Yuba City's Nice Inn battles bedbugs

The Nice Inn doesn't live up to its name, say many residents of the Yuba City motel who talk about bedbugs biting them and their children — an issue the manager says he has addressing and that isn't as severe as some contend.

James Marion Hudson, 31, who with his wife, Stephanie, and their four children live in a $700-a-month unit, said his 4-year-old son has been bit.

"It's been a real bad problem," Hudson said Thursday. "As soon as I can, I'm getting out of here."

Jeremy and Theresa Larson and their two daughters plan to leave the motel at 545 Colusa Ave. near Plumas Street before the end of the month. The couple's two young girls have been bitten on their arms, their parents said.

Richard Hatfield, 52, said he is getting ready to move to Marysville and wants the Nice Inn to pay him for clothes he has to get rid off because of bedbugs.

Nice Inn manager G.S. Singh said three rooms among the 39 units in the motel had bedbugs and were treated by a pest control company that will return Saturday for additional work.

"We are very much serious about it," Singh said of dealing with the issue.

Jeff Williams, environmental health manager for Sutter County, said a county worker was at the motel Thursday. At least two complaints about bedbugs have been lodged, Williams said.

"There is an issue out there," Williams said. "The property owner is doing everything he can to take care of that.

"The owner has been very co-operative," he added.

John Bernal, who works for Yuba City Pest Control, said the Nice Inn has spent $2,000 in the last six days to deal with the bedbug problem.

"Every room is going to be inspected," Bernal said. "I will be here two times a week probably until Christmas until I'm done."

He said that is to deal with bedbugs as well as cockroaches.

Alexis Scott, 48, said it's the roaches that have been the biggest problem for him. Food can't be kept long at the Nice Inn, he said.

"If I leave it overnight, the roaches will be all over it," Scott said.

In 2010, a former resident of a downtown Marysville hotel who said he dealt with bedbugs, air conditioning problems and an unreturned security deposit was awarded $1,600 in a small claims case in Yuba County Superior Court. The visiting judge in his ruling did not detail on how he decided about the amount awarded the renter, who had sought $3,000.

The judge did say in court that bedbugs are mostly a problem in big cities, but that Marysville could face them as well.

In 2011, an Olivehurst resident said hundreds of bedbugs appeared in his home the morning after he set up the mattress he bought from a Marysville furniture store. The bed manufacturer in Sacramento said it would cover the $2,500 cost to fumigate the Maplehurst Street home.

CONTACT Ryan McCarthy at rmccarthy@appealdemocrat.comor 749-4780.