David Weekley Homes' Hypocritical Donations Incite Families Hurt by Homebuilder
David Weekley Homes has hurt many families making them homeless, hurting them financially, and sometimes even injuring them physically. In the meantime, they have just given $50,000 to a national charity that provides homes to the temporarily homeless. This is beyond hypocritical - it is cruel and egregious that they would take hardworking families' money and build them houses so full of construction defects and contamination that they are unsafe to live in and then turn the other way refusing to take FULL responsibility for the economic damages, injuries, and pain and suffering they have caused.

David Weekley Homes' Hypocritical Donations Incite Families Hurt by Homebuilder

December 18, 2002 -- David Weekley Homes has hurt many families making them homeless, hurting them financially, and sometimes even injuring them physically. In the meantime, they have just given $50,000 to a national charity that provides homes to the temporarily homeless. This is beyond hypocritical - it is cruel and egregious that they would take hardworking families' money and build them houses so full of construction defects and contamination that they are unsafe to live in and then turn the other way refusing to take FULL responsibility for the economic damages, injuries, and pain and suffering they have caused.

Thanks to the toxic house that David Weekley Homes built us, we have now been out of our home that we are still paying the mortgage for over one and one half years. We were only able to live in our new toxic David Weekley home for 5 weeks - my baby lost speech and started falling over and we all got sick. Multiple engineering reports show the house, full of toxic volatile organic compound (VOC) chemicals and mold, is not fit for human habitation, and multiple medical experts have confirmed that the injuries we have sustained are from the toxic exposures in the house. In addition, one engineer remarked after he saw the crack running around our entire foundation, "Haven't these people built houses around here before?"

In spite of this, David Weekley still has failed to respond to our offer of settlement to just give us the balance on our mortgage or buy back the house from us. To give us a chance to pick up the pieces and move on with our lives, we even offered to give them a full release of liability for everything else including my baby's brain and neurological injuries and our damage to our personal belongings and drop our lawsuit against Weekley. Still no response.

Rather than trying to resolve this, Weekley seems more interested in hiding all the skeleton victims in the closet by fighting our discovery on other homeowners with mold or VOC claims. They have refused to answer this discovery request calling it "unduly burdensome" and "harassing." Their lawyer told our lawyer that they will file a motion to quash our subpoena to the American Arbitration Association for records of other homeowner claims that have gone through the controversial and confidential arbitration process with Weekley. Based on Weekley's behavior, one has to wonder what else they are trying to hide.

David Weekley himself is quoted in this press release below by HomeAid as saying, "...it's great to be able to give back in a way that allows us to use our unique talents and gifts, so that more families can live in safe, dignified environments." Yet a 1996 investigative article in the Houston Press shows they've been leaving homeowners in their wake for years. See http://web.archive.org/web/20030601105829/http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/1996-06-27/feature.html/1/index.html/

David Weekley Homes poisoned us with toxic volatile organic compounds in the building materials and a home full of toxic mold that can't be lived in and continues to refuse to take responsibility for it all. It is disgusting that David Weekley Homes throws money around to give the public the image that they actually care about people, yet David Weekley Homes abuses the legal process drawing things out to devastate the few families who try to fight for justice and what is right.

Dawn Richardson
http://web.archive.org/web/20030601105829/http://www.toxichomes.org/