Black mold endangers health in cramped homes

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Black mold endangers health in cramped homes

Chronic overcrowding, inadequate ventilation are leading causes

http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?

AID=/20050515/NEWS/505150340/1001

PETER HARRIMAN

pharrima@...

Published: 05/15/05 1:56 am

Amparing Bergen, a resident of the Sunrise Housing Cluster in

, waits in her wheelchair with her dog Zoe, as Oglala Sioux

Tribe maintenance workers inspect mold in her bedroom. The mold

grows along the ceiling, in corners and extends down the walls. In

other parts of the house, mushrooms have appeared from the floor. At

left is maintenance worker Gerald s.

(Lloyd B. Cunningham / Argus Leader)

MARTIN - Amparing Bergen's right leg, the long one, ends at mid-calf

but swings reflexively in the way a youngster would beat her heels

against a chair leg when announcing big news.

Life seems to work overtime, inventing new ways to punish residents

of places such as the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Bergen has lost

her legs to diabetes. She lives with nine other people in a four-

bedroom house on tribal land near . It is small, worn and 33

years old. A dark bloom of mold covers a cinder block basement wall

like a newly seeded green.

" One time, I even had mushrooms growing in my bathroom, " she

says.None of this makes Bergen, 57, unique among Indian people

living in federally subsidized tribal housing.

Diabetes is common.Overcrowding in tribal housing has been a problem

for decades.

And now mold infests 75 percent of the Oglala Sioux Tribe's 1,700

housing units.

Mushrooms in the bathroom, though, are a new species of travail. It

is an extreme example of the infestation with which tribal officials

across the state are dealing. Mold can create fungal infections and

exacerbate existing health problems such as asthma and

allergies.Mold tucked in ceiling corners and reaching dark fingers

down walls is the common product of moisture accumulation. The water

comes from showers and washing machines going nonstop, from soup and

coffee boiling continuously on the stove, from housefuls of people

exhaling.

It is the latest symptom of a persistent and fundamental problem in

Indian Country. Housing is inadequate. There is not enough of it,

and some tribes cannot maintain the housing stock they do own. A

looming major budget cut for tribal housing programs - $107 million

in President Bush's proposed budget - suggests there will be no

quick resolution.At Pine Ridge, two and three families sharing a

house is common, says Rhonda Two Eagle, Oglala Sioux Tribe secretary.

Rooms and basements in houses throughout the reservation are

subdivided with walls of quilts and blankets to create ad hoc

bedrooms. In such conditions, respiratory infections must spread

like rumors. Homework that requires any degree of concentration has

to be difficult for students to complete. Alcohol may be a welcome

release from the social pressure of living too closely with too many

people.

In its 2003 report, " A Quiet Crisis: Federal Funding and Unmet Needs

in Indian Country, " the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reported

that nationwide, 90,000 Indian families are homeless or underhoused,

and 200,000 new tribal housing units are needed to address that and

to replace aging existing housing.On Pine Ridge alone, 8,000 new

units are needed to relieve the crowding, says Ric Palmier,

superintendent of the eastern district of the Oglala Sioux Tribe

Housing Authority.

Amos Prue, housing director for the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, says the

tribe maintains 823 rental units and has a waiting list of 480

families. The list doesn't account for people who get frustrated and

drop off or those who have been evicted and can't reapply until they

resolve the problem that got them thrown out. Usually such families

move in with someone else, he says.A 2004 report on Oglala Sioux

Tribe housing prepared by the University of Illinois Building

Research Council found an average of 2.6 people per bedroom. " Nearly

all the major and minor problems mentioned in the ... report are

amplified by increased overcrowding, " the report says.

In one home, the researchers found 14 people sharing three bedrooms.

Seven of them were being treated for asthma.

The presence of mold in those situations contributes to some health

problems and creates new ones. " If you are allergic to mold, your

asthma will get worse, " according to Hikmat Dagher, a pulmonary

physician at Avera McKennan Hospital. Even people without allergies

might find that exposure to mold sets up a direct irritation

expressed as headaches, a runny nose, itchy eyes, Dagher says.

People with suppressed immune systems can be infected by the mold

itself. " Usually, mold is a benign fungus. But if you have

immunosuppression it can create a lot of trouble. Our body loses the

capacity to clear it out, " says Dagher. Such people include those

with HIV infections, those with organ transplants and people

undergoing chemotherapy.

There is another group.

For people such as Bergen, diabetes can suppress the immune system,

opening them to threats from the mold.Bergen and her daughter,

Dakota , 29, deal with the mold with bleach, paint and

forbearance, mostly forbearance.

" The basement wall used to be really bad, " says. " It was

slimy. " Now it is just black.

The bathroom remains streaked with mold, but at least the mushrooms

haven't come back.

Stopgap solutions

has lived here more than 10 years, and her situation seems to

tether her to this house or other tribal public housing like it. She

sits on a couch and watches television with 3-year-old Dakota, the

youngest of her six children, in her lap. Her oldest daughter,

Lakota, 14, naps in a nearby recliner. is pregnant with her

seventh child.

" All my kids had colds and runny noses all the time. Since I got it

painted, it's not so bad, " says of mold that has appeared on

walls and ceilings upstairs. " We wash it with Clorox water and that

helps. It stains the paint color but it takes off the mold. " Paint

and bleach are stopgap measures, though. Mold in the basement and

bathroom always returns. Now, when it blooms on other walls and

ceiling corners in the house, says, she has taken to covering

it with quilts.

Jeff Gordon, of the University of Illinois Building Research

Council, who helped write the Pine Ridge housing report, says they

see exactly the same problems in about two dozen similar studies on

other reservations around the country.

" What struck me about Pine Ridge is I saw more poverty and

overcrowding. " I think the housing is salvageable, " he says. " To my

mind, the worst problems were social and not building- related. The

houses would probably perform well if there were four or five people

in them instead of 12 or 14. The moisture load on the houses is

extreme because of the overcrowding. "

Housing crunch worsens

Dakota , on Pine Ridge with her six children, typifies the

growing housing crisis looming in Indian Country caused by the

failure to address crowding. At nearby Rosebud, 50 percent of the

population is younger than 18, Prue says.

If Indians are packed into tribal housing now, that's only going to

get worse. Nationwide, the 2000 Census counted 2.5 million Indians

and Alaskan natives in the U.S., 45 percent of them living on tribal

lands. That population will grow to 3.1 million by 2020, the Census

Bureau estimates.Complicating the efforts to control mold in tribal

housing was a well-intentioned directive by HUD in the early 1990s

to promote energy efficiency. Money was made available, and tribal

housing officials dutifully retrofitted housing units with new

insulation and vapor barriers.

" Once we started wrapping those houses tighter than hell, moisture

got in and can't get out, " says Palmier, the Oglala housing

superintendent.

Educating tenants about minimizing mold contamination is a new

emphasis at Pine Ridge and Rosebud. It produces mixed results.

Burnette, supervisor of Occupancy and Resident Services at Rosebud,

says her agency distributes information fliers about mold and has

housing counselors meet with tenants. " We also provide gloves and

Clorox to tenants who need it, " she says.

But from the perspective of an individual living in subsidized

tribal housing " when you can't even get money to fix a window,

you've got a leaky toilet and you're barely feeding the kids,

getting rid of mold is not a top priority, " says of the

Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. He represents North and South Dakota and

Nebraska on the Native American Indian Housing Council and serves on

that group's mold task force.The learning curve on mold at Rosebud

remains steep, according to Lester Lone Hill, head of building and

inspections for the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. Some tribal housing

residents view mold as an imported problem rather than something

related to their living conditions, he says.

" I've heard them say, 'We're getting that thing that Pine Ridge has

now.' "

Prue agrees, " They don't really understand it. "

Sisseton-Wahpeton action

Fliers and bleach help, and housing counselors can spot what

Burnette says is a common problem - the jumbled mountain of clothing

and personal possessions piled against the mold-infested wall in

's basement. However, none of that addresses the fundamental

cause - crowding.

At the other end of the spectrum from Pine Ridge is the Sisseton-

Wahpeton Sioux Tribe at Agency Village. Ron , housing director

for the tribe, says mold has been found in only about 10 percent of

the 475 rental units the tribe manages and the 500 private homes for

which it provides service. " Our percentage would be a lot higher, but

the council made a decision to get on it. The tribal council goes

over that issue every other month - 'What's going on, Ron? Are you

fixing them? How many more do you have to go?' " he says.

Even at Agency Village, however, " we have overcrowding, and it's a

problem, " says.

The University of Illinois study of Oglala Sioux Tribe housing

typifies many of the maintenance problems tribal housing officials

confront. Every house on Pine Ridge visited by the Illinois

researchers was missing gutters and downspouts. Ground was not

sloped to carry water from houses. Thus, it pooled against basements

and seeped in. All the houses viewed by the Illinois team had wet

basements or crawl spaces.In the absence of aggressive federal and

tribal efforts to battle mold infestations, some Oglala Sioux Tribe

members are trying to deal with it on their own. Red Bear,

35, a tribal housing authority employee, has mold in his bathroom.

" It wasn't bad until about five years ago, " he says. " I'd wash it

off, but it came back. "

Relieving the crowding

Unlike many Pine Ridge residents, his family is not packed into

quarters too small. Red Bear, his wife Jeannette, 34, and their

three children, Alyssa and ssa, 13, and Jr., 11, share a

three-bedroom house. His wife, however, has contracted asthma since

mold appeared.

" What's bad is, I work there, " he says sheepishly of his job with

the Housing Authority. He plans to gut and renovate his bathroom

with friends " very soon, even if I have to pay for it out of my own

pocket. If I waited for the tribe to do it, I would wait quite

awhile. " Probably more people such as Bergen and at Pine Ridge

battle mold with bleach than those who attack it with construction

skills such as Red Bear does.

Palmier sees the ultimate solution to mold problems as eliminating

crowding in tribal housing. He dwells wistfully on programs such as

the state's to build manufactured houses using labor from Department

of Corrections inmates and move those homes around South Dakota to

be bought by people with modest incomes. Even that is out of reach

for many of Pine Ridge's impoverished residents.

Palmier lifts his eyes toward the far horizon and imagines a

scene. " You see the lights come down the road at night sometimes, " he

says. " A house, where's it going? I wish it could come here. "

[Guest guest]

This is so depressing and reminds me to be thankful for the many

things I have despite my health problems right now.

--- In , " tigerpaw2c " <tigerpaw2C@n...>

wrote:

> Black mold endangers health in cramped homes

> Chronic overcrowding, inadequate ventilation are leading causes

>

> http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?

> AID=/20050515/NEWS/505150340/1001

>

> PETER HARRIMAN

> pharrima@a...

>

> Published: 05/15/05 1:56 am

> . "