As Told by Sam Laboucan, Regional Service Coordinator
The family had approached FNHC with about five or six needs for his children.
He said housing issues was the highest priority for him. With this house, there was black mold, really, really bad
His boys were really getting sick all the time. Three of his boys had severe asthma and were always going to the hospital all the time to get treatment because of the black mold. He was very motivated.
One of the things they required was a specialist in Environmental, air quality. He was able to track somebody down to do an air quality test in his home and do a real structured report. As the gentleman was able to gather up all the findings in his house his readings were really high. He was even saying it’s amazing how this family has to live in this type of environment, it’s a shame they had to live in this type of home with no help whatsoever.
It was escalated to National because the house would need to be totally renovated, for everything to be up to par again. I got three quotes for three different construction companies but the cheapest one we found was
$144,000, just under $145,000, to do all the work that was required.
In the meantime, there were a few other things the dad had requested for his boys. The boys had to do home schooling, that’s when home schooling first started [per the pandemic]. They had no computers to work on.
We submitted an application to Jordan’s Principle for the boys for the laptops and we were approved for that. Then, I got an email from the focal points saying that National had made a decision and they denied the request for his house renovation.
When I got back to him, he was in total disbelief that all the hard work he had done and myself and focal points, had not been successful. I told him, you have a chance to appeal this which goes to an independent board.
The one Focal Point I was working with, she was very helpful as well. She said I can talk to the father and let him know what other things would help him to make his application a little bit stronger to help him in the appeal process.
We were successful in appealing the decision for a little under $145,000 for that family to get their house renovated.
He said, “If it wasn’t for Jordan’s Principle, chances are my boys would have never survived.” I’ve heard that a few times from different families I worked with in the last two and half years.