This Young Family Got Severely Sick And Lost All Of Their Belongings Due To Toxic Mold And Their Landlord Is Refusing To Do Anything About It
Youngstown, Ohio. Last October, Lindsay Knotts and her husband Zach decided to pick up and move from Texas to Ohio when they learned that they were going to be expecting a little girl.
So, the young family searched for a rental house, and they found one that they would be able to rent to eventually buy and call their own.
The house they picked was originally built back in 1929, and before they agreed to take it, they did have an inspection done on the house by their landlord (a company that offers rent-to-own homes across the nation).
The person who did the inspection told Lindsay and Zach that everything looked good for them to move forward with moving in, though the inspector acknowledged to them that their new basement had a lot of moisture and leaks.
Lindsay and Zach quickly realized that anytime there was rain or snow outside, the basement started accumulating a lot of water, and it turns out there are holes in the basement’s windows and walls.
Lindsay and Zach did reach out to their landlord, who refused to accept or correct the major problem that they were having with their basement flooding.
GoFundMe; pictured above are Lindsay, Zach, and their daughter Willow
Lindsay and Zach spent close to a year pleading with their landlord to do something, without success, and over the course of their time spent in their home, their situation became even more alarming.
“I began having excruciating migraine headaches every single day,” Lindsay explained. “Mind you, I have no history of migraines. I also began to sneeze constantly and have immense sinus pressure and pain.”
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“My body began to have unexplained aches and pains, my eyes started to burn constantly, and I became extremely fatigued. Then, I began having severe digestive issues, which I began to be affected by daily.”
Lindsay was not the only one in their home who started to get sick; Zach did as well.
“My husband, Zack, also “mysteriously” started to develop severe digestive issues and extreme fatigue,” Lindsay said.
“His muscles and joints began to ache, just like mine. And he also developed severe sleep apnea (which he also had no prior history of.)”
GoFundMe; pictured above Lindsay smiles with Willow
As the couple grew sicker, they couldn’t figure out what was going on and what the cause of their symptoms was.
It was only after Zach walked into the basement after a day of a lot of rain that he spotted the problem; there was black mold coating the entire basement.
They immediately contacted their landlord about the mold problem, and although the landlord sent someone to take care of it, they didn’t remove the mold; they just took several panels of the wall and removed those.
The black mold was still all throughout their basement, and they then called an expert in to help them deal with this.
“When the expert came, he was stunned to see the condition of the basement,” Lindsay continued.
“He put on protective gear to protect himself from the overwhelming mold smells, and he said that he could still smell it through his gear. He tested our home and sent the samples off to the lab.”
What the expert uncovered was a complete nightmare for Lindsay, Zach, and their little girl Willow.
“The lab results declared our ENTIRE home as severely toxic,” Lindsay wrote.
GoFundMe; pictured above are photos of the black mold in the basement
“Our entire home AND all of our belongings. We not only discovered that we had a “mold problem”, but that we had a HIGHLY SEVERE infestation of black mold.”
“And not only did we discover that we were sick, but we realized that our mysterious illness was caused as a result of black mold poisoning.”
Everything that Lindsay, Zach, and Willow own has been so contaminated by the black mold that they had no choice available to them except to throw out everything they own.
They also have been advised to move out of their home, so on top of losing everything they own they’re homeless, too.
“Due to the fact that all of our personal belongings are now gone, we are humbly (and I admit, hesitantly) asking for help,” Lindsay concluded.
“All of our clothes, all of our furniture, everything we own is gone. Our savings account is completely drained, due to the extensive medical bills we have incurred over the last year. Our healing journey from this will be a very long road, and we will continue to incur more and more medical bills.”
Lindsay also wants to pursue legal action against their landlord, to make their landlord make things right.
If you would like to donate to the GoFundMe Lindsay has created to help her family rebuild, you can do that here.
More About:Human Interest