Hear from Our Customers
You stop second-guessing every spray can and bait trap you’ve tried. You stop waking up to something moving across the kitchen counter at 2 a.m. And you stop wondering whether the problem is yours to fix or your landlord’s because it’s been handled, documented, and done right.
In Bedford-Stuyvesant specifically, cockroach control isn’t just about your unit. Roughly 45% of dwellings in this neighborhood show signs of cockroach activity, and the NYC Department of Health rates Bedford-Stuyvesant among the worst neighborhoods in the city for homes with roaches. That’s not a reflection of how you keep your home. It’s the reality of living in connected pre-war rowhouses where a century of aging pipes, cracked mortar, and shared party walls gives cockroaches a direct path from one apartment to the next.
When cockroach pest control is done at the building level not just the unit level you get a result that actually holds. No more treating your kitchen while the roaches regroup next door. No more temporary fixes that wear off in two weeks. Families with kids in Bedford-Stuyvesant apartments also get something else: relief from a documented asthma trigger. Cockroach droppings, shed skin, and egg casings are among the most common allergen sources driving elevated childhood asthma rates in this neighborhood. Getting rid of the infestation isn’t just a comfort issue it’s a health one.
Kingsway Exterminating Company is a family-owned business based in Brooklyn, founded by Richard Kourbage Sr. and joined by Richard Kourbage Jr. in 1987. We’ve spent over 40 years working in neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant, and that experience matters. When our technician walks into a Stuyvesant Heights brownstone or a multi-family building off Gates Avenue, they’re not guessing at what they’ll find. They’ve been in buildings like yours, on blocks like yours, for decades.
Our team collectively brings more than 100 years of hands-on pest control experience to every job. Every material we apply is registered with the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation which matters if you have kids, pets, or anyone in the household with respiratory sensitivities. We hold a consistent A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau of New York State, and are fully licensed, bonded, and insured. That’s not a checklist that’s accountability you can verify before you ever pick up the phone.
It starts with an inspection not a quick walkthrough, but a real one. Our technicians look for where cockroaches are harbouring: behind appliances, inside pipe chases, around steam radiator connections, under sinks, inside wall voids. In Bedford-Stuyvesant’s pre-war construction, those harborage points are everywhere, and identifying them is what separates a treatment that works from one that doesn’t.
From there, the treatment plan is built around the species and the structure. German cockroaches in your kitchen get a different protocol than American cockroaches what most New Yorkers call waterbugs migrating up through floor drains after a heavy rain. We use a combination of gel baits, crack-and-crevice applications, dust treatments, and targeted residual products, applied in the specific locations where your infestation is actually living. Because egg cases are resistant to most treatments, follow-up visits are built into the process from the start not added later as an upsell.
If you’re a property manager dealing with complaints across multiple units, or a tenant navigating a landlord who hasn’t responded to a 311 complaint, we can work with both sides. NYC law classifies cockroach infestations as Class C immediately hazardous violations, and landlords are required to respond within 24 hours of a complaint. We can document service for HPD compliance purposes, which matters in a neighborhood where absentee landlord buildings are a real and ongoing challenge.
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What we deliver in Bedford-Stuyvesant isn’t a one-size-fits-all treatment. It’s a cockroach pest control approach built around the specific conditions that make this neighborhood’s infestation problem so persistent: connected building structures, aging sewer lines, deteriorating pipe penetrations, and the constant pressure of adjacent untreated units. German cockroaches and American cockroaches behave differently, breed differently, and require different treatment strategies and our technicians know the difference on sight.
For residential clients whether you own a brownstone in the Stuyvesant Heights Historic District or rent in a multi-family building off Nostrand Avenue service includes a full inspection, species identification, targeted treatment using DEC-registered materials, and scheduled follow-up visits to address newly hatched nymphs before they mature. For commercial clients on Fulton Street or the Nostrand Avenue corridor, we provide treatment and maintenance schedules designed to keep your establishment compliant with NYC Department of Health inspection standards. A single cockroach sighting during a DOH visit can result in a public violation ongoing maintenance is the only reliable way to prevent that.
We also offer a 10% senior discount, which is a genuine acknowledgment of the long-term residents who have called Bed-Stuy home for decades. If you’re a senior homeowner or long-term renter dealing with a building-level problem that’s gone unaddressed for years, that discount is yours.
This is the most common frustration we hear from Bed-Stuy residents, and the answer almost always comes down to building structure. When you treat one apartment in a connected pre-war rowhouse, you’re eliminating the cockroaches in that unit but the ones in the adjacent unit, the wall void between floors, or the pipe chase running through the building are still there. As soon as the treatment fades, they move back in through the same pathways they’ve always used.
There’s also the egg case problem. German cockroach egg cases called ootheca are resistant to most pesticide applications. A single female can carry up to 40 eggs per case, and those eggs hatch 2 to 4 weeks after treatment, which is exactly when most residents assume the problem is solved. Effective cockroach control in Bedford-Stuyvesant requires follow-up visits timed to catch newly hatched nymphs before they reach reproductive maturity. One visit is rarely enough, and any company that tells you otherwise isn’t being straight with you.
In New York City, “waterbug” is the colloquial term most people use for American cockroaches the large, reddish-brown ones that tend to appear in bathrooms, basements, and kitchens, especially after heavy rain. They’re not a different species; they’re cockroaches. But they behave very differently from the German cockroach, which is the smaller, tan-colored species most commonly found in kitchen cabinets and behind appliances.
American cockroaches in Bedford-Stuyvesant typically migrate up through sewer lines, floor drains, and basement utility connections particularly during and after heavy rain events when sewer pressure increases. Bed-Stuy’s aging pre-war plumbing infrastructure makes this migration path especially accessible. German cockroaches, by contrast, spread through shared walls and utility penetrations between units. The treatment protocols for each are different, which is why species identification at the start of any cockroach pest control visit matters. Applying the wrong treatment to the wrong species wastes time and money.
This is a reasonable concern, and it deserves a direct answer. The materials we use are registered with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation meaning they’ve been evaluated for safety and are legally approved for residential use. Our technician will walk you through any preparation steps needed before treatment, such as removing food from counters or keeping pets out of treated areas for a specified period, and will tell you exactly when it’s safe to return to normal activity.
Here’s the context that often gets overlooked: the cockroach infestation itself is a documented health hazard, especially for children. Cockroach droppings, shed skin, and egg casings are among the most common triggers for asthma and allergic reactions in urban apartments. Research from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health has directly linked cockroach allergen exposure to the elevated childhood asthma rates seen in neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant. A properly executed cockroach removal treatment done by a licensed professional using DEC-registered materials reduces your household’s allergen load significantly. The risk of doing nothing is greater than the risk of treating the problem correctly.
Under the NYC Housing Maintenance Code, cockroach infestations are classified as Class C violations the most serious category, labeled “immediately hazardous.” That means your landlord is legally required to address the problem within 24 hours of receiving a complaint. You can file that complaint through NYC 311 or directly through the NYC Housing Preservation and Development online portal, which will trigger an HPD inspection.
That said, the legal process takes time and in Bed-Stuy, where absentee landlord buildings are common, waiting for a landlord to respond while you’re living with an active infestation isn’t always realistic. Some tenants choose to hire a licensed exterminator directly and document the service, which can support a housing court case if the landlord continues to be unresponsive. We work with both tenants and property managers, and can provide service documentation for compliance purposes. Whether you’re a renter trying to protect your household or a property manager trying to resolve a building-wide complaint before it becomes an HPD violation, the process is the same: get the infestation treated, get it documented, and get it done right.
For German cockroaches the most common species in Bed-Stuy apartments you’ll typically see a significant reduction in activity within one to two weeks of the first treatment. Gel baits work by allowing cockroaches to carry the product back to harborage sites, which means the treatment continues working after our technician leaves. You may actually see more cockroach activity in the first few days as the product drives them out of hiding that’s normal, not a sign the treatment failed.
Full elimination in a connected pre-war building usually requires at least two to three visits, spaced appropriately to catch newly hatched nymphs from egg cases that survived the initial treatment. In buildings where adjacent units are untreated, the timeline can extend further because reinfestation pressure from shared walls doesn’t stop. That’s why we build follow-up into the treatment plan from the beginning rather than treating it as an add-on. Realistic expectations and a clear schedule upfront are what separate a cockroach control process that actually works from one that just delays the problem.
Yes we offer a 10% senior discount on pest control services. Bedford-Stuyvesant has a significant population of long-term residents, many of whom are seniors who have owned or rented in this neighborhood for decades. In many cases, these are homeowners dealing with aging building infrastructure original plumbing, deteriorating mortar, old pipe penetrations that creates persistent cockroach pressure year after year despite repeated attempts to address it. The discount exists because professional cockroach pest control should be accessible to the people who have been part of this community the longest.
If you’re a senior homeowner in Bed-Stuy dealing with a recurring infestation that over-the-counter products haven’t solved, the 10% discount applies to your service. Mention it when you call. Our pricing is straightforward no hidden fees, no bait-and-switch estimates and the discount comes off the total, not a promotional tier that requires you to buy a package you don’t need.
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