07:16 AM EST on Friday, February 10, 2006

By JEFF SONIER / 6NEWS
E-mail Jeff: JSonier@WCNC.com

6NEWS

Isabella used to live in Hunter Oaks. She developed a rash all over her skin that doctors couldn't cure and her parents couldn't explain.

6NEWS has discovered that home sweet home could be making you and your neighbors sick. The 6NEWS Investigators found that mold was growing in house after house at Hunter Oaks, a popular neighborhood located off Rea Road just over the Union County line.

Moisture in the foundation causes mold to grow on piers, walls, and floor supports. The mold often filters up into the house itself. It is a problem the neighbors in Hunter Oaks never knew about until their families started getting sick.

Isabella used to live in Hunter Oaks. She developed a rash all over her skin that doctors couldn't cure and her parents couldn't explain.

"She was having headaches every night. She would complain about stomachaches. Her legs hurt...and nothing was working,” said Isabella’s mom Alex Gonzalez. “I mean it got to the point that I would cry because she would wake up in the middle of the night, saying the bugs were eating her."

In fact, Alex Gonzalez said her whole family was sick.

“And then we went away on vacation everybody got better. We went back home...everybody had issues. Headaches, dizziness, cough, sinus infections,” Alex Gonzalez said. “I knew it had something to do with the house at that point."

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The house is located in Hunter Oaks. It is one of four homes, side by side, where others were getting sick, too.

Another neighbor had a strange rash that wouldn't heal. Now, 6NEWS discovered those four houses have something else in common: They all had mold in the crawl spaces underneath the houses.

When asked how he would characterize the seriousness of the mold problem in those houses, David Nelson, Ryland Homes president, said “it was very limited."

Nelson talked to 6NEWS by phone because he refused to appear on camera.

6NEWS

The house is located in Hunter Oaks. It is one of four homes, side by side, where others were getting sick, too.

If the mold wasn't serious, why do real estate records show Ryland spending $1.7 million to buy back those houses, then spending thousands more to cover these muddy, moldy crawl spaces with thick sealed plastic.

"You don't see any connection between the illnesses of the families and the time they lived in those houses with the mold in the crawl spaces?” asked 6NEWS Investigator Jeff Sonier.

"We've seen no evidence of that, Jeff," Nelson responded.

"These folks weren't sick when they moved in,” Sonier said. “They got sick when they moved in and they got better when they moved out. How do you explain that?"

"I'm not a doctor,” Nelson said. “I can't give you any sort of speculation on that."

But a doctor's note blames one neighbor's illness on the mold spores in her house. Another doctor's letter pointed to his patient's toxic mold exposure. And the Gonzalez's said their doctor told them the same thing.

"He helped us realize, yeah, the house is the problem," Alex Gonzalez said.

Again, Ryland Homes disagrees, claiming air quality inside the houses isn't a problem.

"We tested the air inside the homes on three different occasions. And in all those occasions, none of the air samples inside indicated any elevated levels of mold," Nelson said.

But now, 6NEWS has numbers that Ryland didn't want us to see. Ryland's own lab testing results from inside one house and mold numbers from a second lab, testing the same house a month later, show second lab's mold counts are much higher compared to Ryland's mold counts. They were five and six times higher than the levels that Ryland claims are normal…

"You've got sick kids. They've got mold testing results, and yet they tell you there's no problem?" Sonier asked the Gonzalez family.

“Right. So what do you do? We didn't know what to do at that point,” Alex Gonzalez said.

"My wife and I sat down and talked. I said we've got to do something. There's no more staying around here," Ray Gonzalez said.

That's why finally, what the Gonzalez's did was move their family of seven out of Hunter Oaks to a two bedroom hotel room for eight months, leaving behind nearly everything they owned, fearful of more mold contamination. Their clothes still hang in the closets. Their other belongings are in boxes and bags. And photos are all that is left of their new furniture. It is all they have to remind them of what their home used to be.

"You know, you work so hard for so long to build your dream house, and...We can't go back," Alex Gonzalez said.

But when families like the Gonzalez's move out, what about the families moving in? How much are they being told about mold? We'll look at that in part two, along with what's to blame for the mold in those Hunter Oaks houses.