You have my sympathies. We also have an ongoing roach problem in our (pre-war, 5-story, 60-unit) building and despite using *all 18 death-bait traps* in our 3-foot by 15-foot kitchen, they endure - though at a much lower level now than before our downstairs neighbor moved out of her hoarder, filthy, roach infested (seriously, saw the place after she left), 6-months behind on rent apartment. The day after she left, we went from 20-30 sightings a day to one every two weeks. But roaches were here before us and they'll be here after, so as long as we live in this apartment it's a battle.

So...get your downstairs neighbor to self-evict in the middle of the night? It was a proven success strategy for us! ;)

Boric acid, also known as Chinese Chalk, works. It's a poison and the roaches will eat it and die off. You can get a bottle of the powder at most drug stores. Sprinkle it places like under the ledges of cabinets, along the walls, etc. Years ago I bought it in chalk form in Chinatown, and drew it all over the place.That was several apartments ago. If you have pets, it's not the best option.

Really, what you need is for the landlord to treat all the apartments in the building, and the public areas, all at the same time. If anyone in the building claims not to have roaches, they are just kidding themselves. When I lived in Boston, it was written into the lease that the landlord would have access to the apartment four times a year to spray for "insects" which everyone knew meant roaches.

For what you can do--seal off any cracks or gaps around pipes. Use an expanding sealer to get in all the nooks and crannies. Keep food in glass or plastic or metal containers. Don't leave water around-dry out the kitchen sink at night. Don't store brown paper grocery bags--the roaches are attracted to the glue that holds them together.

Don't feed them.
Don't water them.
Seal up any openings they might be entering from.
And call the landlord.

I think I got this tip here, but I have had great success with taping bay leaves in hidden areas (under cabinet shelves). It probably won't solve a huge problem, but it has made it a far more rare sighting in my townhouse than before. Gotta love cheap and safe!!!

We had an exterminator tell us that if the other apartments don't exterminate, it's near impossible to keep them out of yours. He advised us to stick steel wool (the cheap stuff from home improvement stores) into the holes especially around plumping and on shared walls. It did help a lot.
They may be big, but I guess they can squeeze through tiny holes. The steel wool pokes them and they don't like it.
Also, close up your drains at night and some spearmint oil on cotton balls around the house helps a little too.

Agree with all the other opinions.

I live in a 1930 building and the main problem are some tennats who seem to run a garbage facilty, their flat is fully infested causing problems to all of us.

The solution came with a neighbourg who found one kind of jelly. In less than three days we got rid off of the roaches. And lasted for about 9 months, it´s called Goliath, but I think it´s significantly similar to Blattanex.

Sadly, you really need all the neighbours to do the same to cut it, and since our dear ones don´t allow to go inside and apply the jelly we are doomed again... :S

And it doesn´t matter that you keep all your food packed or in sealed jars. They eat leather, paper, cosmetics, and they can survive only with a drop of water for more than a month and a half...

Goliath or Blattanex you will adore the day they hit the markets...

I've heard, constantly spraying with vinegar. It might help, good luck...

make sure you don't leave any cardboard boxes around the house. Just like with the brown bags Xarcady mentioned, the bugs are attracted to them.

A bug guy once told us to get rid of all cardboard/paper containers or boxes under the sink.
Like brillo pad boxes, or the ones trash can/garbage bags come in. The bugs love those.
We decant our d/w detergent into a quart soda bottle with a screw top, takes up less room and is easily poured out.
That means in the bathroom vanity too.
In FL they call them palmetto bugs but they are cockroaches as far as I am concerned.

Try Orange Guard. Hardware stores have it. Made with orange peel it is safe for pets, and children.

I have heard that sprinkling diatomaceous earth helps. We dusted the floor with it under our oven and dishwasher, which is where we thought they might be congregating. That combined with a massive offense of a couple of different types of roach traps (Raid roach motel type stuff) seemed to work... at least on the third try...

We had an exterminator come when we had roaches. He applied a poisonous brown goo to a few places under cabinets and such and that solved it. About four months after the initial application we saw a few more little roaches and had the exterminator back to reapply. The guy who lived here before us was a real slob so it was no wonder there was an infestation. Luckily we live in a large building that offers free extermination as needed so we probably don't have neighbors with infestations.

Clean everything. Seal holes with spray foam. Try to get your landlord to get a pro out to treat everyone! Also check all drains. The big roaches are often water bugs and come up through dry drains. If there is a sink or a shower or a floor drain in your place where the water has evaporated out of, fill it up again and put a few tablespoons of vegetable oil in it to keep it from going dry in the future (sits on top of the water to prevent evaporation & harmless to plumbing). If there is a janitors closet near your apt, have them clean in there and treat it the same way. Sprinkle diatomaceous earth in any areas you think they travel through. It shreds their exoskeleton when they walk over it and not poisonous. Boric acid or Borax reportedly works too. I read someplace to mix borax with peanut butter and they eat it and it kills them.
They love moisture (so clean and thoroughly dry under sinks, fix any leaks etc), nooks (cardboard, cracked walls/floors) and food. If you can make it uninhabitable, they will find another place that suits them better.

Invest in house centipedes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scutigera_coleoptrata

Your roaches will be gone in about a week.

Get a cat.

Here in Texas, the only thing that worked for me was ortho ant killer. Its a white powder, I just put some behind the fridge, under the sink and around the perimeter of the rooms of my apartment. Within s few days they were gone. It lasted for a couple of months.

I have had an ongoing cockroach problem in my apartment for about a year. I hired an exterminator that comes every month and that helped, but did not eliminate the infestation. The roaches were still coming up from downstairs. Finally, I went to Home Depot and bought several boxes of the Combat roach motels, both large and small size. I put them in the kitchen and bathroom. It's been a month and I haven't seen any roaches since that time. The Combat lasts for a few months and so far it is the only thing that has worked for me. The cats don't bother the Conbat motels, but I have heard that dogs chew them, so avoid them if you have dogs.

I've had roaches and the only thing that worked was Advion Roach Gel. You can buy it on amazon. It's not that expensive.

Another commenter mentioned an exterminator using some brown gel. I think this is it. It doesn't smell or anything. The instructions said to put some pea sized balls every few feet but I've had better luck putting a thin line every few feet. It really attracts the roaches to eat it and they bring it back to their nest.

"Invest in house centipedes."

Or a house Gecko.

I had roaches in one apartment lived in for months. The exterminator told me that because they weren't coming from my apartment he could spray and that would deter them or kill a few off but when the spray wore off they'd just come back.

Once they bombed the whole building they went away for good. It took months for the management to finally do it, but it worked. If they're coming from another apartment, that apartment needs to be treated otherwise they'll never truly go away.

We had this problem and I tried everything. The solution I came up with was Boric acid mixed with sugar and flour. I found the boric acid alone they learned quickly not too eat, but the flour and sugar made it a tasty treat they couldn't resist. Within 2 weeks they were all gone and I haven't seen one since (at least a year has passed). Also if you can't find boric acid the laundry soap Borax works I believe.

Ugh, I had to deal with a lil roach problem at the last place I lived ... so not fun. At first I was wary about dumping a bunch of chemicals around my house but I hated the roaches more so I quickly got over that. I lined my pantry, the cabinet under my kitchen sink, the space under my dishwasher and a couple of other suspect places with a thick line of boric acid. I then liberally sprayed Ortho Home Defense Max around the perimeters of my bathroom, kitchen, doorways to outside, etc.

Both of those actions seemed to really reduce roach sightings in my place. I'd still seem them every once in a while but they would already be dead when I found them, which was less traumatic. But .... it wasn't until my complex started spraying around the exteriors of our buildings that the roaches seemed to disappear for good.

Backstory: Two people from the suburbs of the Northeast (US) move into a 1950s duplex in the flood plains in the Southeast (US) and one of them (me) becomes a bit unraveled by the never ending roach infestation.

And yes, 10 months later, it hasn't ended, and I don't see it ending soon. And yet, just today I was happy to hear that our landlord wants us to stay as long as possible, because we really like it here now. Here's how I went got from unable to sleep/wiping every fomite in the house down daily to just slightly uneasy walking around in the dark with a few odd habits:

1) Clean up. First, I did a big surface clean. I didn't get too scrubby because I knew I'd be deep cleaning each area and making a mess all over again.

2) Arm yourself. A botttle of plain soapy water works for many at stopping/slowing down fleeing roaches. A bottle of bleach (or substitute) at disinfecting and/or sanitizing strength is good for the gross areas of your home (and also kills them on contact, for me). Get some traps. I bought in bulk, but you may not go through them as fast as I did (I used mine as barriers like a roach fence in places). Get a caulk gun and some caulk. We got Diatomaceous Earth and Boric Acid (this you can find at Dollar Tree for powders. Also at Dollar Tree are some dehumidifiers. I don't know if they are a good deal or not over all, but we keep one in every closet and under the sinks.

3) Find out what you're dealing with. Laying traps out may help you find where they are coming from, how bad the infestation is, and which species you're dealing with. We have Americans, Germans, and Brown Bandeds. Americans usually come in off the streets or through other gaps in the house. Germans usually set up shop in the kitchen (and are the most persistent little buggers). We had brownbandeds in the bedroom closets.

4) Assume defeat. This is a personal preference of dealing with the problem. We assume that there are roaches running around at night. It's unsettling, but to be honest, it was never something I got out of my head anyway (even after going months with only the occasional sighting). I sort of learned to live with them. I keep all my food in sealed containers. Not only does this make your home less inviting, but you can rest pretty easily knowing you won't be pouring roaches into your cereal. We couldn't afford a trip to outfit our pantries, so we collect and clean out screw-top liquor bottles to help with this. I keep my toothbrush as upright as possible and rinse it before using it. Stuff like that.

5) Quarantine the important things. We have no counterspace and some wall space in our kitchen, which turned out to be a good thing. I don't trust our cabinets, but I do trust our kitchen peninsula. We also have a wiry standing shelf. This is a little ugly (and not good for the feet of the furniture), but we put traps under the legs of the island, and rubbed petroleum jelly on the legs of the metal shelves. We keep it a few inches away from the wall. So we'll always have a little area that we know is roach free. It's not ideal, but it saved my sanity. Also, it can be tricky to do this, and you mind need a partner to lift the furniture onto the traps (we put a paper circle between the trap and the legs to protect furniture). We store some of our dishes on the shelves (we do have a cat, so cat hair is factor in determining what goes where).

4) Explore the nooks and crannies. My bf come home from school to appliances all over the place. He asked me to think about what I was doing and if it was worth it. It was! I discovered a huge hole in the wall behind the oven. I found a slew of dead roaches of various species under the oven and stuck on between the oven and counter (GROSS). The dishwasher was floored in, so we had to wait on that. Check that latch on the DW door: found some eggs. Water machines in fridges are a magnet for them. Found more egg cases there. We had them breeding in our windows. Sealing those up helped a ton. Get on the ladder and look at the door frames. Then crawl around (I had 'roaching outfits' and covered my skin because, blech). Caulk, caulk, caulk.

5) Purge things. Make sure you're taking out the garbage frequently. This was actually hard for me. Without roaches, I'd be re-purposing cardboard and chipboard and reducing all my plastic. But my immediate environment is important, too. Purge what you can. Reduce your clutter. It's easier to wipe down your surfaces or a catch a running roach when you have less stuff in the way.

6) Use your pesticides of choice. We have no children around and and decided to go with some toxic stuff in small doses. We do have a cat, though. We put a mix of DE and Boric Acid (lung irritants) where the cat couldn't get to (under the oven, fridge, washer, dryer, up on the door frames). We put straight DE under the couch, nightstands, etc, where it's out of sight and we don't clean, but the cat could go. Our exterminator sprayed, and put up the brown gel. Helped a bunch but only AFTER the deep clean and sealing up the apartment. I used the mainstream spray near the fridge and other problem areas.

7) Eat down the freezer and dedicate an area to freeze small objects that may be infested. Put the items in a bag and take care to be sanitary about the process. I don't recommend freezing your electronics. If there are some you don't really use but are keeping, try bagging them up for 6 months, vaccuuming them out, and putting them where they won't get reinfested later.

8) Deep clean. Room by room, make sure to remove all their droppings and clean, clean, clean. For example, in the bedroom we steamed the floors, washed the mini blinds (lots of poops in the brackets that hold them up, blech), vacuumed up closets. Really helped. Putting screening on the air vents helped us, but it's not attractive if you tape it down to really seal it up.

9) Check for areas that are problems. We'll never be rid of them. We have two utilitiy closets, and the walls aren't sealed up in either. In one, sheet rock is crumbling all around the HVAC unit. It's a big repair. Since we know about this, we make sure our exterminator pays extra attention there (no aerosols by the pilot light, please).

10) Get rid of as much moisture as possible. I just had a thin shirt fail to dry after hanging up to dry for 3 days. So I know this isn't always feasible. Consider a dehumidifier if you can afford it, or talk to your landlord about sharing the costs (if you rent).

So, obviously these are more steps for when you move in, and it's always easiest to take care before you bring your stuff in. Still, hope it it helps. We still get an occasional one, but our life is completely different than when we moved in.

spray crevice filling foam insulation into any open cracks and spaces that lead into your home from another (floors, ceilings, doorways). also a bead of silicone around all the joints inside cabinets and drawers in the kitchen and bath. it helps to keep them out of these spaces or contain small infestations within them. do not keep or store boxes and shopping bags if you can help it, if you must then keep them in sealed airtight plastic containers.

My husband lived in a roach infested apartment, and after trying everything from exterminators to roach motels to cleaning obsessively, he ended up buying a tokay gecko. They're known as the "pit bull" of geckos, and after he got her he never saw another roach.

In South east asia, we tie a bundle of pandan leaves and leave them where cockroaches are found. Nonpoisonous and acts as an air freshener too.

I agree with BMORESUBLIME. Geckos will definitely solve the roach problem. They will also eat most other insects. My only problem with them is that I am terribly terribly frightened of them.

this brings back nightmares of the southeast where we had huge flying ones....

when i had them, it took all kinds of experimenting before i found out they were crawling up the sink pipes from downstairs [my solution ended up being to leave the drain plugs in when the sink wasn't in use, since the owner & downstairs neighbor seemed fine with this problem].

definitely try the boric acid bait, and diatomaceous earth [which is good for all kinds of bug problems, indoors & out] clean out any paper packaging, and if you think they're coming in the walls, tape off seams in built-in cabinets [this was another thing i tried--it drove me so nuts that i had to try it, until i figured out the plumbing issue].

i did use traps, which seemed to reduce the population to very small, young roaches, but unless you see total effectiveness, they will persist. if you do live in a building, try plugging your drain with an inch of water whenever the sink isn't in use and see if you have the same problem!

@Doemora: Yes! There's nothing like relaxing on the couch on a nice summer's evening and seeing one heading your way! Eww!

I live on the third floor of a walkup and I seem to get about 2 random, adult roaches in my apartment every week, both the skinny reddish brown ones and the fat black ones. Yuck. My cat likes to catch them and bring them to me in bed while I sleep. I have become such a light sleeper because of him (every time I hear him jump enthusiastically into bed I leap out, turn on a light, and try to find the scrambling roach. *shudder*).

My landlord's advice: don't panic until you see the baby ones, dispose of the large ones ASAP, and don't let your dishes soak in your sink.

1. - Combat. It changed life in NYC vis-a-vis roaches
2. - seal ALL cracks and gaps -- steel wool, caulk, foam, whatever.
3 - clean everything really well. Roaches leave an odor that tells other roaches "this is a cool place to find stuff" -- you must clean to get rid of that scent.
4. - Did I say Combat?

I found out that palmetto bugs and/ or roaches hate the smell of cedar wood (moth balls), and essential oils like rosemary oil, lavender oil, camphor oil. You can find these essential oils at amazon or something like that or at a local health store. Keep the house squeaky clean and smelly with these essential oils.
At night, I make sure I always put a few drops close around the sink, and kitchen counters, in the bathroom close to the drains. If I don't have any oils I spray 409 in all drains. Put cedar moth balls in your closets & shelves & drawers, night stands, etc. I have also sealed cracks where they could get in and hide. You can seal cracks with either caulk or silicone, or even foam sealant which you will find at any home depot or lowes, or even walmart. I do this and thank God I haven't seen any in the past few months after I started doing this. I was seeing them every day (1 a day) inside my house by the kitchen and bathroom.
I also plugged the Riddex Pulse, I plugged one in the kitchen, 1 in the bathroom and 1 in the living room.
I hope you find this to be a solution to stop them from wondering inside your home.