Macomb Daily photo by David N. Posavetz When Andrea Oswald discovered mold had infested her Shelby Township mobile home, she couldn't afford the repairs and decided instead to have the home demolished. You can purchase this photo. It will appear tomorrow in our online PHOTO GALLERY. To view Macomb Daily photographs available for purchase, click "PHOTO GALLERY" on the left navigation bar of our Home Page, or click this link now: PHOTO_GALLERY

Andrea Oswald said she just wanted to spruce up her home when seven years ago she removed outside flower boxes.

Instead, she and her two children find themselves without a home and in the middle of a nightmare.

"This has broken my heart," said Oswald, a single mother who works as a secretary at Pontiac Osteopathic Hospital. "This was not the plan."

Oswald's story began seven years ago when she purchased a previously owned mobile home in the Dequindre Estates park in Shelby Township.

The home included flower boxes attached to the outside -- flower boxes that had become an eyesore, she said.

"They were ugly and (the previous owners) were using them as ashtrays," Oswald recalled.

So she removed them.

Fast forward seven years to last month. Oswald's dog got a little rambunctious while playing in the living room and crashed into a wall. A section of the wall crumbled.

Further investigation revealed that black mold had penetrated the drywall of the home to such an extent that a large section crumbled. Oswald immediately thought about her son, 9-year-old Ryan, an asthma patient, and decided she had to move quickly.

Within days, Oswald contacted her insurance company. Then she got some more bad news. The damage would not be covered.

Had the mold been caused by a broken water pipe or similar malfunction, the insurance company said, the repairs would be covered. But since it apparently resulted from Oswald's failure to seal the screw holes after removing the flower boxes, the company wouldn't pay.

"Since your loss was the result of mold, lack of maintenance, and seepage or leakage of rain, there is no coverage," the company wrote in a March 1 letter to Oswald.

An April 2005 posting on the Insurance Information Institute Web site suggests the lack of coverage for such losses is "specifically excluded" in standard homeowners policies.

"Mold contamination is covered ... only if it is the result of a covered peril," the article reads.

Damage to the home was estimated at $4,500 at a minimum, Oswald said, and that depended on how widespread the mold damage. That's $4,500 she didn't have.

She doesn't believe the damage was caused by removal of the flower boxes, so she sought legal advice to challenge the insurance company's denial. More bad news.

"The amount it would cost to go after them, I'm still going to come out negative," she said.

Saddled with a home in which she cannot live and facing $330 monthly lot rent payments, Oswald made one of the toughest choices of her life: She decided to have the home demolished and removed.

"I couldn't afford it," she said. "It breaks my heart to have to pack up my family and move."

For the moment, Oswald and her children are staying with friends. She still has to pay the mortgage on the mobile home that's now been demolished.

Oswald believes she's exhausted all her options, but hopes somebody might suggest a course of action that hasn't occurred to her.

Meanwhile, Oswald will try to find a new home for herself and her children.

"I've got no choice," she said.

Andrea Oswald can be reached at (586) 242-9727.
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