Help the Hammonds' Return Home

Story

"Help Us Move Back into Our House" Our family never expected this year to evolve into the nightmare and stress we are struggling through. We are the Hammond Family and live in Miramar, Florida. In the beginning of August 2024, our pipe burst overhead in the ceiling and flooded four bedrooms including ceiling, walls floors, and contents. After our first experience with mold mitigation, we discovered the root of our problem was a deteriorating copper pipe problem throughout our entire house. Although we are working with our Florida State Funded Citizens Insurance, they do not cover the cost to fix the pipes. As we finally decided to properly replace all plumbing copper pipes to avoid this mess in the future, we had to take an emergency loan. Granted, we are still working our way back from Covid times. Once the re-piping started, it only revealed that our house had more than one pipe burst and substantially more mold. Citizens made us file three claims instead of one which meant three deductibles to come out of pocket. It seems like every day during this process, something else in our home has to get gutted or another plumbing fixture purchased because it was deteriorating as well. Our house was built and only 2003!! We have moved at least 12 times into different hotel rooms in the past 7.5 months!! There are six of us and two cats in our room. Our one son had just graduated college in May. Another son just started college. My granddaughter so far has spent her entire third grade being shuffled around in different hotel rooms. Our daughter has to navigate a longer route to school and work and aftercare pick up for her daughter. The mental stress and dynamics going on while trying to be optimistic has been quite the challenge as one could imagine. We have been pretty much living out of our suitcases for over 7 months and trying to manage going to work. Our belongings in our house were finally approved to be moved into a storage facility about three months into this process. Although we are all coping the best we can with the situation we are grateful each day. Working and navigating through insurance policies and adjusters and being denied extra mold mitigation has been both a mental and financial strain. Hotel reimbursements are thousands of dollars behind. We are not sure when we will be able to move back in. We are working through the Managed Repair Program through Citizens which has been a slow-moving process with many hurdles. Any financial assistance would be greatly appreciated to pay back loan, deductibles, and repairs not covered by our insurance company as we have overextended our budget and stress levels. We cannot wait to get our home back. Heartfelt. Wendy Hammond