One of the negative consequences, though, of having to get to work so quickly was that her initial idea for the business had to be postponed. Originally, she had wanted to set it up as a non-profit so that she could help the elderly and those with special needs get prepared for the exterminator. This is work a landlord does not want to do, she told me. Then she added that when she has been in the apartments of the elderly she has seen what hoarders many have become. And there are also those who cannot do the heavy lifting and arranging that the preparation requires. Someone needs to assist with this and the amount of time is considerable, so a non-profit that offers such a service is a good idea, but for now will have to wait until this new for profit business is settled more. However, this is not to say that she is not at work on setting up the non-profit corporation so it will be in place when she can move on it.
Given how busy she is now, not quite 6 months after starting the business, I asked her how she got clients so quickly.
Yasmine Hecker: I wrote 180 letters to management companies. I got 3 responses but that was all I needed. So in May we had 2 jobs and then in June we had 4 or 5 and we are getting up to doing 10 jobs/per day with 5 members per crew. We have our own equipment and supplies and it is a very labor intensive operation with a perfectionist as its boss.
Deborah Emin: Did you think you would be so busy from the start?
YH: Even though I had a different plan in mind (setting up the non-profit), I knew that landlords do not want to offer this kind of help to their tenants. They don't want the rest of the tenants in the building to know of the bugs so they do not act proactively. They think the tenants will become frightened and leave. And they do leave because landlords do so little to help.
It is short-sighted. If you do not treat the whole building you will be battling the bugs for a long time. They reproduce very quickly. Then you have a major infestation that is much harder to deal with. Part of it too is the stigma of who gets bed bugs and where they come from. Most of that is untrue.
DE: As I watched your crew at my place, I could not believe how much work it takes to prepare a place properly. It is almost a science.
YH: It is a lengthy process and as I knew from having worked for management companies, this is something that can run throughout a building. People do not even know they have bed bugs but they would stand there talking to me and I saw them on their clothing or bodies.
Whether we can ever eradicate the bugs as they did with the use of DDT, I do not know, but with the less powerful pesticides in use these days, these bugs are like bed bugs on steroids. In the past, they would only be within 5 feet of the beds or other areas they lived in, now they can be 100 feet away. They reproduce so fast and the key is to get in there and get them early on before they have had a chance to spread throughout a home or apartment.
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