Decrease your chances of ending up in a home that can make you sick when you INCREASE your mold IQ, apply some proactive indoor air quality detective work, and use some of my tried-and-true mold-safe rental property tips and tools.
Finding a mold-safe home to purchase or building your own mold-safe home are formidable tasks, but I would argue, that finding a mold-safe rental home is actually even more difficult. Rental situations just tend to be harder to take control over. Sometimes getting what you want and need to ensure that your indoor air quality is healthy and won’t cause you further or renewed sickness is next to impossible. It is almost a forgone conclusion that when you are renting, you don’t expect to get exactly what you are looking for and end up taking the least adverse choice, rather than a home that you are excited about and intend to stay in for a while.
Why are healthy rental properties so hard to find?
Mold patients, in particular, are often forced into the rental market. We have the unique issue of needing temporary or rental housing when having to leave our current homes while we make the choice to remediate or sell our “sick” home. At the time, neither “choice” feels like an actual choice and the financial, emotional, and physical stress of finding a temporary or permanent place to live can be daunting. Sometimes, like in my situation, you are lucky enough to have family and friends who will take you in for chunks of time, allowing you to get out of the mold and recover your health and sanity. We were gypsies during our home’s remediation. The kids and I lived in 3 different homes in 3 different states over the course of 4 months while our home was being overhauled, and essentially taken down the studs and rebuilt from the inside out. We had nothing but the new clothes on our backs and each other (we left all of our possessions behind, save some things we had in storage that had never been inside the moldy home), so we were excited to have any place to lay our heads. Others who don’t have that option, have to locate temporary accommodations or rental housing to fill this gap. Some folks for myriad reasons have to find rental housing for the long-term, so they want and need to make a healthy choice about where they live.