Families blame spate of illnesses on mold in their Hill Air Force Base housing

[Guest guest]

Families blame spate of illnesses on mold in their Hill Air Force

Base housing

Hill Air Force Base residents say worries over potentially dangerous

mold have fallen on a private contractor's unsympathetic ears

Salt Lake Tribune - Salt Lake City,UT

By D. LaPlante/The Salt Lake Tribune

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_5710890

FORCE BASE - The stack of medical records for Malek's two

toddlers is an inch thick and growing. Mike never missed a day

of work before moving his family to a home on this sprawling

northern Utah base, but has suffered from a slew of illnesses ever

since. And when puts her son to bed, she watches in

tears as he coughs and wheezes his way to sleep.

At least a dozen families at Hill Air Force Base have reported

infections, allergies and respiratory illnesses they believe to have

been caused or aggravated by mold in their on-base homes. But some

of the affected families told The Salt Lake Tribune their efforts to

find help and obtain answers have been stymied - particularly by the

private contractor to whom the Air Force ceded control of its

residential properties in 2005.

Officials at Boyer Hill Military Housing, which now owns the

more than 1,100 base residences, have denied the claims - and even

suggested the families are lying in order to obtain better homes on

base. Boyer manager Dave said he takes pride in providing

quality housing to Hill's airmen and their families.

" Our goal here is to take care of our residents, " he said.

A lawsuit pending in Utah's 3rd District Court charges

otherwise. Nationwide Management Corporation, which formerly managed

the base residences for Boyer, has claimed its efforts to improve

the " deplorable " living conditions at Hill were thwarted when costs

began biting into Boyer's " grossly overstated " revenue projections.

And mold, the suit suggests, may only be a symptom of a badly

neglected housing system.

'We can't wait to get out'

The tiny blond toddlers balancing in Malek's arms have

spent a lot of time in the hospital over the past year.

Malek suspected her daughters' ailments - including sinus

infections, croup and pneumonia - were being caused by mold at her

home. But she said officials from Boyer refused to have her quarters

examined. So in February, Malek hired a private inspector. The test

cost the enlisted Air Force family $250.

The inspection reports, provided to The Tribune for review, show

Malek's home contains " problem " levels of two potentially toxic

spores - at nearly three times the rate found just outside her front

door. Inspectors say Utahns should generally expect to find

equivalent levels inside and out.

University of Utah immunologist and former Mayo Foundation

investigator Gerald Gleich told The Tribune many of the symptoms

described by the Malek family, and others on base, are consistent

with exposure to the penicillium and aspergillus molds found at the

Malek home, although not having examined the individuals, he

couldn't speak specifically to their cases.

But , the Boyer manager, said he has seen enough. Having

toured the Malek home and found no source of moisture, a

prerequisite for mold growth, he is confident there is no mold in

the house. And the way he sees it, the inspection reports " don't

show any mold problem at all. "

" I'd have no problem living in that house, " said , an

Army veteran who said he " spent years " in base housing.

retired from the Army in 2004 as a colonel.

Boyer is building new homes at Hill. And accused the

families who have reported health problems of " using that to try to

get a new house " on base.

Malek scoffs at that contention. She is moving all right, but to

a home off base, on May 15.

" We're actually going to be paying off our lease through the end

of that month, so we'll have a few weeks of overlapping payments, "

she said. " But we can't wait to get out. "

Malek is angry Boyer wouldn't terminate her lease when she

reported that her children were growing ill - a charge repeated by

several other families.

" Those who have fulfilled the commitment of their leases are

welcome to move, " confirmed, but in the meantime, he

said, ''I'm stuck providing them a home. We both signed a lease.''

Stuck? Malek was incredulous.

" We were stuck, " she said, " in a house that was making us sick. "

'Things got really bad'

Shortly after moving into her home on base last April,

noticed her 5-year-old son's asthma had worsened.

" We were having to use his inhaler all the time, he was on five

different medicines and he was wheezing when he went to bed at

night, " she said.

When summer came, turned on the swamp cooler - " and then

things got really bad. "

At the time, said, she had little trouble getting workers

from base housing, then under Nationwide's management, to respond to

her calls for help. " They came out and cleaned the swamp coolers and

the heat ducts pretty much right away, " said.

Meanwhile, the family borrowed an air purifier from a friend

and, on the advice of their doctor, put dust mite covers on the

boy's mattress and pillows.

When those steps failed to alleviate Dakota 's asthma, Air

Force pediatrician Marcus Luce sought help from base housing.

" Mold is the culprit, " Luce wrote in October. " The family will

need to be relocated to help control this escalating problem. "

Despite the doctor's pleas, said she was told her family

would have to wait until their lease ended, six months later, to get

on the waiting list for a new home. In the meantime, said,

Boyer officials told her that she had the option of moving off of

base - so long as she agreed to continue paying $800 a month in rent

if her vacated home was not immediately filled.

" My son was sick and it seemed like all they wanted was to get

another few months of rent out of us, " she said.

's lease finally ended last week. But when she went to

apply for a transfer to another home, she said, she was told her

family won't even be placed on a waiting list for one of the newer

homes, which are larger, unless she has more children.

says she'll speak to her husband - who is currently

deployed out of state - about moving off base when he returns.

" I'm not going to go through another summer of what Dakota went

through last year, " said.

Meanwhile, Luce - who drafted similar letters on behalf of at

least 10 families - has been told he can no longer unilaterally

write base housing officials seeking new quarters for sick

residents.

Hill's chief of medical staff, Lt. Col. Bennion, said Luce

wasn't qualified to make the diagnoses he was making without first

seeing an assessment of the conditions of the home.

Bennion said Luce should have " recommended that the patient

contact a manager at Boyer Hill and address the issue there, as

Boyer Hill would be the one in power to arrange for that

assessment. "

If Boyer doesn't act? Bennion had no answer.

'Infection after infection'

Mike wasn't used to being sick.

" I was always the kid in school who got the award for perfect

attendance, " said , an Air Force electrician who said he has

suffered from near-constant respiratory illnesses since moving into

his home at Hill. " Now I was having infection after infection. "

In February, had his tonsils and adenoids removed. The

month before, his 2-year-old daughter, Jaelynn, had the same

surgery.

thinks many of the problems he and his family have been

experiencing are being caused by the shadowy splotches he has found

behind his couch, in his closets and around his air vents.

- who lives in the duplex apartment adjoining

Malek's home - said the only time his family feels healthy is when

they leave their home for vacation. A recent trip to Michigan, for

instance, " was a welcome relief from the feeling we get, every time

we walk into our home.. . .

" It's a feeling like walking into a brick wall. "

said Boyer officials don't seem to believe him - and won't

even bother to come to his house to check on his claims. " They keep

on saying there is no problem, that it's all in our head, " he said.

His wife, , said threatened to sue her " for

making false accusations, " then hung up on her during a recent phone

call about the mold problems.

" They've treated us very poorly, " she said.

denied those claims.

Watching Jaelynn play on her front lawn, laughed at

how the mold issue has made other problems with her home seem " not

so bad. "

" There's always been this smell of gas, " she says, gesturing

toward the gas line leading into the home. " You can smell it as you

come up the walk. "

said she's been calling Boyer about that problem for

months. They finally came out to address the problem last week.

'Deplorable condition'

By all accounts, the relationship between Boyer and Nationwide

Management - its former property manager - began amicably, with the

two Salt Lake City-based companies working together on a bid that

ultimately granted Boyer a 50-year right to collect rent from Hill's

on-base families.

But when the two firms parted ways, last October, Nationwide's

managers believed they had been cheated out of more than $1.6

million in property management fees.

And that's when the laundry began to air.

With overtones of a recent housing controversy at Walter

Army Medical Center, the suit contends many of the housing units at

Hill:

* Are " in deplorable condition " from years of neglect.

* Have been poorly maintained, particularly those units assigned

to enlisted personnel.

* Have been lacking properly working appliances, including swamp

coolers, refrigerators, furnaces and dishwashers.

The suit doesn't mention mold issues. But Nationwide president

Drew Pearson said he wasn't surprised by the claims of residents

that Boyer officials have been unresponsive to that

concern, " especially because one of their parting comments to us was

that we completed maintenance calls from residents too fast. "

Pearson did acknowledge that many problems he encountered while

managing the Hill properties preceded Boyer's 2005 acquisition of

base housing. But he thinks Boyer - which had no experience managing

large housing projects and didn't do a unit-by-unit inspection

before bidding for the job at Hill - simply wasn't prepared to

handle the work.

" Property management isn't an easy job, " said Pearson, a 30-year

veteran of the game. " It's dirty work and it's expensive. And if

you're not ready for those things, you simply shouldn't get

involved. "

Boyer Hill director Mark Pace would not answer questions about

the suit.

In court documents, Boyer explained the decision to terminate

its relationship with the decades-old property management company

came, in part, because Nationwide didn't " stay within the

established budget " for repairs it was making to the run-down

residences.

(Boyer is the owner of The Salt Lake Tribune building at The

Gateway in downtown Salt Lake City.)

Though Hill officials technically have oversight over Boyer's

management of base housing, a commander who oversees that

supervision said his ability to respond to the complaints is

limited.

" These homes no longer belong to the U.S. government, " said Col.

Harry Briesmaster. " We've given these homes to Boyer Hill Military

Housing . . . they are the landlord. They're the primary owners. "

As such, he said, disputes between Boyer and its tenants are " no

different than the other 1,000 airmen who live off the base " and

thus any airman with a complaint could take his grievance " through

civil law. "

Briesmaster said he would look into any problem he decided

was " systemic. "

But at this point, said, she won't be holding her

breath - except for when she is cleaning mold from her walls.

mlaplante@...