PORTLAND, Ore. -- An invasion of bed bugs in a downtown building has its owners waging a campaign to eradicate them.

The Henry Building on Southwest Fourth Avenue houses recently homeless people, many of them veterans. Many of the renters in the single-room occupancy hotel live there because they have few other options.

The people living there and the director of the nonprofit organization that operates the building agree that bed bugs have been an ongoing problem. That problem has gotten much worse in the past month.

"They come and go. They have these growth stages. I haven’t seen any in a few days, but then I’ll have days were they’re all over the place," Henry Building resident Doug Ewald said.

The bed bugs that exterminators are targeting this week are an ongoing public health concern, according to the director of Central City Concern, the nonprofit group that operates the building. Central City Concern said they've developed a multi-pronged attack to try to deal with the problem.

"It involves everything from making sure that our driers and washers in the building are free to residents, to caulking all the cracks in the floor and walls, to spraying all the rooms and casing all the beds in protective plastic. Everything we can think of to get this problem eradicated from this building," said Ed Blackburn of Central City Concern.

But some people who live there said the owners should have done something stronger and sooner.

"What they’re doing now, I hope it works. But they should have done it a long time ago," Ewald said.

The building director said the work will be completed this week. Follow up treatments are anticipated.

Vets Shelter Owners Wage War On Bed Bugs