Pre-1960 houses, raised floors and sewer roaches
Census estimates put San Bernardino's median year built at 1973. About 22,800 homes, a third of the city's housing, date to before 1960, and some 5,900 to 1939 or earlier. Another 4,400 are mobile homes. Houses from those decades are more likely to sit on raised foundations with crawl spaces, and their original drain lines have probably been patched more than once.
That matters for the large outdoor species. UC IPM describes American cockroaches living in sewers and storm drains and entering ground floors through damaged pipes, faulty drain traps and missing screens, and Oriental and Turkestan cockroaches gathering in water meter boxes, crawl spaces and damp ground cover. In an older San Bernardino house we look under the floor and at the cleanouts, foundation vents and plumbing penetrations, not only inside the kitchen.
Sources: [1][10]
Half the city rents, and few rentals get an inside look
Renters head about 32,100 San Bernardino households, essentially half the city. About 15,000 homes are in buildings of five or more units, and roughly 5,000 more are in duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes.
Since 2008 the city's Single-Family Rental Property Inspection Program has required inspections of rented single-family homes, duplexes and triplexes, but it concentrates on exterior conditions, and interior checks are at the code enforcement officer's discretion. San Bernardino County's own apartment-inspection program lists only unincorporated areas, Yucca Valley and Chino Hills as its service area.
As a result, a German cockroach infestation inside a San Bernardino rental is unlikely to be caught by a routine inspection. Tenants should report roaches to the owner or manager in writing, and owners of buildings with shared plumbing walls get better results when the neighboring units are inspected and treated in the same visit.
Sources: [1][2][3]
County vector control and San Bernardino restaurant closures
San Bernardino is one of the valley cities where the county's Mosquito and Vector Control Program provides service, and the county lists roaches among the nuisance pests that program covers, along with flies, rodents, fleas and bed bugs. Residents can submit a service request to the program. For cockroaches inside a business, the county's guidance for lodging operators recommends contracting with a licensed pest control operator.
Restaurants and markets in the city are inspected by county Environmental Health Services, whose guide closes a food facility with a cockroach infestation regardless of its letter grade. On September 9, 2026, county inspectors closed a restaurant on East Baseline Street for a cockroach infestation; it reopened two days later. On October 1, a food business on Highland Avenue was closed for insufficient hot water and a vermin infestation, a term the county uses for rodents, cockroaches and flies, and it reopened October 5.
For San Bernardino food businesses we schedule visits outside service hours, use food-safe baits, growth regulators and traps instead of broadcast spraying, and leave a dated log after every visit.
Sources: [4][5][6][7][8][9]
