05:28 PM EST on Friday, February 10, 2006

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

6NEWS

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

Families in a popular charlotte area neighborhood said mold in their houses was making them sick, so the 6NEWS Investigators went looking for the cause.

It’s a problem in the Hunter Oaks neighborhood that forced some families to move out. But are the families that are moving in being told about the mold?

Alex Gonzalez said her family's dream disappeared when their five kids started having awful rashes and other illnesses.

"There was blood all over her pajamas, all over her sheets, all over her comforter,” Alex Gonzalez said.  “I couldn't do anything."

It turns out other neighbors in Hunter Oaks were getting sick too.  Their doctors blamed the health problems on exposure to mold that was growing under their houses.  The homebuilder, Ryland Homes, said the doctors and the neighbors are wrong.

When asked if he saw any connection between the illnesses of the families and the time they lived in those houses with the mold in the crawl spaces, David Nelson, Ryland Homes president, said "We've seen no evidence of that."

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But 6NEWS has the real estate records that show Ryland Homes still spent $1.7 million buying back houses in Hunter Oaks, houses the neighbors said were built too close to a creek out back. And a 6NEWS check of Union County planning records show the neighbors may be right.

6NEWS flew over the area in AirStar6 and found that the low lying lots at the end of the street were not even on the map when the county approved a flood plan for the neighborhood back in 1999. Then two years later in 2001, the maps changed adding the houses where the creek now spills its banks with every heavy rain, flooding yards and crawl spaces.

An owners' home video from two years ago showed mold growing under the house.  Their hired home inspectors also found standing water and water stains, plus poor grading, gutters and downspouts.

And 6NEWS learned squishy soil in Hunter Oaks may be another problem, putting 4,000 square foot houses in an area the county's soil survey calls "poorly suited to urban development".

Soil scientist Allen Walters supervises 31 North Carolina counties for the Department of Agriculture. And while he told 6NEWS he has never gone digging in Hunter Oaks, Walters is also no stranger to the problems they're having.

"What's a homeowner going to see on a house that's built on this kind of soil?” 6NEWS Investigator Jeff Sonier asked Walters.

"That soil has very slow permeability and that water is going to sit there for awhile.”

“We think we've done everything we can possibly do to prevent that situation,” Nelson said.  “And have since completely remediated those houses, and have already sold and closed three of them back to new homeowners."

It turns out only months after sick families moved out of those moldy houses, new families are moving back in. In fact, real estate records show Ryland actually sold two of those houses for $5,000 and $35,000 more than they paid for them.  And how much about the old problems do the new neighbors really know? State law requires all home sellers to provide this checklist to home buyers. But Ryland won't show us what they checked for number 14 on environmental hazards. They still claim there is no environmental hazard.

"Made everyone aware prior to the transaction what the issues were," Nelson said.

 But a homebuyer told 6NEWS he knew nothing about the sick families until four months after he moved in, when a neighbor told him.

And that's what worries Alex Gonzalez now as she pointed out how her one daughter's skin has finally healed from those awful rashes that covered her body. But Alex Gonzalez said her family hasn't healed. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“This is a tough time for all of us,” Alex Gonzalez said.  “We'll get through it as a family."

Ryland Homes, meanwhile, said they are concerned about their homeowners; they're concerned about building a quality product and standing behind it.  And when 6NEWS asked Ryland if they had concerns about the soil or the possible flooding before building those homes, their response was "no, none whatsoever."