TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Leah Mullins and her husband, who is in the Air Force, were first assigned to base housing at MacDill Air Force Base in June of 2023, and they were happy with the location.

“At first, we were excited. We were excited to be back home in Florida,” Mullins said.

Only a month later, they began to notice problems with the base home they were assigned to.

“We started to notice that there was water collecting in our upstairs light fixtures. We were having some moisture issues in our laundry room,” Mullins said.

But the problems didn’t stop there. The excess water and moisture created mold, and the mold caused health problems in her family.

“My daughter alone, my oldest daughter, was sent home 17 times from school, this last school year, for dizziness, being nauseous, headaches, constant sickness in our home,” Mullins said.

Mold issues have been noted in the same base housing units since 2019.

A previous group of tenants settled a class action lawsuit against the outside contractor, The Michaels Organization, that maintains and runs the homes.

Now, a new lawsuit claims the organization has been “creating and concealing dangerous living conditions that sickened and traumatized service members and their loved ones.”

Kristina Baehr is an attorney with Just Well Law and is part of the litigation, representing more than one hundred clients.

“People are sick. The housing conditions are unsafe, and we have neighborhoods that are full of mold,” Baehr said.

Baehr said the company is simply not fixing the problems.

“You know, mold is not hard to address, it really isn’t. You find the source, you remove the source, and you clean up the mold, and then you test and make sure it’s gone. It’s not rocket science,” Baehr said.

She said the company has also not addressed the root cause of the problem: excess moisture.

“You have a company, Michaels, that refuses to address and refuses to find the sources of the moisture, and in fact refuses to use the word mold. That’s how you make hundreds of people sick,” Baehr said.

She said it’s affecting the mission readiness of people on base.

“We can’t afford to keep this up as a country. We can not be mission-ready if our military families are sick,” Baehr said.

The Michaels Organization did not immediately respond to an email asking for a comment on the lawsuit.