The following story was reported by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with Salt Lake City Weekly.

Jonathan Rodriguez started noticing small issues after moving into the Legends at River Oaks apartment complex in Sandy: a musty smell; a bit of mold in the toilet; and the fact that his cat, Toby, went from a usually friendly feline to one constantly hiding under the bed.

Then a few months into his nine-month lease, Rodriguez said, he started getting sick. His eyes would water, he couldn’t taste anything and couldn’t breathe properly. He started taking COVID tests, but each one came back negative.

“It just kept happening over and over, and I remember I’d come home at night and all of a sudden just couldn’t breathe,” he recalled.

Later, Rodriguez found what he described as a wet, starfish-sized growth on the wall behind his TV. He also noticed black-colored mold along the bottom of the wall.

Photos Rodriguez shared with The Utah Investigative Journalism Project match those descriptions. When Rodriguez pulled up the carpet, he said it was wet underneath.

“Immediately, I’m like, ‘This explains it. This is why I’ve been sick for months and I couldn’t breathe and all this other stuff,'” he related.

Rodriguez said he immediately called the property’s maintenance but stated that they failed to remediate the problem, which he said was attributed to the water heater not draining properly.

When Rodriguez pushed the issue, he said the property management team pointed to a mold clause in his lease stating that residents indemnify the landlord of any liability relating to mold, mildew or other contaminants, “regardless of the source.”

Under the lease, residents aren’t allowed to hire out or DIY any testing for contamination but can request the owner do so if the resident prepays for it. The results, the lease continues, are property of the building owner, who is only obligated to disclose positive results exceeding legal limits.

“They basically did not care,” Rodriguez said. “They did not want to help me whatsoever. They didn’t want to send anyone in there professionally … It was really like, ‘Sorry, you signed something. Bye.'”

The complex isn’t the only one using such mold clauses; yet, Utah law also requires landlords to maintain sanitary and safe conditions.

An investigation by the UIJP found that Rodriguez was not the only former tenant of Legends at River Oaks, or its parent company Weidner Apartment Homes, to have experienced mold problems. But the law around tenants’ options and protections in these situations can be limited, say legal experts.

Tenants may, however, have some options under the Utah Fit Premises Act, a law governing rental unit standards.

Legends at River Oaks referred the UIJP to Weidner Apartment Homes, which said over the phone that its spokesperson would be in contact with a reporter. The spokesperson did not reach out, nor did the company respond to a message through the contact form on its website.

Tenants’ Options
The Salt Lake County Health Department doesn’t regulate mold since it’s an allergen and there isn’t a “safe” level of mold established by the department or other health organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Because of this, neither the Health Department nor the CDC recommend mold testing.

“There’s not a place that you can go that doesn’t have mold. It’s in the world around us,” said Karla Bartholomew, an environmental health scientist with the department.

The CDC states that exposure to damp and moldy environments can cause a variety of health effects, or none at all.

“Mold is not infectious. Mold isn’t a major health concern,” Health Department spokesperson Nicholas Rupp said. “So for people who are allergic to mold, it can result in some allergy-like symptoms, kind of like hay fever or seasonal allergies. But for people who aren’t allergic, who aren’t susceptible to those allergens, it doesn’t cause anything.”

Bartholomew said if tenants experience allergy symptoms related to mold, they should speak with a medical provider.

Although the department doesn’t regulate mold, it does still respond to complaints related to active water leaks, flooding and sewer problems. In Bartholomew’s 15 years as a Health Department inspector, she said having a conversation with a landlord fixes the problem 80% of the time.

If a landlord isn’t being responsive, the department then issues a warning letter. Tenants should check their leases, however, for Bartholomew pointed out that while the department can force a landlord to repair something, the landlord can still pass the cost on to tenants.

For mold problems, Bartholomew recommends avoiding humidifiers and regularly cleaning areas with frequent moisture, like bathrooms.

Tenants’ legal options are also limited. The Utah Fit Premises Act requires landlords to maintain units and “to protect the physical health and safety of the ordinary renter.”

The act offers renters two remedies if landlords fail to meet those standards: repair and deduct; or rent abatement.

The first option allows renters to pay for the repair up front and then deduct the cost from future rent. Tenants can deduct up to two months of rent and must give receipts to the landlord. This option may not be plausible if the repairs are more expensive, if the tenant doesn’t have the money to pay for repairs, or if a lease restricts how and what a tenant can repair.

The second option, rent abatement, does not mean withholding rent. In fact, doing so isn’t permissible under Utah law.

Instead, this option allows tenants to terminate their lease early. Tenants first put the landlord on notice to repair the problem within 24 hours, three days or 10 days, depending on the severity of the problem. If the landlord doesn’t make substantial steps toward repairs in that time, the tenant can then terminate the lease agreement and has 10 calendar days after the repair window ends to move out.

The landlord is then required to refund their entire security deposit and any prepaid rent. If a landlord ignores that requirement, the tenant can sue them in small claims court.

Tenants must be fully in compliance with their lease to use the act. Even something as simple as having a barbecue on your porch when the lease prohibits this can cause issues later on.

But legal experts say pursuing those remedies can be risky for tenants and instead recommend first trying to negotiate with landlords.

“The landlord will likely be looking for any easy way out of it or to get even with you,” noted Denise George, a licensed paralegal practitioner. “You need to be very prepared for what all the different options are. And I’ve never yet seen anybody be able to put it all the way through.”

George suggested that any renter considering using the act should first speak with a legal professional. She also recommended that tenants first try to negotiate with a landlord before going to the Fit Premises Act. Doing so, she said, is often a lower-risk option, especially for renters who don’t have the desire or resources to move out of their apartment.

“There are downsides to the tenant for using the Fit Premises Act as well because the landlord could decide just to not make any repairs and give you 10 days to move out of the residence,” George said. “It’s a protection that we have for tenants, but it’s not a great one … It’s written to protect the landlords a lot, and it is vague and a little confusing to use.”

The act doesn’t specifically mention mold, and legal professionals disagree about whether it’s a good option in those cases.

Brooke Byall, a licensed paralegal, argued that mold does fall under the act.

“A landlord has an obligation to provide a clean and safe environment that is habitable. Mold can cause a premises to be uninhabitable,” she contended in an email.

Utah Legal Services Director of Litigation Jacob Kent disagreed, saying that the act is better suited to address the root causes of mold, like a leak or flooding, rather than the mold itself.

Both George and Byall stressed that the act needs significant changes to make it fairer to tenants, including clarifying its language, requiring landlords to house a tenant while they make repairs and putting the bigger burden of evidence on the landlord.

“The entire act should be redone and considered in a way that is more equal to the rights of our tenants in Utah,” Byall stated.

Not the Only One
Legends at River Oaks apartment complex in Sandy is surrounded by well-maintained landscaping and scores of covered parking spots. The property is dotted with walking paths, a dog park, playground and swimming pools.

But former tenant Natalia—who asked to be identified by only her first name out of fear of retaliation—says her own experience with mold and what she observed from neighboring units led her to believe the place had issues hiding behind fresh coats of paint and modern appliances.

“It kind of feels like they’re just sort of biding their time until they have serious, serious issues,” she said.

Natalia was only allowed to tour the model unit before moving in and said her actual unit had bulging or tilted walls, ceilings and floors as well as mold in the bathroom.

During Natalia’s 21 months in the apartment, she said two neighbors appeared to have water issues, including one instance when water from the above unit leaked out near Natalia’s front door.

Maintenance workers came out to address the mold in her bathroom, but the issue persisted, she said. By that point, she was near the end of the lease.

She remarked that it’s hard to keep fighting with management when it “feels like it’s going to take more energy than it’s worth.”

One former Weidner tenant, however, did put in the energy. Lori Munoz, who lived at a Weidner property in Texas, sued the company in 2023, claiming that her health issues were linked to mold, toxins and water damage that the company refused to properly address, according to court documents.

The conditions and contamination became so bad, Munoz alleged, that she was forced to abandon all her belongings. Munoz’s case ended in a settlement last fall.

“Every single day, while she was in her apartment, Lori wheezed, coughed and had difficulty seeing because of a film that covered her eyes,” a legal complaint in the case reads. “Her nose bled all of the time, she could not sleep, and would often wake up and felt like she was choking.”

Emilie Minshew, a 29-year-old Utah native who lived at Legends at River Oaks from Spring 2018 to Spring 2019, also experienced mold issues.

It wasn’t until the last few months of her and her husband’s lease that the couple discovered a large mold patch in their bedroom behind a dresser. Minshew had been sick multiple times since moving into the unit and recalled how she began to put two and two together.

“I couldn’t figure out why I kept catching pneumonia and feeling gross and cruddy,” she said. “I have asthma, but it’s usually really well managed. At that point in my life, I wasn’t even on a daily medication or anything.”

Minshew called maintenance a handful of times about the mold, unsuccessfully.

“They canceled every time we called, and then they blamed it on us,” Minshew said, adding that the excuses ranged from claiming she had asked to cancel the work request to saying maintenance couldn’t come in because the couple had a dog. “We had a Corgi puppy who was in a crate out of the way—just kind of like weird excuses trying to put it back on us.”

Rodriguez eventually took matters into his own hands and bought a mold-testing kit at Home Depot. The test results, which he shared with the UIJP, were positive for a handful of common mold and fungi. Not all the species and strains of those identified are dangerous, but some can cause serious illness, particularly for individuals with existing respiratory issues or mold allergies.

Rodriguez’s doctor eventually diagnosed him with an allergy to mold spores. “He should only go back in with a mask on to collect his personal items,” reads a copy of the doctor’s notes that Rodriguez shared with the UIJP.

By that point, Rodriguez only had a few days left in his lease, but he says the ordeal has stuck with him even a year later.

His goal in sharing his experience, he stressed, is to raise awareness about tenants’ rights when it comes to mold.

“It was just kind of haunting me after a while,” he said, adding that he still can’t taste or smell as well as he used to. “I’ll have issues where I can’t catch my breath because I was living in this space as this thing was growing for so long.”

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