Bed bugs have turned into a months-long ordeal for families with loved ones living at Park Place Apartments, a senior high-rise at 19460 Park Drive in Harper Woods, where relatives say bites and infestations have shown up in rooms on different floors even as management insists the problem is contained to a single unit.
Carlotta Robinson, who lives in nearby Eastpointe, told the Detroit Free Press that her 76-year-old mother, 80-year-old father, and 79-year-old aunt have all dealt with bed bugs in their rooms for several months. Her nephew reportedly found several bugs in his grandmother's sink around May or June. Robinson said her family has spent more than $1,500 replacing furniture, and her mother — who has glaucoma and difficulty communicating — purchased a new mattress, bedframe, and linens after receiving several treatments that Robinson said were unsuccessful.
Robinson's father appears to be clear of bed bugs now, after extermination and getting rid of infested furniture, including a recliner he discarded in August. Her mother's apartment, according to the report, has been sprayed at least three times, most recently on September 4, with a follow-up planned two weeks later. Pest control provider Orkin has treated the affected apartment multiple times and identified additional preparations needed before further treatment can work, the paper reported.
A Son's Monthslong Push for Answers
Shawn Walton, who lives in New York, said he first spoke with Park Place management on June 27 about his mother's bed bugs and the communication difficulties surrounding the issue. He followed up again on September 2, then filed a resident complaint with the Harper Woods building department and reached out to Harper Woods officials, state representatives, and the Free Press the same day. The Harper Woods building department did not respond to the paper's request for comment.
Walton said he wants clear information about how widespread the infestation really is and confirmation that his mother won't be blamed for it. His mother's apartment was eventually treated after management reviewed the issue. National Church Residences, the Dublin, Ohio-based parent company of Park Place, told the Free Press that to its knowledge only one apartment was affected by bed bugs as of September 10.
Tricia Strahler, director of public relations for National Church Residences, said management works with residents and pest control professionals when issues are reported promptly, and encouraged residents seeing bed bugs to contact property management directly for immediate treatment. A regional director for the company reportedly plans to follow up with Walton's mother after obtaining inspection reports and reviewing the findings. Park Place management has also said a resident with bed bugs washed linens in the building's laundry room, which was closed for one weekend for treatment and, per Robinson, during two separate weeks when she visited her mother.
Who Bears the Burden of Prep Work
Park Place residents are responsible for laundering linens, removing items, and preparing their apartments ahead of treatment, and must leave their units for about four hours while the work is done. Robinson said she believes the building should instead move all tenants out and fumigate the entire complex multiple times, and she has asked whether her mother could be relocated to another unit during extermination.
That prep burden lands hardest on the very population Park Place serves. A study published in the Journal of Medical Entomology, cited by Oxford Academic, found that bed bug eradication in low-income senior housing is frequently hindered by elderly residents' inability to complete heavy unit preparation, fear of reporting, and pesticide resistance — the kind of frailty that can make moving furniture, bagging belongings, or laundering bedding a serious obstacle for tenants like Robinson's parents.
Federal guidance is meant to shield residents from bearing costs they didn't cause. HUD policy directives cited by the National Low Income Housing Coalition instruct field offices that subsidized housing managers cannot shift extermination costs or preparation burdens onto tenants unless management can show the resident caused the infestation through direct negligence. Michigan state law offers less specificity: under MCL 554.139, landlords must keep rental properties in reasonable repair and fit for use, but state statute lacks explicit rules on bed bug extermination timelines or who pays, according to the Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy. A 2021 bill, House Bill 5412, would have set strict statewide response timelines and barred landlords from leasing units with active infestations, but it failed to become law.
Why One Unit May Not Be the Whole Story
Entomologists warn that treating a single apartment rarely solves a building-wide problem. Guidance from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency notes that effective bed bug control in multi-family buildings requires coordinated Integrated Pest Management across adjacent units, since spot treatments and foggers fail to eradicate infestations that migrate through wall voids and shared electrical conduits. That biology helps explain why the problem can outrun a single-unit response: a single female bed bug can lay 200 to 500 eggs over her lifetime, with offspring reaching reproductive maturity in five to eight weeks at room temperature, according to the National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health.
Park Place of Harper Woods is an eight-story, 132-unit affordable senior housing facility built in 1984 that serves low-income adults 62 and older, according to the Affordable Housing Hub. National Church Residences, its parent organization, is the nation's largest non-profit provider of affordable senior housing, managing more than 370 communities across 25 states and serving over 75,000 older adults as of 2025. Federal inspection records show the property scored an excellent 94 out of 100 on a HUD physical inspection in May 2019, up from an 85 score in June 2017.
The complaint at Park Place echoes concerns Hoodline has covered at other National Church Residences properties, including safety issues at a separate senior complex the company manages, and mirrors reports of persistent infestations detailed in coverage of an Akron senior high-rise. It also follows a temporary closure at the Royal Oak Public Library in Oakland County this summer after staff discovered bed bugs there, underscoring how the pests have become a recurring headache for Metro Detroit institutions.
