Okay, so I am about to give up my beloved Red Sox and move to Chicago. And I stumble upon this website. And the first thing I see is lots and lots of threads about cockroaches. So, just how prevalent are they in Chicago? Are they in everywhere? Including my condo? the moving van hasn’t come yet and I am worried. Someone please reassure me… thanks… if you do, I might root for the White Sox…I said maybe…:eek:
Welcome to the board, Soxluver, and good luck with the move. I’ve moved your thread to the Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share forum, I think it should get more responses over here.
I saw a single roach in the three years I lived in Chicago. This strikes me as an odd worry.
Never seen a single cockroach in 8 years in chicago.
We had a terrible roach problem after we first moved into our apartment. The landlord had to bomb twice. After the 2nd time, I dumped boric acid in places the cats couldn’t get to, like under and behind the oven and under the sink, then scattered bay leaves everyfrickinwhere, out of sight (in all the drawers and cabinets, and on the counter behind the appliances like the blender and convection oven. I haven’t seen one roach in 3 years. A few creepy centipedes (which probably helps since they eat roaches), and a couple of spiders, but no roaches.
Welcome to Chicago!
They are pretty much everywhere in the city. I’ve never had one in a suburban flat, but they are in the city.
The thing is it often is your neighbors and you can’t control that. For instance, in places like Aldi or other stores where they use boxes instead of displays roaches will lay eggs, then your neighbors bring those boxes home.
If you’re flat is underground (or garden level as they call it) you will get tons of bugs.
It’s really your landlord. I have no bugs but I keep NO food in the flat that isn’t in the fridge. If I leave any food out, boom they’re there. So they must be in my neighbor’s flat, and don’t visit me cause there is no food
I once had an apartment with roaches, which my landlord couldn’t get rid of, because he was an IDIOT. (And no, I wasn’t in the garden apartment - I did have a different garden apartment before that, with no bugs.)
How did my landlord try to kill the roaches? Every few months, he’d come around with a can of Raid and spray a baseboard or two. Once he even got fancy and bug-bombed my apartment, but none of the other apartments in the building. So the roaches took a short vacation across the hall, and then promptly came back as soon as the smoke had cleared.
Then my idiot landlord decided to have an attorney send me a threatening letter telling me I was required, at my own expense, to hire a professional exterminator for the building. Ummm, NO. If you’re going to mess with your tenant, you probably shouldn’t choose the one who does legal writing for a living, and you probably shouldn’t assume that she can’t figure out that all the other tenants also have roaches because they don’t speak English. I wrote him a nasty letter citing chapter and verse of the Chicago Residential Landlord-Tenant Ordinance, which stated that the landlord is responsible for keeping the apartment free of pests, and pointed out that he had never paid me interest on my security deposit as required by aw, for which the penalty was two months’ rent. He got much more conciliatory after that 
, and I moved out as soon as my lease was up.
But seriously, to the OP - don’t let all that stuff scare you away. I’ve lived in the Chicago area for a total of nearly 35 years, and that’s the only time I had a roach problem. But keeping your food in the fridge or in airtight packaging isn’t a bad idea, in any case.
I had one place with a roach problem, and that was ongoing because of idiot landlords who would only spray one apartment at a time, pretty much whoever complained lately. The other places I’ve lived around here haven’t had roach problems at all. The house I live in now just gets some ants coming in during the summer, and the occasional mouse in winter - both are just looking for food and are pretty easily taken care of.
Older, larger buildings seem (IMHO) to have more of a problem than newer buildings with fewer units. This varies, of course, with many exceptions.
The big, “courtyard” apartment buildings dating from pre-WWII seem, in my experience, to have the worst issues although I’m told some of the housing projects had impressive infestations as well.
That said, there are buildings with no infestations.
The problem of bringing them in from the grocery store or catching them from your neighbors is a very real one. Vigilance is your friend, so is preemptive pest control.
In one building I lived in we not only had roaches but also spiders, centipedes, ants, mice, and in the basement, rats. Yes, we moved. Amazingly, we managed to avoid bringing any of the pests with us. Have not had any roaches for over 10 years. We still get centipedes, ants, spiders, and mice, though but those all seem much easier to control/eliminate from our residence.
None of my friends living in the city have ever mentioned seeing any roaches in their homes and they’re the type of people that would mention it frequently with much terror.
Now here’s where the Doper comes in to blow everyone else’s generalizations out of the water with anecdotal evidence: I’ve had a roach problem in 1 of 4 apartments. That 1 apartment was the newest construction, and in the suburbs (Tinley Park, to be precise). Neither of my 2 apartments in Evanston (which may as well be Chicago) or my apartment in Chicago proper (which is older construction; built in 1920something) have a problem.
I did have a roach problem where I worked, and never brought 'em home. We’re not at all anal about food storage or general cleanliness or any of the stuff that’s supposed to help ensure against bugs.
In the suburban apartment and in the office where we had a roach problem, I found MaxForce bait gel to be the bestest thing ever. It was first given to me by a neighbor who works for an exterminator; it honestly is what the pros use. You can buy it online, though, you don’t need a license or anything. Great stuff, works the first time and never seems to quit!
Well this will make a great anecdote for the next “why did you join the Dope?” thread. “So I was moving to Chicago and I suddenly freaked out that it was overrun by cockroaches…”. 
I don’t know anyone who’s had roaches in the city and when we were younger some of us lived in absolute *dives *too. The biggest roach I’ve ever seen in my life was at the Gold Coast Whole Foods though, but I’m sure he was just a stowaway in some organic tropical produce.