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| This lump of mold has claimed an area of Marisol Lugo's apartment. (CBS Photo) |
Posted: Friday, 31 July 2009 5:46AM
Mold, mold everywhere at Logan Square apartment
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CHICAGO (CBS) ― It's a disgusting and dangerous problem that's gotten out of hand.
A Logan Square mother felt she had nowhere else to turn, so she sent CBS 2 pictures. And they are not pretty.
Mold, lots of it, has built up inside the one-bedroom apartment she shares with her daughter.
CBS 2's Dana Kozlov took her case to the landlord.
Mold on the walls. Mold in a closet. And then a hunk of mold in what was Marisol Lugo's daughter's bedroom.
"I thank God I had my friend Connie with me because I lost it," Lugo said of the discovery.
The Logan Square renter says she and her daughter have been fighting these unhealthy conditions in her one-bedroom, garden-level apartment since it first flooded last August -- with no help from Peak Management, the company that manages the building. She says she has tried to clean up the mold dozens of times, but it comes back.
"I've called them a bunch of times," she said. "I'm tired of calling them. I've left messages with them, I've left messages with their maintenance crew … They just continue to ignore me."
It's forced the now-unemployed mom and daughter to live in cramped quarters, closing off the mold-infested bedroom to avoid breathing in those spores. It's especially difficult for 12-year-old Ganisa.
"Just looking at it, and knowing that I'm living here and nobody's doing anything about it, it's really bad," Ganisa said.
We confronted the building maintenance man, who couldn't give us information.
Peak Properties owner Mike Zucker said there are two sides to every story. He offered his.
"If something like this was going on, I would have heard about it," he said.
Zucker says he checked his company's database and there is no record Lugo ever called the company's office. She is also behind on her $715 rent, something Lugo acknowledged. Still, Zucker wants to make things right.
"She can call me and she can tell me what she wants to do," he said. "She can move to a different apartment in the building, we can fix up her apartment with the proper mold-remediation specialist, she can move to another one of our buildings. She can move out 100 percent altogether."
So what's Lugo's response? She says she isn't sure she wants to live in another Peak Management property, so she's leaning towards breaking her lease. Whatever the result, all agree she and her daughter can't live with that mold any longer.
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