In June 2023, Leah Mullins and her Air Force husband began living in their assigned base housing at MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Fla. They were pleased with the housing location initially.
“At first, we were excited. We were excited to be back home in Florida,” Mullins said.
Only a month later, they began to notice problems with the base home they were assigned to.
“However, we soon observed water building up in the light fixtures upstairs and moisture issues in our laundry room,” Mullins explained.
But the problems didn’t stop there. The excess water and moisture created mold, and the mold caused health problems in her family.
Mullins also shared concerns about their children’s health. “Our eldest daughter was sent home 17 times during the last school year for symptoms like dizziness, nausea, and headaches, indicating constant sickness in our home,” she added.
Mold issues have been noted in the same base housing units since 2019.
Previously, a group of tenants won a class action lawsuit against the management contractor, The Michaels Organization, responsible for maintaining the homes.
Subsequently, a new lawsuit alleges that the organization has been “creating and hiding hazardous living conditions that caused illness and trauma to service members and their families.”
Kristina Baehr is an attorney with Just Well Law and is part of the litigation, representing more than one hundred clients.
“People are sick. The housing conditions are unsafe, and we have neighborhoods that are full of mold,” Baehr said.
Baehr said the company is simply not fixing the problems.
“Addressing mold isn’t complicated; you identify and eliminate the source, clean the mold, and then test to confirm its removal. It’s not rocket science,” Baehr remarked.
She said the company has also not addressed the root cause of the problem: excess moisture.
“You have a company, Michaels, that refuses to address and refuses to find the sources of the moisture, and in fact refuses to use the word mold. That’s how you make hundreds of people sick,” Baehr said.
She said it’s affecting the mission readiness of people on base.
“We can’t afford to keep this up as a country. We can not be mission-ready if our military families are sick,” Baehr said.
The Michaels Organization did not immediately respond to an email asking for a comment on the lawsuit.
