Help Lesli, Liberty and their Parents Find Safe Housing

The Short Version of Our Story

Our family of four and our three dogs have had to vacate our home due to a toxic mold infestation. We are temporarily staying in a hotel while we try to find new housing. The vast majority of our belongings including furniture (mattresses, couches, recliners, our mother's wing back chair and piano, desk chairs, dressers, etc.), large appliances (refrigerator, washer/dryer, microwave, stove, etc.) and electronics in general have been deemed contaminated by a mold inspector, unable to be saved, and must be left behind. We only really have two options, which is to make the house livable again (which will cost thousands of dollars) or to start over. At this point, after everything we've been through, we feel that starting over is the least traumatic option.

We feel beat down and devastated, but grateful that we are no longer in that environment. The mold has caused a lot of health issues, which we're told will take some time to heal.

We have been staying in the most affordable hotel we can find, but will only be able to do so for another week. After that, we will have nowhere to go.

We've created this GoFundMe with the intention and hope that we might be able to get some help with food and clothing, medicine and doctors visits, PPE (respirator filters, gloves, protective clothing), the deposit on an apartment, a storage unit where we can store some of the few things that can be salvaged, mattresses and disinfectant wipes and sprays. It changes daily, but at present we feel that these things are most essential. The rest we will replace in time. We can only be in the house for ten minutes (wearing n95 masks) before we start experiencing hypoxia, chest pain, burning skin and eyes, joint and muscle pain, etc.

Thus far, we've had little help from FEMA and no help at all from the insurance company. We've tried contacting the Red Cross and other organizations and have been told to go to a homeless shelter.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Any assistance you might be able to provide, even if it's just to share our story with others, would be greatly appreciated. If you'd like to know more details about what we've been through and why we are currently homeless, the full story can be found below. Best wishes, Lesli

The Full Story

Hello! My name is Liberty. I live in central Florida with my sister, our parents, and our three Boston Terriers: Dude, Cricket and Daisy.

For the past few years, we'd been living in a rent house and then finally, this past March, my sister was able to get what was supposed to be our forever home. The house was beautiful at first, newly remodeled with brand new flooring, appliances, cabinets and perfect for our family.

A few months after we moved in, we started to notice the floor was starting to develop little raised spots. Then, sewer backed up into the sinks, toilets, laundry room and showers. We discovered that was caused by an undisclosed septic tank with a dead drain field. My sister paid around $11k to have a new one installed. While we waited the three or so months it takes for the permit to go through, our family had to bathe outside and go to the bathroom in trash bags.

During that time, the little raised spots in the floor grew into larger and larger humps, turning the floor into a minefield of trip hazards. One day, a bit of our "luxury" vinyl flooring popped up, and we could see a bit of mold under the plastic underlayment. We thought perhaps the seller had replaced the sub-flooring with OSB (particle board), which is known to expand when moisture is present (such as the constant humidity in Florida) and would also explain what we thought was new mold growth. The plan was to replace the flooring a bit at a time as we could afford the materials, thinking we were safe because the mold was sealed under the plastic underlayment.

In addition to all of that, during that time I was hospitalized twice with very contagious mycoplasma pneumonia. Our mom stayed in the hospital with me and also contracted pneumonia, but a less severe version. I experienced sepsis, the threat of deep vein thrombosis, part of my right lung collapsing, extreme exhaustion and a myriad of other terrifying things. Mycoplasma pneumonia is normally a "walking pneumonia" and mild enough, we're told, that most people are still able to do everyday things. I missed almost three months of work and now have asthma and a lingering heart issue that causes my heart rate to go extremely high and also extremely low.

After I was discharged the second time, things started to calm down. My mom and I started to recover, the new drain field was installed so we had indoor plumbing again and we were developing a plan for fixing the humps in the floor.

In October, our parents and I experienced our first large hurricane since moving to Florida. Everything seemed to weather the storm without issue, apart from our air conditioner. The morning after the storm, it was making a strange noise, and we noticed that little to no air was coming out of the vents in the floor of the house. My sister turned off the breaker to the ac, and then called an HVAC company out to inspect it.

The HVAC technician informed us that the unit itself was fine, but there was water in the ducts running under the house. That meant that we could no longer run the air conditioner, because we would be blowing all sorts of biological matter (including mold) into the house. Additionally, we found out that a lot of the ductwork was damaged, comprised of attic ducts instead of crawlspace ducts and were resting on the ground instead of being secured up onto the joists. Therefore, the ducts wouldn't have the extra layer of protection from water that normal crawlspace ducts have, and they would be resting in any water that might have gotten under the house. The HVAC company pointed out that there has most likely been water in the ducts since before we moved in, which meant that we have been blowing the aforementioned biological hazards into the house for at least eight months.

The package unit outside had been installed by the seller in a below ground level ditch in order for the ducts to fit under the house. We asked about raising the air conditioner up above ground level, which would require a large hole in the side of the house, in the flooring inside and a series of custom shrouds. That would have been incredibly expensive, so we decided to do what the HVAC company recommended, which was to have all of the ducts replaced and lifted up off the ground and to work on diverting possible future water with a French drain and retaining wall. The duct replacement was quoted at $10.5k. My sister agreed to a payment plan and scheduled the appointment.

When the team came out to replace the ducts, we learned that even if the ducts were replaced, they would almost certainly fill with water again because of how close the joists were to the ground. They said they almost never see this sort of setup in a house like ours and that what we needed was a mini-split (ductless) system. We were quoted $23.5k to have that installed, which was more expensive than my sister was able to afford.

We decided that we would make do with the large portable air conditioner we bought when we first had to turn the ac off and with window units.

A window unit was purchased for my room, but it couldn't be installed because my bed was right under the window. We also couldn't move the bed, because one of the humps we mentioned before was in the middle of my room and extremely large. The hump would need to be removed, which had the added benefit of us finally seeing the full scope of what we would be dealing with when we went to repair all of the other humps in the house. We sealed off half of my room and the door, bought plywood and flooring to fix the floor and then my sister started to tear everything out, starting with the top layer of vinyl flooring.

What she found underneath was a plastic underlayment and what we believe is the original oak flooring, made up of small three ish inch by eight inch tongue and groove pieces. When she peeled back the plastic, she found that the humps had been caused by the oak flooring becoming wet and expanding, causing it to buckle upwards. What was even more distressing though, was that all of the floor pieces (top and bottom) were completely covered with thick, white, black and green mold, which meant that all of the other humps in the house were most likely in the same state. We found out later that they were.

My sister started prying up the oak pieces, putting them in black trash bags and taking them outside. She was able to rip up about half of them (they were nailed down) before she had to go to sleep and get ready for work the next day. We sealed the door and went to sleep (I slept in the living room).

Throughout this whole experience, our family had slowly been getting sicker and sicker, so slowly that we thought it was just normal allergies, apart from when our mom and I contracted pneumonia. The day after she started tearing up the floor, I woke up feeling extremely sick (horrible joint pain, sore throat, stomach distress, fever), so I went to the doctor.

The doctor said our family needed to leave the house immediately, that it was not safe to be there and that if we didn't, we would continue to get sicker and sicker.

The next day, however, everyone was feeling exponentially worse. Our dad, who has late-stage Parkinson's with dementia, copd and who had been diagnosed a week before with an upper respiratory infection, was coughing worse than we've ever heard before. My sister, who also was diagnosed with an upper respiratory infection, had a swollen throat, burning eyes and had started to have a weird taste in her mouth when she coughed. That evening, we packed some clothing (not realizing it was contaminated) and went to a hotel.

My mom and sister would go back to the house off and on to grab things we had forgotten. Despite wearing n95 masks, they could only stay in for shorter and shorter increments each time. At one point, my sister could only stay in for about five minutes before her skin and eyes started to burn, she started having blurry double vision and she felt sleepy with extreme chest heaviness. We learned later she was experiencing hypoxia.

That brings us to where we are today. My sister hired a mold inspector, who declined the use of one of our unopened n95 masks because "a healthy person can be in for ten or fifteen minutes safely", to do air quality tests and take samples. When we showed him my room, he was looking around for about fifteen seconds before he started panicking. He'd pulled his polo over his mouth and nose and was saying over and over that we couldn't be in there, that we had to leave, that we couldn't stay in that room for a moment longer, before running outside. He later said he hadn't realized how bad it actually was and that his skin had started burning. He said it was atrocious and "shame on them for selling this house to you".

He completed the air quality tests, took samples and then went to look under the house in the crawlspace. He said that it was drastically worse than the HVAC techs had described. The whole underside of the house is rotted (including dry rot) and covered with mold.

At the end of his visit, he gave us an idea of what steps would need to be taken.

1. An engineer needed to come out and determine if the house was safe structurally, due to the severe rot underneath.

2. All of the flooring, sub-flooring and possibly the joists in the entire house would have to be ripped out and replaced.

3. A mold remediation company would need to remove whatever mold was left.

4. Anything in the house that couldn't be submerged in disinfectant was contaminated, beyond saving and would have to go.

Our homeowner's insurance company is trying everything they can to get out of helping us. We have a "loss of use" benefit, which would help tremendously, but they say we will only get access to it if they can determine the mold was caused by a covered peril, such as a busted pipe or roof leak. We think the mold has been there for years and that we will most likely not be getting it.

FEMA did provide a bit of help. They gave us around $2,990 to make the house livable again, which honestly is only a drop in the bucket. They also said we need to use part of that money to have our water heater elevated "for next time".

My sister has been calling various organizations and reaching out to federal programs for help, but so far all of them will either not take her call, can't help or have a waiting list.

Our immediate goal is to get a small apartment for our parents and then one for my sister and me. We are going this route because we don't have enough cash to secure a rent house for all of us. Our parents qualify for low-income housing and will be mostly self-sufficient. We don't want to split up the family, but this will get us out of the hotel quicker and will allow us to pay off debt and recover.

As my sister said in the shorter version of this, we're hoping this GoFundMe will help us with apartment deposits, mattresses, food and clothing, medicine and doctor visits, protective clothing, respirator filters, and disinfectant wipes and sprays. We should be able to save our pots and pans, plates/bowls/utensils and things like that. The list above contains our immediate needs that we cannot afford to get on our own. The rest of it we will slowly replace as we can.

If you made it this far, we want to thank you so very much for taking the time to read this. Any help would be greatly appreciated, even if it is just to share our story with others.