Help Nelson Huffman Rebuild After Flood

Hello, my name is Nelson Huffman. I live in New Mexico. Unfortunately, this past week (2/14/25), our house flooded due to a busted pipe in my mom's bathroom. Not only that, but our landlord/maintenance has been doing the bare minimum. Our house was barely functional, even before the flooding. My mom, sibling, and I can't live here anymore; we desperately need help. Anything will help, even a few cents.

More Information:

I need help, and I'm not even sure to what capacity at this point. We are still reeling from this past Friday's events...

Friday at 7 in the morning our house began to flood due to a busted hot water pipe under the master bathroom. About 80% of the house was sitting in an inch of water by the time maintenance finally arrived to shut the main water line off at 830. I scrambled to remove all of our household items off the ground to avoid water damage, and I succeeded for the most part, but a lot of our furniture sat in the water until a company pumped the water out around 12. Meaning, we had standing water in the home from 7 a.m. until 1200 that afternoon.

I laid every available sheet, blanket, and towel down along the waters path to try and inhib water flow. These items were taken soaking wet and placed in the smaller bathroom tub where they are still located, mildewed and ruined. The water pumping company offered to reimburse half the cost of doing laundry, but I'm not sure if that's going to go through or not.

My landlord has not heeded any of my emails, in fact, I didn't hear a word from her until Friday around 1230 when she sent our hotel voucher through Monday morning, but no word on anything else. No reports on maintenence, the plumber, or steps to rectify the damage to our household items. I heard from her again Monday afternoon with another hotel voucher because she had failed to take into account Presidents day. Not only were her offices closed, but my kids school as well. We were forced to pack our things, leave the hotel, and stay at the house with no hot water and loud fans/humidifiers running until she sent another hotel voucher around 1 that afternoon for yet another stay through Tuesday morning.

I've sent emails to the landlord asking what they will do about our items being damaged, new mold growth in the home (we fought her in getting a mold company to test our house for three months. I paid out of pocket to have testing done which confirmed mold twice the environmental level. It took a total of 5 months to get them to believe me and conduct remediation efforts in the master bathroom and kitchen. This was brought to her sttention Aug of '23 and completed the end of January '24), as well as the danger to our health. Her response came Tuesday afternoon- a mandated transfer to a unit smack dab in the middle of the war zone. We cruised by the new unit and immediately came across a 20+ person homeless encampment on the units cross roads. I would never feel safe leaving my kids home alone at this new unit. We already have issues with the homeless stealing things from our yard and front porch and have had run ins with people knocking on our doors at 3 in the morning. I can only imagine the hell this new spot would inspire.

I don't know what to do...I plan on calling legal aid, which will help, but going through with a lawsuit is 100% not going to be easy. Nevermind the money required to make this happen. I told maintenance about my suspicion of a leak in that bathroom the day after Christmas last year...they didn't believe me and conducted "repairs" with no integrity or professionalism. I kept telling them about the sound of running water, but all they wanted to do was change out faucet heads and other unrelated repairs. So, the house flooded due to their negligence. Had they taken me seriously, they would have caught the leak months ago.

The negligence of the maintenance crew is unbelievable. This one incident is only the tip of the iceberg.

I feel completely defeated. This house has brought us nothing but despair. Between the confirmed mold that took 5 months to remediate, the untold damage to our health from living in that environment, the fact that my car is on its last leg and the mechanic who took $1200 from me to do repairs, but didn't actually do the work, to putting Nova down, my 4 year old perfectly healthy pup before moving in here, after suddenly developing pancreatitis (I'm convinced mold exposure took our baby, but I'll never be able to prove this) to this flooding. I legit feel wholly and completely defeated. I can't help but ask why all these things keep happening to us. As soon as we catch a breath, something else blindsides us and leaves us gasping for breath.

I need support, I need help, I need something. My kids are friggin troopers in all of this but this has all definitely impacted their mental health as well.

I'm sorry for rambling, it's incredibly difficult for me to ask for any sort of help. So, giving the full story, in my mind, is necessary.