Complaint Review: Hometown America LLC8805

Hometown was a great company to work for when Barry McCabe was the CEO, he retired about 1 1/2 years ago. The worst thing that could have happened to the company. This Gregg O'Berry became the CEO and then he brought in Eric Zimmerman, as Supervisor of the Tampa Region. I lived in an employee home that was infested with Black Mold, I complained to my bosses many times and that all said, we don't have monies in the budget this year to fix it. This went on for 3 years, the mold was so bad, that it was growing out of the electrical outlets and the lightening fixures. It was so bad, we would stay outside until 1-2:00 in the morning because I had trouble breathing and was getting bad headaches. Then we started having problems with rats, yes they were getting into the house. When I told my boss who was Jim Sellen at the time he laugh and said set traps. This was not right.

I contacted someone about mold and filed a complaint with Human Resource about the Black Mold, they finally agreed to have the home checked out after my husband got really sick. This was in Sept. 2006, when the test came back that had us move out of the house. The home was later torn down. My husband was diagnoised with cancer. We have requested several times for a copy of that mold report and the company will not give it to us.
Not only was mold in the house but also in the office. Again, for 4 years there was no money in the budget to fix the office. I left that community in Oct. 2007, in late Nov. early Dec. they shut that office down and relocated the employees because of the same problems.

Hometown's biggest problem is all they want is that rent, they don't care about there employee's or the residents. I filed a complaint against my boss, and again requested the report on the mold in the house that we lived in and 2 days later I was fired. They would not give me a reason other than it was a management decission.

They have an employee who is also a manager who owns his own business fixing up homes, especialy moble homes. He brings all the trash and brush from his own business and dumps into Hometowns dumpsters and gets it all hauled out at the company's expense. This is against company policy and the residents are the ones to pay for it. This Manager can get away with anything where the corp. office is concerned.

There was another manager who worked for the company for 17 years and was out on medical leave. She had surgery on her back in Nov. 2007 Came back to work in Feb. and had approval to go back on Medical leave for another surgury in March. She was terminated, reason was she was performing her job properly during the last 4 months.

Hometown to this day, has not sent us a copy of the mold report. My husband cancer could have been caused from the black mold. The tumor was growing inside my husband for about 3 years, we lived in the house just over the 3 years.

Our home was hit by an SUV while we were sleeping it came throw our bedroom wall, we lost almost $3000.00 worth of collectables, We did not have any insurance at the time, because we throught that we would be covered under Hometown's insurance. There respond was, you should get insurance, incase someone tries to come threw the house again.

When it comes to employee's Hometown doesn't care, everything is a joke to them and the company is really gone to the dogs since Mr. McCabe retired. He was a great person and really new how to run and operate the company. Instead you have people in high position with a big title and they have not a clue on what really is going on. They love to get complaints, especially on the managers, we can fire them.

They don't realize that the managers have a job to do, which at times it causes the residents to get mad at them, they complain and the corp. office says, we can make the problem go away if we fire the managers. Duh, the problems don't go away, it just makes it worst for the next managers.

Hometown America's, upper management needs to wake up, they are truly runing the business in the ground.

Ann
Orlando, Florida
U.S.A.