Military families are getting sick from mold in their homes. Now they’re suing – Crosscut

Melissa Godoy with family dog Roman, a French bulldog and dachshund mix, at their off-post rental home in Olympia, Nov. 18, 2019. Godoy's family, including their dog, experienced health issues at their previous home. (Lindsey Wasson for Crosscut)

Advocate and military spouse Leigh Tuttle points at that decision as a possible turning point. My worry is that through the contracting process, the Army essentially sold their soul to the devil for 50 years, she said.

Tuttle recently relocated to the Tacoma area when her husband transferred to JBLM, but she moved her family into off-base civilian housing after she had similar problems with mold and health problems while living at a previous military installation. She has testified before Congress and regularly takes to social media to speak out on housing and other issues impacting military families. She said its not just about the health of individuals at stake, but potentially severe impacts on military readiness.

JBLM is a hub for special operations, and we are still a nation at war. Soldiers who are deployed to theater should never have to worry about their loved ones living in a hotel room for weeks on end due to the negligence of privatized housing, said Tuttle.The Army needs to take a strong and meaningful stance against these companies that are harming our soldiers and families, and to prove they do care and to rebuild a sense of community.

In January 2019, Godoy still had bronchitis. By that time military leadership had gotten more involved. During a visit by leaders from her husbands unit, housing maintenance personnel were present, and Godoy asked them to look for mold. A maintenance specialist checked the crawl space, came back and reported that there was an improperly installed shower drain. It wasfixed the same day. Godoy asked him if he saw mold, and he told her he hadnt looked and to call housing if she had other concerns.

She did. Godoy went directly to the housing manager and complained that the staff had dismissed and ignored concerns about mold, despite repeated documented instances of water buildup from bad plumbing. She said the manager insisted again that there was no mold and told Godoy to talk to a doctor instead of housing personnel about her symptoms.

By summer she and her children were still sick. My doctor was really concerned about my toddler, she said. Doctors asked her if she had mold in her house, telling her that could potentially explain the symptoms. I told them I dont know.Housing says theres not, Godoy told Crosscut.

Godoy said she was rapidly losing weight, up to 5 pounds a month. She found herself in the emergency room and urgent care several times. She got tested for cancer and the test came back negative. We couldnt find an explanation for why I was losing so much weight and why I couldnt eat anything, said Godoy. It really scared my husband and me because I would cry every day, thinking to myself, Why am I so sick? How can I go from this CrossFit, boxing athlete to this withering away woman?

In July she asked maintenance to come to her house again. They told her they found nothing. I just decided to look for myself, Godoy said. She grabbed a flathead screwdriver and hammer and began to peel off wood paneling in the bathroom near the shower. She quickly found grayish shading in the wall. She said that when she turned over the wood panel in her hand there was black fuzzy spotty stuff all on the inside of it. I found it, I found out why me and my family are so ...sick.

She continued pulling off panels, finding more mold. Same thing, black stuff, all inside of it, she said. She then noticed a piece of tile at the base of the shower that was abnormally white. They had painted over it, she said. It looked like mildew was coming through the paint. She decided to pry that loose too, and said she found black, wet fuzz inside. It was covered in toxic mold, she said.

She called LMH and recorded the walkthrough on her phone. She demanded to know how they could miss the mold for months even as she specifically asked them about it. They put us in a hotel within the hour, she said. She posted video and people began reaching out. Godoy started a Facebook group called Lincoln Military Housing Toxic Homes JBLM. It soon grew to over 1,000 members. She began to receive messages from other families reaching out to her with reports of breathing problems, rashes and other issues. Some asked her to look through their houses asshe had her own.

She started doing walkthroughs with families and pulling up boards. She said that within just the first week she found mold in 26 houses. [We] found really high levels of toxic mold in their houses, she said. They began posting videos and sharing resources on how to find mold. Other families began tearing out panels and tiles to look for mold. They also reached out to local TV stations.

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Military families are getting sick from mold in their homes. Now they're suing - Crosscut