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[Guest guest]

Hi All,

Since I am alone in dealing with this and have lost family to disease and friends to mold (because they can't stand to hear about it as much as I'm living it), I will post.

I have had my condo remediated, torn apart and rebuilt at enormous expense only to discover that the problem cannot be cured or solved. I can't sell my condo because no one is looking to buy, the economy is not conducive to buying, and the holidays have begun. I have cut my land line phone service, cut my tv service and am looking to move into a furnished room.

This will be the second holiday season that I have been sick, unemployed and practically homeless. I thought I was well enough and the condo was safe enough to stay here, but when I went off my antihistamines for a few days for an allergy test, I learned that my symptoms have been actually getting worse as I take more and more allergy medication. I cannot allow this to continue.

This is depressing beyond belief and I know most of you have a story like this to tell.

I am continuing to try to contact people in state and federal government to fight for help in this battle. I am copying here a letter I just sent that describes what I am trying to look into.

If anyone has any ideas, let me know.

Here's the letter:

I am a mold victim in my 17 year old condo which I starting inhabiting in July of 2001.

My inspector found no water intrusion or mold during inspection mainly because the whole area was in a 3 year drought. Had I talked to the neighbors before I bought, I would have learned a whole different story:

The condos here (condexes: 2 attached townhouses) are built on what the neighbors understood to be protected wetlands. They protested the development vigorously for something like 30 years or more all to no avail. A developer came in and in violation of EPA wetlands determinations, in violation of building codes and using inferior building materials, built very attractive condos. Other nice looking but mold infested homes have been built by unscrupulous people as well.

Almost everyone up and down the street has flooding, mold problems and is sick. One person downhill of this development has already died of obstructive pulmonary disease and his wife and daughter are not far behind. Neighbors open their doors to me as I go door to door for Neighborhood watch activities and a blast of moldy air comes out fit to knock a person down.

I was wondering if you could point me in any kind of direction that could help me look into lifting the statute of repose that is in effect with regard to builders. Or if city inspectors could, under special circumstances, could be held liable for letting horrible violations pass thru so that city coffers get money from unscrupulous developers.

That is, the way things stand now, if a structure stands for 6-10+ years and is later found out to have structural and materials violations, the owner can no longer try to get satisfaction from getting damages reimbursed by the builder/developer, who is after all, the initial culprit in many of these cases.

The builder and the city inspectors who have built and inspected this inferior housing are complicit in this horror show. Both stand to save and make a lot of money by providing cheap housing (for them, but not for the buyer) that is unsafe in the short or long term to live in. The real estate agents continue to make their money selling condos and homes that are making people ill.

People, in their fear of losing their shirts, quietly sell and move if they can, passing the problem on to many levels of ownership until someone is made so desperately ill that everything stops. That sick person is made to bear the full brunt of this incredibly unethical behavior.

The builders and city inspectors who claim they had no idea or claim that someone must be peculiarly sensitive to have this problem could all admit to knowing that someone would get ill living in a wet cardboard box! Many of these homes look quite nice, but are not much more than cardboard boxes. We move into them thinking that the builder/developer put as much time and care into making them safe and solid as he did into making them attractive to buyers.

It just seems a shame that the government and taxpayers should have to foot the bill to help people like myself (if the toxic mold bill comes thru) when builders and city inspectors have not been held responsible.

What person upon looking to buy a home will be allowed to cut into the walls to see what materials and violations of building codes there are? Why are builders and corrupt city governments being protected at the expense of the health and financial resources of so many poor and other sick people?

I will help in any way I can in this fight and have an activist network. I am very good at contacting many people.

Just point me in a direction that you think may help and I will go for it. I have contacted the Massachusetts ethics committee only to be told they "looked extensively into the problem" and found that no one had violated any ethical guidelines! They are not off the hook.

I get sick and I must rest, but I am so outraged at how long I have had to suffer (since 2001), how long my neighbors have had to suffer, how long countless others have gone thru this home ownership mill - passing the problem onto the next layer - that I will fight this until I am no longer on this planet.

I have just turned off my phone line and cut tv service as I must now move into a furnished room somewhere until my condo sells. I had it remediated at enormous expense while hopping, in extremely poor health, from place to place only to find that the problem cannot be fixed without leveling the place - the place is almost entirely constructed of particleboard that touches wet ground, but on the inside so that you can't see it without tearing the walls apart. The roof underlayment is also entirely particleboard which has become water soaked. The condo is a breeding ground for stachybotris and many other toxic molds.

The remediation helped my health somewhat, but since I couldn't get all the mold fixed and there is a problem with wetness/mold coming from my neighbor's side, I am still sick here and must move out. I thought I had a home, but I got a nightmare.

Sincerely,