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by itake 2 days ago
> roaches in the kitchen

roaches need to come from somewhere. Even if your apartment is spotless, someone else in the building might not be...

3 comments

If you see more and more of them in your kitchen, you most likely are not cleaning it properly after every meal.

Sure, if your kitchen was on the moon, you wouldn't have a bug issue. That would still be dirty.

More than what? If my neighbour has 2000 roaches in his apartment. Then it would not be strange 10 walks into mine. And if they do they of course gonna hang out were they find the most amount of food (even if you clean odds are there is going to be more residue etc in kitchen vs bedroom)
I had neighbors with filthy apartments who thought the solution is routine spraying. Every time, the roaches would take shelter in mine through unknown passages.
In the post, every time they move, they happen to have neighbors that brings roaches and they must move out again after 2 years...
Can confirm. Used to live in an apartment where I did everything I could to keep the place clean. Cockroaches kept coming back.

The solution? Moving to a different place. Never seen a roach ever again. Even moving to a different apartment inside the building didn't help.

Hint: it's the neighbors.

But is it the landlord's issue?
Most leases have clauses stating something to the effect that tenants are responsible for keeping their units reasonably clean and sanitary. If tenants start complaining about roaches, a good landlord will do a bit of investigation and remind tenants of the importance of cleanliness, proper disposal of trash, etc.
At least in Oakland, it's the landlord's responsibility to manage pest control. It needs to be done at a building level, or else the roaches will just get shuffled around.
Yeah a good landlord will do pest control but cockroaches are...cockroaches. If you do pest control but have tenants who are leaving food waste out, not disposing of trash properly, etc. it will be a game of whack-a-mole.

As far as communities are concerned, the best places to live are the places where landlords/management and residents/tenants both do their parts to keep things clean and habitable. Teamwork makes the dream work.

Definitely, it needs both sides.
a "good" landlord will lecture the tenant without solving the problem and a "bad" landlord will double the rent
> ...a "good" landlord will lecture the tenant without solving the problem

Huh? When it comes to pests, it takes effort on both sides, especially in environments that are prone to pests. A landlord can pay for regular pest control services but if there are tenants who don't store and dispose of waste properly, it can reduce their efficacy.

Good luck with that. I have seen landlords that flat out deny there is a roach issue.
I meant that in our country vermin is a tennants issue, not the owner's. Only when the state of the building (large holes) facilitates the ingres of insects or rodents you could mobilise tge landlord.