Woman disabled by Lyme Disease facing worsening symptoms over alleged mold in her NYC home: ‘I’m losing everything I own’

Kelly Kreth was living the Manhattan dream. Ten years ago, she lucked into a rent-stabilized apartment in a doorman elevator building in Yorkville. Her current rent is just $2,105.42 a month.

In her 1964 white-brick building, comparable market-rate apartments rent in the mid-$3,000s. Her home — decorated in black, white and red — was as impeccable as she is.

Last fall, the dream imploded.

Kreth is disabled by Lyme Disease, and her neurological symptoms — fatigue, tinnitus, neuropathy, dizziness, numbness, burning pain — flared up, she told The Post. Turns out, in the winter, testing revealed mold in both her urine and her apartment.

Last month, Kreth filed two lawsuits against her landlord, Solil Management. It’s one of the city’s biggest and wealthiest landlords , founded by the late real-estate magnate Sol Goldman and currently controlled by his daughter Jane Goldman.

Legal documents claim the landlord refuses to properly remediate the mold or to offer alternative housing.

Kreth — a veteran self-employed publicist and freelance writer — sought to have the PTAC heating and cooling units replaced and the mold in her unit thoroughly cleaned by a licensed mold remediator . She found the response by the landlord, Solil Management, inadequate, according to court documents.

An e-mail from the property manager, Samuel Mahabir, said that the management’s mold assessor found slightly high readings in the bathroom, and the landlord would deep clean the bathroom and perform “standard maintenance and cleaning” of the PTAC units, as seen by The Post.

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The parties continually disagreed about how extensive the work should be.

“Since March, we have acted promptly to address Ms. Kreth’s concerns about conditions in her apartment,” Solil Management told The Post in a statement.

“We hired a licensed mold inspection company, offered to clean her PTAC units and bathroom, replace floor tiles, replace the PTAC units, and offered an appropriate rent abatement. Despite many attempts to schedule a time for this work, Ms. Kreth refused access to replace the PTAC units until July 25, when they were replaced. Ms. Kreth has yet to give us access to perform the other repairs.”

The repairs the landlord seeks to do are insufficient, Kreth said. “Initially, the landlord refused anything other than merely using building staff not licensed in mold remediation. I asked for a full remediation multiple times and was refused. They offered nothing in terms of property damage or medical damage compensation. They have presented no plan and given me no expert to walk me through how to tend to my contaminated property.”

What’s more, the requests for access and repairs often came on short notice or with unacceptable conditions. “They are saying they will fix things only if I will recant all of my complaints and not sue,” Kreth said regarding an email reviewed by The Post.

As for the rent abatement, the property manager initially offered $70 a day, Kreth said — but yesterday, the landlord’s lawyer, Kunal Yadav, sent her and her lawyer an email saying there was never any agreement about such an abatement. “You are responsible for rent,” he wrote in the email seen by The Post, and demanded proof of rent payments into escrow.

In late June, the heating and cooling units broke. To Kreth, it was a “huge flood”; to management, it was a “minor leak.”

The apartment smelled swampy and putrid, Kreth said. With her symptoms worsening, she says she was forced to stay elsewhere — a combination of hotels and friends’ couches — sometimes sending her dachshund, Biggie, to pricey boarding or daycare.

The landlord’s lawyer, Yadav, called Kreth’s demands “unreasonable,” writing that “your furniture is not ruined or damaged,” and the heating and cooling units “are fully functional,” as seen in an email reviewed by The Post.

The legal paperwork asserts that Kreth’s heating and cooling units showed “17 types of toxic mold, some at levels of 1000x the safe amount for a healthy person.” She has requested a “full, licensed mold remediation.”

The landlord said that Kreth collected her own mold samples rather than using a specialist. The landlord further said that its own mold results were confidential and refused to share them with The Post.

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Yadav wrote to Kreth that, before making repairs and addressing mold concerns, the landlord would require her to waive all complaints with “any Court and/or enforcement agency,” the message says.

Kreth’s doctor, Leo Galland , wrote to her landlord that Kreth suffers from Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy, or CIDP. Exposure to mold “aggravates her disabling disease,” he wrote, and “immediate remediation, while she lives in a space that has no evident water damage or mold, is a medical necessity.”

Kreth’s invisible condition causes “severe sensory disturbances,” said Galland, who specializes in immune disorders. “Her belongings may have become infested with mold. Some things may be impossible to clean. It’s not a trivial problem.”

Kreth receives periodic immunotherapy infusions of gamma globulin. Her insurance covers the pricey treatment only if administered by an in-home nurse, who monitors her vital signs. The landlord’s actions, she said, have “threatened my health and life-sustaining medical care.”

Some levels of mold and mycotoxins — mold’s poisonous byproducts — aren’t harmful to people with healthy immune systems, said Kreth’s personal-injury lawyer, Richard Hershman. “But Kelly has special immunity conditions that make her more sensitive than other people. Kelly has lost her whole life. The apartment is not habitable.”

Solil — which owns multiple residential buildings in Manhattan — has also refused to move her to a comparable unit, Hershman said. (Reps for Solil did not respond to this when asked for comment.)

“I’ve been doing mold cases for 30-plus years. This is one of the worst I’ve seen. People suffer terribly.”

Kreth, 54 — who writes for her local East Side Feed site — was bitten by a tick 13 years ago in Montauk, she said, and later exhibited the classic bullseye rash. She moved to her Yorkville building because she had trouble climbing the stairs in her previous Hell’s Kitchen building.

“I can’t carry things, so an elevator is not a luxury for me,” she said. “It is a necessity. I thought this was my forever home. I’m losing everything I own.”

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In the city’s brutal housing market, apartments she can afford tend to be high-floor walkups or are otherwise substandard.

An unsafe home has long-term ramifications, Kreth said. “The landlord has the power to destroy someone’s life. I am physically sick and financially devastated. I am insane with worry.”

City records show violations in her unit for less than 10 square feet of visible mold, which according to city law “may not be that substantial a condition,” said real-estate lawyer Stewart Wurtzel of Tane Waterman & Wurtzel, who is not involved in the case.

Typically, a judge relies on the report of the city’s inspector, who “might not do the world’s greatest job,” he said. “The tenant is entitled to prove there are conditions over and above what the inspector reported.”

The case becomes “a battle of the experts,” he said. “The tenant would hire her own mold expert and the landlord would bring in their own and say it’s not so bad, and the court has to determine who it believes.”

A disabled tenant is entitled to a reasonable accommodation. Such an accommodation “is very fact-intensive,” Wurtzel said. “The city’s Human Rights Commission requires a cooperative dialog between the two parties. The fact that the condition is rare doesn’t mean the landlord can ignore it.”

For less than 10 square feet of mold, a building can remediate on its own.

“While I understand the law says under 10 feet of mold doesn’t require full remediation, reasonable accommodation for my disability does,” Kreth said.

Proper remediation is a big job, requiring lifting the flooring and baseboards, using dehumidifiers and air scrubbers, and treating surfaces with biocide, said mold inspector Thomas Madigan of Pristine Inspection Associates , who is also not involved in the case.

“Long-term exposure is nasty,” he said. “I carry a respirator in my car.”

A separate mold lawsuit was filed by a former tenant who moved out last winter, mentioning complaints to the super that the heating and cooling system “was infested with mold due to not being properly cleaned and maintained.”

Last week, in an attempt to salvage some possessions, Kreth tried to hire a moving company to move some items to storage.

The company sent an estimator but hesitated to take the job. “After spending 10-15 minutes at your place he started having a headache and was feeling bad,” the foreman wrote to Kreth.

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