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Regina is haunted by the specter of mold.
She found the insidious spores in the closet, behind the refrigerator, and around the bathtub for two years after the dishwasher flooded her apartment in Asheville, North Carolina.
The infestation only got worse after Hurricane Helene. Rainwater rushed into her son’s third-floor bedroom at the Evergreen Ridge Apartments through gaps in the window frame, warping and discoloring the wall. After the 2024 storm, faint brown spots dotted the panes, and the trim appeared loose. When the A/C went out last summer, she worried the mess would spread in the hot, humid air. Her son has had allergic reactions to mold before, including itchy eyes and coughing, and the threat of it happening again kept her up at night. She scrubbed the apartment weekly, only to watch the spores creep back. As a single mom who works long shifts as a nurse, she felt she couldn’t keep up with the creeping damage.
“My cabinets are falling apart,” she said. Regina, who asked that her real name not be used for fear of repercussions, walked through her bathroom, pointing out where the damp persisted. “You can touch it,” she said. “It falls apart. And that’s from water damage, obviously.”
Signs of mold and water damage permeate the complex, which is nearly a century old and once housed a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital. Tenants attribute a lot of it to leaky pipes, but Helene made things worse. Though the complex was on ground high enough to avoid inundation, tenants said Helene’s more than 12 inches of rain poured through windowsills facing the west. The walls of a utility hallway were black and crumbling, a condition, tenants said, that predated Helene, but may have worsened since. Same with the ceiling in the lobby, which sagged under the weight of water damage. An overpowering, musty smell permeated the building and wafted into the apartments. There are three large buildings in the complex, where many apartments are rented by the elderly, those with disabilities, and families with young children.
Regina’s apartment and floor show signs of leaky pipes and water intrusion – a common problem in aging rental housing throughout the Southeast.
Regina’s apartment and floor show signs of leaky pipes and water intrusion – a common problem in aging rental housing throughout the Southeast. Laura Hackett / Blue Ridge Public Radio
Regina’s apartment and floor show signs of leaky pipes and water intrusion – a common problem in aging rental housing throughout the Southeast. Laura Hackett / Blue Ridge Public Radio
Regina’s apartment and floor show signs of leaky pipes and water intrusion – a common problem in aging rental housing throughout the Southeast.
A property manager at the complex declined to comment, and its owner, Shadow Ridge Associates, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Mold is a type of fungi, which are moisture-loving in general and thrive in the kind of heat and lingering dampness residents of Evergreen Ridge describe. Outside, these organisms tend to be harmless. Black mold lives in the soil beneath our feet; spores float unnoticed through the air. But when mold infiltrates homes, it thrives in conditions many people find ideal — temperatures between 60 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit and relative humidity above 70 percent.
In the wake of the rains and floods that have repeatedly inundated the Southeast, mold is growing harder to avoid and harder to eliminate. Climate change and the impacts it brings — heavier precipitation, frequent flooding, and increased heat and humidity — are creating the perfect petri dish for mold to thrive, exposing more people to its health impacts.
Despite its prevalence, mold receives shockingly little study. It is expensive to fix, largely untracked as a public health issue, and subjected to building codes and housing safety regulations that lag behind a problem that is no longer confined to the aftermath of disasters. As mold’s ideal conditions grow more prevalent, it remains a big gray area in public knowledge, and both state and federal policy.
Regina’s health concerns finally prompted her to break her lease in December. She’s spending more than she’d like on a new place, but said the peace of mind is worth it.
IIn the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Duke University scientists saw a chance to fill some of the gaps in what we know about mold. The team, calling itself the Duke Climate and Fungi Research Group, or CLIF, went through flooded buildings in Black Mountain, North Carolina, a small town outside of Asheville, collecting air samples and scraping residue from walls. Floodwaters had reached 27 feet and left a mist that settled into homes and workplaces when they receded. Residents soon began reporting headaches, coughing, and respiratory problems.
Researchers often encounter common indoor molds like penicillium or aspergillusafter a flood, but there are innumerable species, and their impacts on human health vary widely. The organisms produce a variety of chemicals. Some, called mycotoxins, remain stable in the environment, while others, known as volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, disappear quickly. Both can affect the human body, including the lungs, liver, and kidneys, but VOCs have been the subject of less study.
How mold affects people depends on more than just the species. It also varies with how much is present and how well-ventilated the space is. Someone’s preexisting conditions also shape their response. For most healthy adults, mold may cause mild symptoms, but for children, older adults, and those with respiratory issues or compromised immune systems, mold-related irritation and infection can be serious and persistent.
“For people with chronic respiratory illnesses or conditions like asthma, substances produced by fungi may worsen their symptoms. That’s what we’re trying to understand,” said Asiya Gusa, a microbiologist at Duke University studying the problem with CLIF.
A 1963 Center for Disease Control and Prevention radiograph shows a fungus ball in the upper lobe of the right lung — a fungal infection caused by the fungus Aspergillus.
Smith Collection / Gado / Getty Images
Environmental factors beyond temperature also play a major role. It’s not just heat that aggravates mold — it’s flooding itself, according to Gusa. What once grew on riverbanks, in trees, and other outdoor locations can now be found indoors.
In addition to her work with Helene, Gusa is also studying long-running accounts of conditions like “Katrina cough,” a suite of respiratory symptoms that include a runny nose and dry cough that Louisiana residents began reporting after Hurricane Katrina.
Understanding the full, moldy picture requires more than expertise in microbiology. It also takes engineers and architects to understand how mold affects structures and test mold-resistant building materials while others analyze fungal DNA and chemical emissions. That’s why the CLIF team takes a multidisciplinary approach and includes engineers and architectural experts. “For scientists,” Gusa said, “we have, like, tunnel vision.” By working together, the team can connect the dots between flooding, building conditions, fungal growth, and human health — an approach that a single-discipline study could easily miss.
Gusa said the team is still studying the fungi the CLIF team found in Black Mountain. So far they’ve identified 65 species, from common varieties often found in water-damaged environments like aspergillus to more mycotoxic examples like Penicillium citrinum. The next step, she said, is to determine if the species are in fact as dangerous to human health when they grow on different building materials. “We plan to test whether these ‘opportunistic fungi’ are resistant to antifungal drugs used to treat disease,” she added in a follow-up email.
The results of those tests could provide a better idea of the threats mold poses to human health and the role climate change might play in its propagation. When Gusa studied cryptococcus — which can infect the brains of the severely immunocompromised — in the past, she found that the heat threshold for the fungus was rising. “Their ability to change their DNA to adapt was much higher when they encountered higher temperature,” Gusa said.
Translating these findings into public health guidance will be the next challenge. Agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledge general risks, but questions about which molds cause which health effects — and under what conditions — remain difficult to answer.
Mud and mildew cover the walls of a house damaged by Hurricane Helene in Swannanoa, North Carolina, as seen on September 21, 2024. Marvin Joseph / The Washington Post via Getty Images
Part of the problem is that mold’s health impacts are difficult to track. Fungi aggravate preexisting conditions and cause what are known as nonspecific symptoms like itching, sneezing, and coughing that can be hard to pinpoint and monitor. In other words, mold doesn’t cause a specific disease that health departments can easily track, said Virginia Guidry of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. People like her can only watch for increases in the respiratory ailments, infections, allergies, and other ailments that mold can exacerbate.
“We don’t actually have a great way to track mold cases because those symptoms are fairly non-specific, and it doesn’t often send people to either the doctor or to the emergency department,” Guidry said. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that mold-related symptoms show up most often in people who already have breathing problems. Among those studied, about 3.5 out of every 10,000 people with private insurance and 8.5 out of every 10,000 people on Medicaid reported mold-related symptoms.
Some residents of Evergreen Ridge Apartments report persistent sinus problems and other respiratory symptoms. Those who can afford to move have. But in a state like North Carolina, where legal protections for renters are limited and affordable housing is scarce, many people have nowhere else to go. One Evergreen resident, Dana, said she wakes up every morning with congestion, something she began experiencing after moving in three years ago. It started occurring nightly after Helene, and she regularly coughs up mucus each morning.
“I don’t want to have to wake up every day like that,” said Dana, who asked that her real name not be used for fear of repercussions from her landlord.
Asheville remediation expert Dylan Hunt, who works for a company called Green Home Solutions, has seen extreme weather cause an explosion of household mold. After Helene, he saw black mold appear in places it hadn’t before. Even minor flooding can trigger growth within 24 to 48 hours if it isn’t cleaned up immediately — and when water damage goes unnoticed, mold can continue spreading for months. Depending on how much water a home takes on and how humid it stays inside, spores can spread throughout an entire house within weeks, turning what might have been a small cleanup into a much larger problem.
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The crisis grew worse over the summer. The region saw a long stretch of hot, humid weather, including Asheville’s hottest July on record (tied with the summer of 1993). Homes that hadn’t experienced flooding started smelling musty, and Hunt’s phone began ringing with complaints of damaged furniture, headaches, and coughs. Drainage pathways shifted after Helene, changing how water moves through the area. Now even light rain can cause water intrusion in some homes.
“Water’s hitting homes in places where it hasn’t hit before,” Hunt said. “A lot of homes, especially the lower levels of homes, will just erupt in a coating of white, fuzzy mold.” Because the damage isn’t always immediate or visible, some people wait months to respond. By then, what might have been a $5,000 cleanup might have grown into a $30,000 remediation project — a frightful amount of money, especially when insurance isn’t always an option. Most companies won’t cover the problem unless it’s the result of a “covered peril” like a burst pipe.
Despite mounting costs and health concerns, mold remains largely unregulated. The EPA does not have an exposure limit, so there’s no federal support for mold testing. Instead, states are left to decide how seriously to take the problem — with about 15 setting their own standards.
That lack of oversight can leave renters with few options. For some, it can even mean starting over. When Helene flooded the three-bedroom house they rented near the French Broad River, Ginger and Amanda Simmons packed up and left. More than a year later, their search for a home has become a frustrating cycle of hope followed by doubt. Many of the rentals they have toured show signs of water damage — a particular concern because their 8-year-old daughter is sensitive to mold and has a history of respiratory problems. In several cases, a place smelled musty or affected their breathing within 20 minutes of being inside.
“I’m nervous to get a rental out here because at this point so many of these houses have had water damage,” Ginger said. “I just don’t know if the owners will disclose it, or fix it, or even know about it.”
When remediation is delayed, incomplete, or simply does not occur, tenants are often left with few options. In North Carolina, the main recourse is to request, in writing, that the property owner address the problem. Turning that into a repair is often an uphill battle, said David Bartholomew, an attorney with Pisgah Legal Services in Asheville.
Because of the high cost, property owners are sometimes reluctant to address the problem, especially in the absence of enforcement.
For renters, requesting a repair means asking a landlord to incur serious expense — and because there’s no federal mold exposure standard, not every state or municipality is ready to back renters up when that happens.
An old utility hallway in an Asheville apartment complex shows mold growth pre-dating Hurricane Helene. Laura Hackett / Blue Ridge Public Radio
Bartholomew guessed that there are “easily thousands of people” in Western North Carolina who have had mold issues exacerbated by Helene. Since last spring, he’s seen a 35 percent increase in mold-related legal cases from residents throughout the region. The lack of state and city laws overseeing mold places a heavier burden on tenants seeking remediation, he said.
Tenants must show that a landlord has a duty to rectify the problem, and prove who is at fault, he said. They must also document harm, often with expert testimony about the type of mold involved and medical records showing health impacts and costs. “That can be difficult,” he said.
For tenants living in moldy homes, the risk has become a worry somewhere between bills, work, and life’s other demands, one that grows insidiously with time. As heavier rains and longer stretches of hot, humid weather settle into the South, that mold is becoming less an isolated household problem and more a predictable consequence of a changing climate — one advancing faster than the protections meant to keep pace with it.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A hotter, wetter South is becoming a breeding ground for mold on Feb 25, 2026.
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Indigenous rights defenders say they’ll ‘not stay silent’ after anti-protest bylaw defeated in ‘Winnipeg’
(indiginews.com)
Vivian Ketchum, an Anishinaabe grandmother from Wauzhushk Onigum First Nation who lives in ‘Winnipeg,’ speaks at a rally against a controversial anti-protest bylaw outside City Hall on Feb. 17, alongside other community groups opposed to the withdrawn proposal. Photo by Crystal Greene
Indigenous activists joined other social movements in “Winnipeg” to help defeat a proposed city bylaw they say would have silenced dissent and free speech — including Indigenous rights advocacy.
Last week, residents gathered outside city hall against a draft bylaw that many say would put a chilling effect on their constitutional right to protest.
More than 800 people showed up to protest the proposal, in addition to thousands of online submissions against it.
Facing widespread outcry, the city councillor behind the motion withdrew his support, shelving the bylaw even as public anger continued.
But some opponents fear the attempt could resurface some day and vow to continue raising their voices.
One of those decrying the bylaw was Vivian Ketchum, an Anishinaabe grandmother from Wauzhushk Onigum First Nation who lives in the city.
She vowed that, after five decades of protesting injustice, she “won’t ever stop,” telling the crowd that silencing free speech would be an attempt to silence Indigenous people.
“The church tried to silence me, Child and Family Services tried to silence me, the federal government tried to silence me,” she told the crowd.
“The city bylaw is not going to … silence me at all. “
She recalled her first protest in 1974 when she was a child, at Anicinabe Park in “Kenora, Ont.” — where armed Anishinaabe people and allies occupied the park, taking back land that had been expropriated by the town.
“I’m going to keep raising my brothers’ and sisters’ voices at these rallies and marches,” she said. “And I am going to continue to smudge the streets, and I’m going to continue to use my megaphone.”
Indigenous residents of ‘Winnipeg’ protest against an attempted bylaw creating no-protest zones of the city, carrying signs reading ‘Stand up for democracy’ and ‘Fight for our right to protest.’ Photo by Crystal Greene
Ultimately, after widespread community opposition, the bylaw’s own creator withdrew his support for the proposal.
Evan Duncan, the city councillor who proposed the bylaw, walked back on his motion to have the Executive Policy Committee (EPC) vote on the matter last Tuesday.
Instead, the EPC heard from citizens, many from the Indigenous, Palestinian, Jewish, LGTBQ, and activist communities.
Thousands of online submissions opposed the bylaw, too.
The council item caused an uproar, with criticism of its lack of public consultation.
The proposed Safe Access to Vulnerable Infrastructure bylaw would have prohibited what it referred to as “nuisance demonstrations and intimidation of persons at or in respect of vulnerable social infrastructure.”
This would create a restrictive 100-metre bubble around “vulnerable” gathering places — including places of worship, schools, childcare centres, hospitals.
A protester in ‘Winnipeg’ holds up a map advocates say shows areas a withdrawn bylaw would have created a no-protest bubble zone within 100 metres of so-called ‘vulnerable’ locations in the city’s downtown. Photo by Crystal Greene
‘We are still told to be quiet … I will not stay silent’
Critics of the bylaw said letting authorities define “nuisance demonstrations” would have left dangerous room for overreach by law enforcement.
A coalition launched an online map showing that over five percent of the city, mostly around downtown, would be restricted from demonstrations. They were concerned how 100 metre buffers overlap into places where people demonstrate, such as outside city hall, or constituency offices.
The bylaw would recommend a $500 fine for a first offense, with fees rising to $5,000 for third and further offenses, according to a city media release.
“I can barely afford groceries,” said Ketchum. “Do you think I can afford a fine?”
It would have been enforced by bylaw officers and the Winnipeg Police Service.
Groups such as the Canadian Civil Liberties Association were concerned that the broad over reach would violate Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and undermine democracy.
“These Charter-protected rights have little meaning without broad access to public spaces for expressing dissent and challenging the status quo,” said Anaïs Bussières McNicoll, director of CCLA’s Fundamental Freedoms program, in a media release.
“People’s right to physical safety is already extensively protected by existing law,” added Howard Sapers, CCLA’s executive director, who also called it “rights-infringing legislation.”
Beside Ketchum speaking at last week’s rally was Barb Guimond, a member of Sagkeeng First Nation and a day-school survivor.
“We often speak of Truth and Reconciliation, there’s no reconciliation in my opinion,” said Guimond who spoke to the crowd.
“As First Nations women, we are still told to be quiet … I now have a voice, I will not stay silent.”
At Winnipeg City Hall, Sagkeeng First Nation member Barb Guimond speaks out against a withdrawn anti-protest bylaw on Feb. 17. Photo by Crystal Greene
Inside city hall, Guimond warned of attacks against Indigenous advocates if the bylaw were to pass.
She questioned why Duncan’s idea was presented as urgently needed, when calls to stop violence and discrimination against Indigenous peoples have been ignored.
For example, she cited the case of unhoused Indigenous woman Tammy Bateman, who died after a Winnipeg police vehicle ran her over in 2024. The province’s Independent Investigations Unit watchdog cleared the officer involved of any charges.
At a protest against the Winnipeg Police Service (WPS) after Bateman’s death, a white man drove into demonstrators — hitting a woman on a bike, and injuring a young demonstrator requiring surgery.
“We have been targeted by racists,” Guimond said.
“The second protest, another Caucasian woman was trying to drive through us again, and I asked the WPS if these people were charged. They weren’t, and why is that?”
She also cited “continued attacks on our people” by private security guards in the city, saying “there’s no compassion.”
‘We will again have to make our voices heard’
But despite the shelving of the controversial anti-protest bylaw, advocates urged fellow citizens to stay vigilant — and keep exercising their rights to speak out.
Naomi Woodfield, a Métis citizen and Two-Spirit trans woman, described “Winnipeg” as “a city with a long and proud history of effective protest.”
She listed off the 1919 General Strike which “shook the entire country and paved the way for workers’ rights,” the Winnipeg Pride protest for rights of 2SLGBTQIA+ Manitobans, and “countless demonstrations” to “claw back” what was stolen from Indigenous Peoples.
She said that the 100-metre buffer zone would mean that the annual Pride parade would be blocked from at least 18 spots along its usual route which has stayed the same for a decade.
“Protest is not only a benefit to society but actively integral to a healthy one,” Woodfield said.
The province itself would not have been founded if not for the Red River Resistance, under Métis leader Louis Riel.
“Even the founding of our province only happened because of the power of many coming together in resistance,” she said.
And in recent decades, many Indigenous people took to the streets of the city to successfully fight for their rights.
Indigenous rights advocates joined unions, civil liberties groups, and human rights activists at a protest against an anti-protest bylaw in ‘Winnipeg’ on Feb. 17. Photo by Crystal Greene
That public resistance includes decades of Indigenous people protesting for a national inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit (MMIWG2s+) people, said Sandra DeLaronde, chair of Giganawenimaanaanig, the Manitoba MMIWG2s+ Implementation Committee.
“For 20 years we walked the streets of the city and many cities to call for a national inquiry and we finally got one,” she recalled.
“There will be many times to come in the future where we will again have to make our voices heard and put our bodies in the street to make change.”
Andrew Kohan, a community member who was at meetings to strategize against the bylaw, said the widespread resistance that defeated it showed an “impressive” solidarity between groups, particularly Indigenous people and allies.
“You have labour folks talking about Indigenous rights,” he said. “You have Indigenous folks talking about protest rights in other spaces around other issues.”
He said that a map helping visualize where the buffer zones could outlaw protests helped to activate residents against the proposal.
“People took a look at that map, people took a look at the language of the bylaw, and they realized what a crisis it was,” he explained.
“It was horrifying to everyone. The number of places that you wouldn’t be able to protest and raise your voice was just extreme.”
‘100-metre buffer zone is most effective’: bylaw supporter
But not everyone at city hall last week was opposed to the bylaw.
One presenter supporting Duncan’s motion was B’nai Brith Canada.
The registered charity calls itself “the country’s oldest human rights organization” and a leading countrywide advocacy group “promoting Jewish unity and continuity … and a leader in combating antisemitism and racism.”
Richard Robertson, B’nai Brith’s director of research and advocacy, told city council “Canada’s Jewish community is under attack, suffering through a crisis of antisemitism.”
He said antisemitic hate incidents have risen 124 percent since 2022. In “Winnipeg,” the Rady Jewish Community Centre, the Shaarey Zedek synagogue, and Kelvin High School have all been targeted with antisemetic graffiti.
“The right of every resident to enter, make use of such infrastructure, must not be treated as secondary to the rights of nefarious actors to engage in nuisance protest,” he said.
He said that B’nai Brith had been consulted on similar protest bylaws across “Canada.”
“It is B’nai Brith’s opinion that a 100-metre buffer zone is most effective,” Richardson said, citing similar buffer zones enacted in cities such as “Calgary,““Vaughn“ and “Brampton.”
But other Jewish residents of the city disagreed with B’nai Brith’s position.
“The nature of protest is to cause unease — this can be perceived as a threat to safety, but it’s not a physical threat to safety,” said Ellen Karlinski, a member of the United Jewish People’s Order.
“Protests make us think, challenge and discuss. No place should be protected from these assemblies, as long as they are peaceful gatherings and don’t obstruct people’s entry.”
‘I don’t see this bill going back to the drawing board,’ admits Mayor Scott Gillingham, after withdrawal of a controversial anti-protest bylaw amidst widespread outcry and protest. Photo by Crystal Greene
Mayor admits bylaw ‘was too broad in its scope’
One reporter asked Mayor Scott Gillingham if Indigenous people should face any restrictions when demonstrating.
“All people in Canada should be subject to the same set of rules and laws that would govern, and do govern our society,” Gillingham said.
“It’s clear from what was proposed that the bylaw was too broad in its scope.”
The bylaw’s creator, Duncan, admitted the lack of public consultation before tabling it was a mistake.
“My bad for not doing the extensive community consultation that is needed,” the city councillor added.
IndigiNews asked Gillingham if the bylaw were to be re-introduced, if it would affect Indigenous residents who have had sacred fires, held space on public lands, and in the past marched through “Winnipeg’s” central intersection, Portage and Main, without applying for permits.
Many of those locations would have required exemption permits to the bylaw, under the original proposal.
But Gillingham said the proposal is unlikely to return.
“The answer would be ‘no,’” Gillingham replied. “I don’t see this bill going back to the drawing board.”
At the end of a long day of presentations he added, “I will very much stay attuned to what our federal government does next.”
At the federal level, the outcome of Bill C-9 Combatting Hate Act is still pending, after being introduced in Parliament last fall.
The federal bill, similar to the “Winnipeg” bylaw, went through a first reading at the House of Commons in September.
The post Indigenous rights defenders say they’ll ‘not stay silent’ after anti-protest bylaw defeated in ‘Winnipeg’ appeared first on Indiginews.
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