Community activists in Vancouver are calling on the city to pay for an expanded bedbug program following an initial effort that targeted two rooming hotels in the Downtown Eastside.

Anne O'Neil and Ann Livingston of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users managed to get $51,000 in government funding last summer to target the bug problem at two hotels.

O'Neil, who supervised the project, said that some of the rooms had been overrun by the insects.

"In some of the rooms we were seeing them crawling around on the walls, on curtains, and so it was a really heavy infestation here, they were dropping from the ceiling. It was quite horrible."

The rooms were sprayed twice, and the beds and other wooden furniture were replaced.

A new report prepared for city council shows that more than half the infested rooms remained bedbug-free two months later. City staff call that a success.

Now O'Neil and Livingston want the project expanded.

"You really need to create a system whereby you can knock on the door, get a room prepped, get the spray guys in and come back in 10 days and do it again," said Livingston.

"And then, the real project is to not have people pulling bedbug-infested garbage out of the alley into another place. This creates constant reinfection. So that's why it needs to be a neighbourhood campaign."

Livingstone said bedbugs are a growing problem everywhere in Vancouver, and trying to get rid of them in the city's poorest neighbourhood is money well spent.