SAN DIEGO — More military families are speaking out against a local housing community that they say made them sick. A new lawsuit claims Lincoln Military Housing allowed mold and microbes to grow inside homes there creating dangerous living conditions.
Marine spouse and mother April Huffman says she is hoping no one else has to go through what her family endured while stationed in San Diego.
“I felt like Incould never keep my kids healthy and I was doing everything as a mom I could do,” says Huffman.
Her family is one of five in San Diego that have filed a lawsuit against government contractor Lincoln Military Housing, claiming unsafe living conditions.
The Huffman's moved to the home in Murphy Canyon in 2018 and they could tell right away something wasn't right.
“We had noticed some of the walls were soft to touch and there was weird smells in the home,” says Huffington.
Within weeks she says her kids started developing respiratory issues and doctors visits and trips to the ER became the regular. Testing revealed several types of toxic mold within their home.
Attorney John Gomez is representing 12 families who had similar experiences in the same community.
"Companies get greedy and they want to cut costs and maximize profits and LMH is a prime example of one of those companies," says Gomez.
Lincoln Military Housing sent this statement to News 8:
For the privacy of our residents, Lincoln Military Housing (LMH) is unable to go into specifics regarding the circumstances of individual residents, nor are we at liberty to discuss the specifics of any pending litigation.
Lincoln Military Housing is fully committed to ensuring our residents live in a safe and healthy environment every day. We thoroughly investigate all resident concerns, including those related to water intrusion or mold, to ensure that they are immediately and appropriately addressed.
LMH has industry-leading water intrusion and mold management practices and protocols in place, developed pursuant to our partnership with the U.S. Navy, and we treat all reports of water intrusion or mold as an emergency request with the goal that our trained technicians make contact with the resident within 30 minutes. If water intrusion or suspected mold is found in a home, we promptly remediate it and will enlist the support of licensed contractors and third-party microbial experts as necessary. Upon completion of any required work, and to ensure the issue has been properly remediated, it is LMH's standard practice to perform multiple follow-up visits with our residents to ensure that all issues and resident concerns have been resolved in a satisfactory manner.
LMH stands behind the statement we made to Congress in 2019. More than 1,400 LMH employees, many of whom are veterans, military spouses, or have service members in their families, wake up every day to serve our residents with honor and integrity, and we strive for every one of our residents to be 100% satisfied with their Lincoln experience. LMH and our military service partners have multiple avenues for residents to raise concerns, either through our three-step dispute resolution process, our executive hotline, or via the military services' resident advocate program. We work diligently and collaboratively to resolve all issues to the satisfaction of our residents and will continue to do so, and we regret that any resident feels that they must turn to litigation as a recourse.
Watch: Military families displaced by mold as Lincoln Housing says it's fixing the issue