Updated with comments from landlord and corrected name of Baker's Wildlife Services

LANSING – A foster mom of two young girls said her rental house on the city’s west side is infested with rats, and she’s desperate for help.

“You can hear stuff moving around in the walls. I know they’re in there. It freaks me out,” Nikki Heddens said.

Heddens moved into the three-bedroom home on Carey Street in December. It’s next door to the house where Lois Faggion, now 88, last fall killed nearly two dozen rats with a hammer after they were snared alive in glue traps inside her home. Community groups and her neighbors rallied to help her repair holes leading into her house.

A family member of Heddens contacted the State Journal after Heddens said she repeatedly asked her landlord to take care of the rat problem.

Heddens, 28, is fostering two nieces, 4 and 8, and also watches out for her 18-year-old brother who lives with her. She said she can’t afford to move without a refund of her security deposit.

The rental had a tenant who moved in around the time Faggion was battling rats but the family quickly moved out, citing a problem with the rodents, said Sondra Faggion, Lois’ daughter.

Rat problem: Putnam: Good riddance rats! Lansing helps 87-year-old who dispatched rodents with hammer

“When they found out there were rats in my mom’s house, and they were hearing them in the walls, they didn’t stay more than a week,” she said.

That’s the same house that Heddens rented in late December, just in time to keep two nieces from being placed in foster care with strangers. Heddens' apartment was too small to take in her nieces, and she faced a Dec. 31 deadline to get a place with three bedrooms.

Heddens said she found large droppings after paying her deposit but was assured they were old and would be cleaned up.

“They told me they had the house inspected … and there wasn’t any rodent issues,” she said.

Ants, wasps and fleas too

The house also has had ants inside, a wasp nest under the siding next to the driveway and fleas in the yard, she said. There were signs of rodents, too, for the first few months she lived there but she was in denial, she said. The company did fix a leaking pipe from the kitchen sink that she said was spilling food from the garbage disposal on the basement floor.

But, at the start of summer, the noises in the walls at night became undeniable. Her two nieces asked about the scurrying in the walls.

“It’s hard, because I don’t want them to go to bed scared,” she said. “But what do I tell them when they say there’s a monster in my wall?”

Heddens said she’s contacted Renaissance Property Management perhaps 10 times and refused to pay her August rent until the pest issues are handled.

She got an eviction warning letter in response. Her lease runs through April 2020.

Her landlords told her she was more than welcome to hire someone to come out and address the pest issues, she said.

"I pay $820 a month. I don’t think it’s fair I have to pay for an exterminator,” she said.

Kip Wilson, the owner of the Okemos-based management company, declined to discuss it, saying he doesn't talk about his tenants.

Heddens said employees of the management company have said it’s her fault if there are pests due to sloppy housekeeping.

“It’s not spotless. I have kids,” Heddens said, but added, “I’m not a dirty person. I keep the house picked up. I do the dishes.”

The owner of the home, listed in online property records as Timothy Williams of DeWitt, said Tuesday that a note left on his door from the Lansing State Journal was the first he heard of the problem.

He said an exterminator was scheduled to look at the property.

"If It’s an issue, we’re going to take care of it. There will be no charge to the tenant for that," he said.

On Friday, Heddens texted a photo of a dead rat found in her basement. She said the management company placed rat poison in the basement a day earlier after she told him she was talking to a reporter and had called Lansing’s code compliance office.

The code compliance office recommended she give the landlord another chance and to contact legal aid. She said calls to a housing clinic operated by Michigan State University and a legal aid office haven't been successful because they are not taking new clients.

According to online records, the house has been licensed as a rental since 2013 but the certification is on hold.

Catching rats tricky

Brian McGrain, director of Lansing's economic development and planning office, said there were several pending issues at the address including dirty air ducts, lack of working smoke detectors and a needed pest control inspection.

He said rodents in a home are a concern but aren’t enough to “red tag” a home as unfit for occupancy. But he said the city will require a letter from a reputable exterminator that the pests are gone.

“If they are operating a home with safety concerns, health concerns, we can’t let that continue,” he said.

McGrain said as far as he knows, the rat infestation is isolated and not a widespread issue in the neighborhood.

“I don’t think there’s any particular neighborhood where we’re watching out for a rat problem,” he said.

Pest expert Kevin Baker, owner of Baker's Wildlife Services in Mason, said he’s answered about a call per year over the past decade from Lansing homeowners seeking to get rid of rats. Several have been in the older neighborhood where Heddens lives. He said sewers under the homes are an entry for rats.

“The first thing I do is go down in the basement and look for any uncapped drains,” he said.

Baker, who doesn’t use glue traps because of their cruelty, said it can be difficult to trap rats. He uses snap traps or live traps and then euthanizes the rodents. Poisoning them is easier but they could die in the walls and smell. But that may be the best option if there are many rats, Baker said.

'One step forward, two steps back'

Heddens and her four younger siblings were placed in foster care when she was 12. An aunt took them in and adopted them but died when Heddens was 16.

Since her aunt’s death, she’s been the defacto mom for her siblings and now has committed to caring for her nieces.

Heddens earned a certification to be a medical assistant and has been working full time since last year in an orthopedic practice.

She’s trying to do the right thing but finds it an uphill climb.

“I’m working so hard to provide a safe and stable home for my nieces and my brother, and I feel like it’s one step forward and two steps back,” she said.

Related:

38% of Lansing rentals may be unsafe. Is the city doing enough to fix the problem?

Judy Putnam is a columnist with the Lansing State Journal. Contact her at (517) 267-1304 or at jputnam@lsj.com.Follow her on Twitter @judyputnam.

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