Mold still an issue at Eureka Garden in Jax

The war of words continues between Pastor Mark Griffin and Reverend Richard Hamlet regarding the slow remediation of enduring issues at Eureka Garden, as an email last week suggests.

Griffin, whose ministry serves residents of the beleaguered 400 unit HUD community, has taken issue with Hamlet and his Global Ministries Foundation, which owns and runs Eureka Garden and other blighted HUD complexes, in recent months.

Last week, the subject was mold.

Griffin observed, in an email to Hamlet, that “no one has addressed the tenant association’s request to receive a detailed report of the mold testing results.”

“As I’m sure you are aware,” Griffin added, “the tenants are complaining about mold remediation work taking place in their apartments while they (especially the children) continue to live there.  They are breathing in dust and perhaps even mold spores.  Your management represented to the tenants at a recent tenant association meeting that the areas being remediated would be properly draped with airtight materials and an ‘air scrubbing machine’ to ensure harmful air particles would not escape the secure area.  However, tenants are saying that this approach is not working, and they have provide pictures of the work areas, which clearly show that the remediation work areas are not being secured.”

Griffin wonders why the tenants aren’t “being relocated to apartments that have been determined to be mold-free, while you remediate those units that clearly have mold.”

Griffin also takes issue with the peripatetic attempts at communication from the management team regarding mold remediation, which include a letter only being sent to residents “whose apartments required mold remediation when the remediation work is completed and the independent testing confirms that there are no elevated or harmful levels of mold present within the apartment.”

This approach concerns Griffin: “Based on that statement, are you saying that the tenants whose apartments did not require mold remediation will not get a letter confirming the same?  Will residents who had mold remediation and still have elevated or harmful levels of mold get a letter?  Will they ever be informed as to the level of mold prior to the remediation?  Will there be follow-up mold testing at some point in the future to ensure that the remediation work was successful?”

The saga continues, regrettably, at Eureka Garden.