My house has mold, what rights do I have in Arkansas?

By Magpants

Recently we discovered we have a mold problem in our ducts which is causing mold spores to be blown out with our AC and heat. My husband has been quite sick, (asthma, congestion, coughing, lethargy, itchy eyes, head aches etc.) so we investigated and found really nasty mold looking black and green stuff all throughout our upstairs ducts. We called our landlord who sent out a maintenance guy to check things out. Then they hired Steamatic to clean our ducts. Well that only made it worse because instead of treating the problem like mold, it was just assumed to be dirt, therefore it got spread everywhere. We decided to hire a mold inspector on our own, who before he even did his test, knew that it was mold and was shocked to hear how it had be "cleaned". He said that the carpets had not been cleaned in some time because the level of dirt saturation causing the carpet to be dark colored along the walls. This entire time we have been made to feel like we are just complaining and that" every house has some mold" and that it will "cost $5,000 to fix" (we were quoted $1000). And to them "it looks just like mildew". Well no wonder they are dragging their heals! (All words of landlord) We are going in next week to talk things out and our landlord mentioned that we could talk about breaking our lease so we don’t have to live in a house that makes us sick. What so they can pass the house along to the next poor saps?! From what I have read Arkansas state laws make it that we can’t really do anything and we have to either pay up and fix it ourselves or move. I don’t want to do either! What can I do about this?

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