JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Shanisha Waller, a resident at Blodgett Villas in Jacksonville, operated by the Jacksonville Housing Authority, says she’s living in an apartment with mold issues that are making her sick.
“When I went to the hospital on Friday, the doctor was telling me he’s pretty much saying, like, hey, the only real way to solve this is to remove the allergen,” Waller said.
Waller and her four children were expecting a new start when she moved into Blodgett Villas about two years ago after experiencing homelessness.
“I left an abusive marriage in Fort Myers and had to come here,” Waller said.
Because of the mold, she’s been living in hotels for weeks with financial help from the community, which she says is getting costly.
These photos show underneath her kitchen sink from March.
She says that at the end of March, she contacted code enforcement. They sent out a contractor who sprayed a solution and put in a wooden board. Waller doesn’t believe it is a long-term solution.
“The code enforcement guy. He was saying, like they’re familiar with this property, that’s not a good thing, because then that shows you can only imagine how many other people out here have been through what I’m going through,” Waller said.
Waller showed Action News Jax an email from JHA on March 26 that explained they were waiting on mold test results, and she’d hear from the property manager about the plan of treatment.
“They haven’t really been responsive to my emails. The day I had to go to the doctor, I went up there. She saw my face. She saw my face swollen up, my eyes were shut.”
Action News Jax reporter Jasmine Butler stopped by the office on Monday to speak with the property manager.
She was given an address to the JHA office.
We reached out to the Jacksonville Housing Authority for an interview.
A JHA spokesperson sent us this statement:
The JHA team is dedicated to ensuring the health and safety of our residents, in which we serve! JHA continues to mobilize our resident services team of social workers that specializes in training residents on housekeeping best practices, including but not limited to proper cleaning of their restroom and kitchen, using the ventilation system daily, and opening windows or doors for fresh air circulation.
JHA also conducts preventative maintenance checks and encourages our residence to timely submit work order requests. A work order request is another method used to promptly notify management of a maintenance concern, which is aligned to private sector management processes.
JHA’s professional team had quickly replaced cabinet sections due to a leak upon being notified by the resident. JHA has new unit appliances on order for this unit and has been attempting to schedule unit painting.
JHA will continue to quickly address resident matters while also providing educational housekeeping training.
Waller says they have not directly addressed the mold issue.
[DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks]
[SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter]
Click here to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Action News Jax live.