You may have heard before that cockroaches are one of the most resilient and hardy of all insect groups. Experts claim that this rumor happens to be one of the few rumors about insects that is largely true. Cockroaches are widely distributed across the globe, but you would not expect to find large amounts of them reappearing 18 times in a row within an 18 month period, especially after they were professionally eradicated each time. As unlikely as this scenario may seem, one man in Toronto is currently experiencing this waking nightmare on a daily basis, and it is beginning to have a negative impact on his mental health.

Cockroach infestations are nothing new to apartment dwellers in Toronto, but one tenant has experienced 18 separate cockroach infestations in just a year and a half span of time. The tenant, Kyle Iannuzzi, first noticed his cockroach roomates the very first day he moved in, and the cockroaches have ranged in size from tiny babies to centimeter and a half long adults. Initially, Kyle attempted to bear with the pest control efforts, but now, after a year and a half of repeated infestations, Kyle’s mental health is beginning to decline. According to Kyle, his closest friends have claimed that his mental health has clearly been affected by the repeated infestations that have occured over the months. These comments led Kyle to seek psychiatric assistance, but until the cockroaches disappear from his apartment unit, he does not anticipate an elevation in his mood. Every time pest control professionals spray his apartment with pesticides, Kyle has to gather all of his belongings before removing most of them from his modest one bedroom apartment. Kyle has spoken with ten other tenants in his building who have also spotted cockroaches in their units.

The cockroach presence in the unit persists to this day, but this is not due to a lack of effort on the part of pest control professionals who have tried every method possible to rid Kyle’s unit of roaches. A local Toronto news team attempted to contact Kyle’s landlord for a comment, but all calls have been ignored. The city of Toronto has officially ordered the landlord to have the roaches removed, but there is little else the city can do until a certain amount of time passes. Now, all out of options, Kyle will have to take his complaints to the provincial Landlord and Tenant Tribunal in Toronto so that city officials can make a ruling on the matter, but in the meantime, he will simply have to live with sharing his apartment with cockroaches.

Do you think that Kyle’s mental or physical health could be at stake due to the plethora of cockroaches that he is forced to live with?