UCF Admits Mold Infestation After We Ask Questions
Housing, News, Safety — By Andrew Stein on February 28, 2010 at 7:04 pmWe’re Still Waiting to Hear Whether Lease Is Still Binding
University of Central Florida freshman Albert Piedrahita may never have known the UCF-affiliated apartment he was living in was infested with mold, if he didn’t report how he was unexpectedly forced to move out to KnightNews.com’s new investigative unit.
The unit, called KnightNews.com Fights for You, was created after questions of fairness at UCF were raised when UCF officials told KnightNews.com reporters they couldn’t cover the SGA election outside of the Student Union’s “Free Assembly Area,” typically reserved for outside food vendors and large demonstrations outside UCF’s Student Union.
When Piedrahita told KnightNews.com Friday that he was recently kicked out of Pegasus Landing Apartments — a place where he was happy living because of its closeness to campus, private bathrooms and private room where he could study — and forced to move to the Towers where he has to share a bathroom on campus, he had no idea it was because mold was discovered in his building.
It was only after KnightNews.com started asking UCF officials questions that Piedrahita said he got a call telling him the reason he had to move was because mold was found in his building — not because of standard “renovations” as he was initially told.
Although the mold infestation sounds troubling, Grant Heston with UCF News and Information issued a release stating the relocation was done “out of an abundance of caution” and that “College Park Management told UCF it has taken air-quality samples in several of the affected units, and air-quality results were within acceptable limits.”
Heston’s release states College Park Management and UCF are assisting students with the move.
But Piedrahita said he barely got any help moving, and had to rely on friends with a truck to help pick up his life and move it on campus mid-semester. He said moving everything he owned disrupted his studies when he should have been focusing on school, and thinks the way UCF handled the situation was “sketchy,” especially because he said the university initially told him nothing about the mold.
“I feel it’s ridiuclous. I feel like I’ve been deceived,” Piedrahita said.
“I feel like I was done wrong you know. We pay all this tuition, we pay all this money … we never find out about anything, not just this, anything until months later,” Piedrahita added, referring to “tailgating” rule changes and “all that stuff” KnightNews.com has been covering.
Piedrahita’s family still lives in Columbia, and has fallen on tough economic times. He said he was hoping to take this opportunity to get out of his housing contract and move in with a friend to save money — but officials told him that wasn’t an option.
Piedrahita asked KnightNews.com to help him figure out why being forced out of his apartment in the middle of the semester didn’t void his contract. But when KnightNews.com asked that question in an e-mail to UCF’s News and Information Department, Grant Heston, its assistant vice president, released a statement which did not directly address it.
“Residents who are moving can relocate to other parts of Pegasus Landing or other area accommodations,” read the portion of the statement which came closest to addressing that question.
“Although some of the alternate locations have higher rents, students who relocate will not pay more,” Heston’s statement continued, which suggests displaced students, like Piedrahita, do not have the option of taking this opportunity to get out of their lease and live with a friend or family for free.
After KnightNews.com started asking questions Friday, Piedrahita said officials started to come clean.
“They called me and told me about the mold, and they said it would take a while longer for me to move back in,” Piedrahita said. “I didn’t know that in the first place, they just told me they needed to do ‘renovations.’”
Originally, Piedrahita said he was only given the option to move into the Towers on campus, but now that he has completed the move they are offering him a place to move to in Pegasus Landing — where he preferred to be all along.
“It’s just annoying,” he said. “They asked me and called me today to see if I wanted to move out of Towers and move into Pegasus Landing again.”
But Piedrahita doesn’t want to spend the time or money to move another time this semester. “Tomorrow, I’m gonna talk to them to see if I can get reduced rent for the couple months that I’m out, because this is annoying, it’s ridiculous.”
According to Heston’s release KnightNews.com received this weekend, it was UCF which requested that College Park Management TRS, Inc., the property management company that operates Pegasus Landing apartments, relocate the 21 affected students after mold was discovered in one building.
“UCF and College Park Management were informed on Feb. 23 that water intrusion into one part of Building 4 at Pegasus Landing led to mold being detected in seven apartment units,” the release stated. “More work is needed to determine the full extent of the damage…”
Although College Park Management operates Pegasus Landing, the UCF Foundation owns the land the buildings sit on. “The buildings are owned by CaPFA Capital Corp. 2000F, a Florida nonprofit corporation,” according to Chad Binette with UCF’s News and Information department.
As a precaution, UCF says it has requested that College Park Management immediately perform air-quality tests in comparable units in the complex, as well as come up with a comprehensive plan to address the problem. Residents who have further questions can contact College Park Management at 407-362-5190 or 407-362-5194.
The KnightNews.com Fights for You Investigative Unit is committed to asking tough questions and getting answers when you feel like you’re being taken advantage of. E-mail us at news@knightnews.com, or call our tip line: 407-5-Tip-UCF if you need KnightNews.com to Fight for You, too.
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Click next page to read our original questions about the issue, and also read the entire statement from UCF’s News and Information department.
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17 Comments
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I live in Building 4 of pegasus landing, I first reported mold a year and a half ago. 5 throat infections later and two hospital stays later i finally got pegasus landing to check out my wall which was crumbeling. Three days later i get a call saying i had to move to the towers, they gave me no other options. Albert is a good friend of mine and lives on the other side of my wall, we were the first people moved and we had no help what so ever no boxes and no movers. Further more my roomates in pegasus landing were notified they had to move (but have yet to do so) I was told i had 3 days to get everything out and turn in my keys. I told pegasus landing I would need help moving my tv out if i was to do this, they said they would have somebody do this free of charge. the next day my roomates get $282.50 target gift cards and i get nothing because someone had to help me with my tv(free of charge) The managers are liars and criminals. My brother lives in pegasus landing too and has a damn pasture growing on his exterior wall and he lives in bldg 7. This is going to be a huge problem real soon. I signed a lease saying i was gonna live in a safe clean apartment- lease violation! The managers have called me many times and lied to me and continue to do so. If you want to be treated like an idiot and lied to, if you want to be a patient not a resident, if you wanna get moved out durring midterms than pegasus landing is the place for you. Ps any leased room in an infected bldg is void.
For future reference check your spelling on countries. His family lives in COLOMBIA,South America not Columbia, South Carolina. Two different continents. It’s really offensive to Colombians when their country’s name isn’t spelled right.
You should focus more on reporting the correct story and checking your spelling instead of publishing stories with missing facts.
I lived at Peg Landing 3 years ago and there was mold in our AC unit and we were constantly sick but never complained..I am sure there was mold in other places we could not see… With the prices they charge each student for a shitty, out of date apartment you would think they would make it a nice apartment complex.. When I lived there I lived in a 4 bedroom with 4 others and paid 510 a piece so for a 4 bedroom apartment we were paying over $2,000… You can rent a nice home or find a NICE apartment to live in for so much CHEAPER! What a waste of $$$! It’s about time they renovate but instead of one building they should do the whole complex!
UCF has had problems with mold before.
http://www.wftv.com/news/4667266/detail.html
Lol this is hilarious I’m sure kn is exactly the reason they told the tenants about the mold….. notttt .. no one reads this website accept for the few facebook fans you have get over yourselves
You are a dumbass.
They knew there was mold on 2/23. They admitted it to your gf Saturday AFTER KN asked about it and was gonna do the story.
They probably helped her more because she was a girl, and this other kid was screwed. If KN didn’t ask questions, you’d never know there was mold.
This story is ridiculous! My girlfriend lives in the building and she was called by Pegasus Landing weeks ago and asked to temporarily relocate for renovations. They asked her if she needed help and when she said yes, they gave her boxes to pack, helped her pack and load her things and arranged travel on campus. They called her Saturday and explained that when completing renovations, they found mold in the apartment, which was going to cause the repairs to take longer and asked if she wanted to stay at Towers, go back to Landing, or go to one of the other properties they own. They never once asked her for more money, kept her informed the whole time, and assisted her every step of the way. On top of that, they did tests and said there was more mold in the outside air than inside, so they were just being “precautionary”. I don’t know what’s up with the kid in the story, but it sounds like BS to me! I’m with David, KnightNews is a JOKE!
If you want to talk about mold on campus, visit Libra. My boyfriend got strep throat 6 times while living there, and respiratory issues the entire time. It ALWAYS smelled like mold in there, and nothing ever dried in his room. Now that he lives in a house off campus, he hasn’t had any breathing problems. UCF talks about campus safety a lot, but that isn’t just about being careful where you walk at night. Tons of people are severely allergic to mold, and not fixing the problem is just going to make more people sick.
I think UCF should let him out of his lease. It’s disgusting they just want more money. He could have lived with a friend for free!
Yet another reason why I will never live in campus-affiliated housing or on campus ever again. And David, he definitely was deceived…”standard renovations” is not the removal of a mold infestation problem. It’s especially bull that they didn’t help him move at all, when it’s their fault he had to move in the first place.
Maybe he felt deceived because he may have had health problems from the mold, and was never told about it. Why keep that shit secret?
How has this person been deceived? He was moved out for renovations. If someone renovates an old building, they repair and improve it and get it back into good condition… how is getting rid of mold not a renovation? I used to like Knightnews a while ago, now you guys are a joke
Mom, thank you for the comment, we will start investigating this as well.
If you have more details you can share please e-mail us at news@knightnews.com. If you need to be anonymous you can use this link: http://knightnews.com/send-your-story/
If you know of anyone who has gotten sick as a result of this, have them contact us.
You may wan to hav them check for mould in tower 4 after the fire 2 years ago and the water damage there haas been mould in ceilings of a number of nits and rather than checking on it or repairing they have been painting over the ceilings to cover the mould