The first sentence of a bill before the Legislature says it all: Bedbugs are bloodsucking insects that typically hide in bedrooms and come out to feed at night.

Anyone with a nightmare hotel experience can tell you that. But what’s surprising about the proposed legislation, which would require landlords to ensure rental properties are free of the pests, is that it’d be the first bedbug regulation in Hawaiʻi, which has one of the highest percentages of renters in the U.S.

Hawaiʻi Sen. Stanley Chang, chair of the Senate Housing Committee, which approved a version of the bill Thursday, has his own bedbug story from a time in New York. “I would not wish it on my worst enemy,” he said.

Senate Bill 456 puts the presence of bedbugs on par with a lack of running water, electricity or plumbing in a home. Sen. Karl Rhoads, who sponsored the bill, said a property infested with bedbugs “probably rises to the level of uninhabitability” under Hawaiʻi’s landlord-tenant code.

The bill, however, doesn’t apply to Hawaiʻi’s sprawling hotel sector, which had $5.5 billion in revenue in 2024, and any effort to include the industry in the legislation is likely to face strong opposition. The latest version of the bill mostly makes landlords responsible for fixing the problem, prompting pushback from the Hawaiʻi Association of Realtors.

If the bill passes, Hawaiʻi would join 24 other states and cities with bedbug laws. Some date back decades and bear archaic language indicating how long bedbugs have plagued communities. An Ohio law from the 1940s bans the pests in rail cars, and Wisconsin requires landlords to use “all means necessary” to prevent bedbugs in homes for “orphans, indigents and delinquents.”

Nevada requires hotel rooms with bedbugs to be fumigated. Other states and cities protect residential tenants like Hawaiʻi would do. New York City demands that landlords provide new tenants with a bedbug history of the apartment and apartment building for the previous year.

A bedbug bill introduced in 2024 died. Rhoads, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, hopes this can be the year Hawaiʻi finally does something.

“I’ve never had them, thank God,” he said. “But I hear they’re horrible.”

The Hawaiʻi Department of Health doesn’t keep statistics on bedbugs because they don’t carry or spread disease. But the department says the bugs can cause itching and loss of sleep, and that “excessive scratching can increase the chance of secondary skin infections.”

Bedbugs are also sneaky. People generally sleep through bites because the creatures, who like warm, dark spaces, inject an anesthetic and blood thinner into their hosts before feeding, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. The bugs can hide in box springs and headboards for several months without needing blood.

Although overall data doesn’t exist, anecdotes of high-profile incidents abound in Hawaiʻi. In 2014, a bedbug infestation was reported at Oʻahu Community Correctional Center. In 2023, the state Department of Transportation had to shut down a section of Daniel K. Inouye International Airport so exterminators could kill bedbugs that had infested part of a terminal.

In March, Hawaiʻi News Now reported that Honolulu’s Joint Traffic Management Center was temporarily shut down after bedbugs were found in the building’s quiet room. It cost $1,800 to fumigate the space.

For an unfiltered (and unverified) peek at the local bedbug problem, bedbugreports.com lets travelers anonymously share stories about outbreaks in rental housing and hotels, such as an alleged incident at a landmark Waikīkī hotel.

“My husband and I checked into the hotel on 9/11/2024,” the traveler reported. “When I woke up the next morning, I had several red, itchy bumps on my arms. I thought that I was bitten by a mosquito — however, the next morning, I had several more bites on my knee and arms. I then checked for bedbugs (tip from my daughter) and BINGO, in the seam of the mattress, box springs, I found bedbugs.”

Hotel executives contacted by Civil Beat were reluctant to speak on the record about bedbug issues. But Tim Lyons, executive director of the Hawaiʻi Pest Control Association, said it’s not uncommon for bedbugs to hitchhike with travelers into hotels. Even the most expensive properties are susceptible, he said.

“They’re not discriminatory,” Lyons said of the pests.

Eight states have statutes addressing bedbugs at hotels, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Rhoads said his bill is aimed only at the pests in residences. As for hotels, he said, in the age of social media and online reviews, it’s easy for word to get out if a property has a widespread problem.

“It’s incumbent on them if they want to make money to take care of the problem,” he said.

But Rhoads also said, “If the committees that take a look at it decide they want to include hotels, it won’t bother me at all.”

But a bill expanded to include the powerful hotel industry could face a tough climb. The Hawaiʻi Association of Realtors testified against the bill, saying “owners or tenants residing in infested units can unknowingly transfer the bedbugs to adjacent properties, and determining the source of the infestation can be complicated.”

Alvin Fukuyama, owner of State Termite and Pest Control in ʻAiea, said there’s also a question of fairness. It can cost $200 per room to treat a home for bedbugs, he said.

Many exterminators provide no warranty if the bugs come back, but tenants or their guests, not landlords, are usually the ones who bring bedbugs into a home, Fukuyama said.

“Whoever’s living there is typically the one who’s bringing it in,” he said.