New IPM Guide for Affordable Housing

Affordable multifamily housing presents unique challenges for those trying to manage bed bugs, cockroaches, and rodents. Pest-free housing is a realistic goal, but a network of staff, pest management professionals, and residents must cooperate to successfully manage pests building-wide.

Integrated Pest Management: A Guide for Affordable Housing is a new resource from the Northeastern IPM Center that will help affordable housing managers, owners, and agents use integrated pest management (IPM) to contend with a variety of urban pests in their facilities. It will also serve as a useful tool for anyone seeking to integrate IPM practices into a residential pest management strategy. The illustrated, 81-page guide gives readers

• a basic knowledge of pests and pesticides that will help them make informed pest control decisions with a pest management professional;
• an understanding of how to implement IPM in housing; and
• tools to orient staff to their role on an IPM team.

Developed as part of a project called “Delivery of IPM Training to Public Housing Authorities,” the guide was supported through an interagency agreement between USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the HUD’s Office of Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control. The guide is based on the IPM in Multifamily Housing Training that is reviewed and supported by the National Center for Healthy Housing, Regional IPM Centers, National Pest Management Association, Pennsylvania IPM Program, National Center for Environmental Health Strategies, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The complete guide and additional resources are available at StopPests.org/Guide.