Lauren Ritchie:
New tenants unaware of home’s flood risk.
The Simmons family moved into a gorgeous five-bedroom, four-bath pool home on Estes Road just outside Eustis on April 1, but the joke was on them.
They spent this week wading through a fecal soup of floodwater and raw sewage to pack what belongings survived the flood that pushed past sand-bagged doors and splashed up the walls of the first floor while the winds of Hurricane Irma howled.
Neither the real-estate agent who rented the house to them nor the owner bothered to mention that the home had flooded so badly that it stood vacant for seven years or that the overwhelming drainage problem hadn’t been fixed.
When neighbors predicted to John Simmons, 43, that the house would flood, his wife, Tiffany, asked Ivan Porges, husband of the owner, about the flooding and was told it had “been taken care of.” Except that it hadn’t. Porges’ wife, Marlene Roach, trustee for home owner Redington Management Holding Trust, said in an email that her lawyer told her not to talk about the flooding.
Tiffany Simmons texted Porges to say that she and her husband learned the building’s sorry history when neighbors came to check on them the morning after Irma blew through. She told him he should be “seriously ashamed” for failing to disclose the house’s flooding, putting her family in jeopardy, and that they’d be moving out for good. He chided the 35-year-old mother of three, who had just carried her children out of the living room filled with a gush of reeking human waste and floodwater: “You are understandably upset, but do have some sense of proportion.”
Porges didn’t respond to a call seeking comment.
Daft female, bothering an important guy like Porges with such trivial nonsense. He told her that the flood was “inexplicable” and simply “a drawback of living in the tropics.” Except that it is neither. What happened to the Simmons family was predicted and expected. The house built in 2001 by John and Jane Milsap as their dream home was just fine until the city of Eustis let the Blue Lake Estates subdivision be built on fill at a higher elevation than the home in unincorporated Lake County on Estes Road, to which it backs up.
During every big rain since about 2008, water has raced downward into the natural bowl where the home sits.
Water was 2 feet up the walls when the Milsaps left for good in 2009. Two years later, the acrid mold was so pungent in the deserted structure that it stung the eyes of visitors and left everyone stumbling outside to cough and gulp fresh air.
At the time, the county’s public works director said the only solution was a lift station to pump the water away. Those cost roughly $150,000.
Eustis insisted it did nothing to cause the problem and refused to help pay for it. The county didn’t want to assume the whole cost, and nothing was done.
So, Roach and Porges were able to buy the house in 2014 for about $137,200. It was renovated and put on the market in 2016 for $365,000, but no one bought it. When “For Sale” signs went up, neighbors taped warnings to potential buyers on the front door. Asked whether the owners planned to disclose the flooding, a real-estate agent said he knew nothing about it and proclaimed the house in “great condition!” The owners didn’t bother to return calls at the time.
An agent with the same Osceola County real-estate company, La Rosa Realty, handled the rental to the Simmons family. Tiffany Simmons said she dealt with sales associate Jean Tullus, who never mentioned flooding.
Asked why he failed to tell the renters about the flooding, Tullus said, “Uh, what? What house is this? I wasn’t acting as a Realtor for that house. I don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Oops! Wrong answer, Jean! Tiffany Simmons said Tullus’ cell number was on the advertisement to rent the house, and she provided texts showing that Tullus collected her rental application, met her at the home, gave her the security code and turned over contact information for the owners. She said he showed her the place and gave her the keys.
Confronted, Tullus stammered, “I am just a friend — well, not a friend — just someone the owner knew.” He said the couple was out of town for the weekend, and he might have talked with Simmons once during that time about the house.
There are more details of unscrupulous behavior, but the savvy reader gets the point. Right now, this is a nasty, stinking, choleraworthy health hazard of the first order.
Here’s what needs to happen: Authorities must condemn this house as unfit for habitation. Lake County and Eustis must either fix the drainage problem or buy the house and tear it down.
No more looking the other way, elected officials. Otherwise, these owners are going to continue to rent to unsuspecting families, causing more misery and financial distress. It has to stop before someone ends up with typhoid.