County Health Department is aware of the outbreak at Community House, but because bedbugs are not a “reportable” condition, it’s not something the agency tracks, public health officer Dr. Jennifer Vines said.

“Bedbugs are not known to transmit any diseases to be of any public health concern,” she said. “They do cause a lot of discomfort, and when they bites are scratched, they can get infected. Other than that, they’re just a profound nuisance.”

Kirk said after the Community House board of directors and others will be talking in the next couple of days to decide the next course of action.

“We’re just trying to get all the information to make the best decision,” he said.

Earlier, Kirk said he thought the shelter residents might have to be housed elsewhere during treatment.

“Now it appears they’ll do one floor at a time, so residents won’t be displaced,” he said Thursday afternoon.

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