Thousands Of Termites Untreated In Baby Room

Location: San Diego, CA

I am a condo owner in San Diego, California. On August 19, I reported that I found a few termites in my primary bedroom to the HOA maintenance contact. Our HOA is responsible for all treatment of wood-destroying pests in common areas, but the homeowners are responsible for damage done (such as destroying furniture, etc). They told me to reach out to their contracted pest control company. They sent out an inspector a few days later. The inspector said that he has been in this exact unit six or seven times for the previous owners regarding this persisting termite issue. He said that the HOA has not fumigated our building (consisting of six individual units) despite the ongoing termite issue in our unit. He notes that our unit has the most severe termite issue in the building.

The inspector writes in his report that the only way to truly manage the termites is to fumigate the building. He sends that to the HOA. He noted that localized treatment will not stop the swarming. Over the course of the next few weeks, the termites got worse and worse. It got to the point where thousands of termites were swarming in our master bedroom. This is the bedroom where myself, my husband, and five month baby (4 months at the time) sleep. We determined it was not safe to sleep in a room with thousands of termites despite the swarms calming down around 6 PM every day. There were so many termites that I literally found termite wings in my baby‘s diaper. We spent hours a day killing and cleaning up dead termites and wings.

On Labor Day weekend, it was quite hot in San Diego. It caused the most massive swarm of termites that we had seen to this day. It was so severe that I had to call the emergency HOA maintenance line. Essentially, they didn’t answer and I had to call the line 4 more times to get in touch with anybody and they essentially said that the maintenance person is on vacation and we’re out of
luck.

During this ordeal, I took pictures and videos (dated and time stamped) and sent them to the HOA maintenance person to create a paper trail. I sent dozens and dozens of videos and pictures to highlight the severity of the issue. I pleaded for the HOA to send emergency pest control to our unit. They told me that nothing could be done and that we just needed to wait for fumigation. I emailed last week and they told us that they would be fumigating the first week of November.

Today, we are having one of the worst swarming events that we have had in our unit. It has forced us to move out of the master bedroom again, and we have spent countless hours spraying alive termites and cleaning thousands and thousands of dead termites. I emailed the HOA maintenance contact and he just told us that fumigation is happening in six weeks. I told them we cannot wait six weeks because of the severity of the issue. I then requested an internal dispute resolution to discuss the loss of use of our primary bedroom due to the termite infestation as well as partial HOA dues reimbursement.

I am seeking advice on how to proceed. We spend $600 a month on HOA dues and we have felt like the HOA has not taken this issue seriously despite the fact that our five month old baby sleeps in the master bedroom where the termite swarming is happening. The photos of the swarming event are quite severe, yet they have taken no steps to aid us, despite it being the HOA‘s obligation to maintain the structure.

PLEASE ADVISE.