Cracked Houses

Shari Wilson's house is falling apart at the seams. And her life isn't so great, either.

You'd never know it to look at her. At 32, Wilson has the wholesome good looks of a sitcom mom. Juggling 3-month-old Teagen in her kitchen in suburban Surprise, she might be starring in a commercial for children's Tylenol. Or Ivory soap.

Her five-year-old house is another story.

Cracks are etched along the walls, creeping from the corners of the windows and the baseboards. Holes have been cut in various spots on the kitchen linoleum. There's also a series of holes in the backyard -- five feet deep.

And, since the Wilsons started pulling up the carpet three years ago and stopped, it now sits, half-on, half-off, as if waiting for hardwood floors to arrive and put it out of its misery.

Worst of all: the crack running the entire length of the house, from the easternmost edge of the living room floor to the westernmost edge of the kitchen.

This is not one of those spidery cracks that surface on aging stucco, or the normal hairlines that show up on patios.

This is a 45-foot gash bisecting the house's foundation, as if an earthquake struck Surprise.

It's because of this gash that Shari Wilson's entire house is starting to crack, and because of the cracks that her lawyer advised her, in no uncertain terms, to hold off on any new flooring.

"I can't do anything," she says. "I absolutely cannot fix anything, because if I do, and they end up ripping it out, I'd have to pay for it. And so I'm just stuck."

Wilson and her husband, Shane, chose this house, on North 158th Lane in Surprise, for its size: 4,100 square feet.

They already had three daughters when they decided to become foster parents. Eventually, they added three more kids to their brood, all with special needs. So four bedrooms were important. So was a big yard.

"We got the biggest house we could afford," Shari Wilson says.

They were living the American dream, as clichéd as that sounds. And, yes, it's an even bigger cliché to report that their dream turned into a nightmare. But it did.

(That's the thing about clichés: There's some truth at the heart of every one.)

What happened is this:

The house that Shari Wilson thought would be perfect for her growing family developed severe structural defects, including a mold problem.

Her builder refused to fix them, she says.

And when she hired a lawyer, the builder just fought harder. Now Wilson's paid out nearly $100,000 in legal and professional fees -- and the house is as screwed up as ever.

All along, Shari Wilson has wanted only two things: to get the home fixed, and to get her lawyers' fees recouped.

She feels like she doesn't have a choice. Who has the money to pay a lawyer $100,000? And if she can't stay in the house, where is she going to go, with seven kids -- baby Teagen having arrived last November -- and the rising cost of Arizona real estate?

Some people in Shari Wilson's situation might get hysterical. For most Americans, a house isn't just shelter: It's the biggest financial investment they'll ever make.

No one takes out a 30-year mortgage, imagining that their house could fall apart in just five years.

And they don't expect to have to refinance that mortgage, twice, to cover lawyer and engineering fees.

Shari Wilson has done this.

Now she's left trying to salvage her investment in a system that's stacked against her. Arizona's government has been heavily influenced by developers, and if the builders have their way, it's sure to get even worse.

But Shari Wilson is not hysterical. You can't be a mother to so many kids unless you accept catastrophe with a certain nonchalance. And so Wilson does.

Still, it's clear that she is sick and tired of this 45-foot-long crack, and sick and tired of contractors coming to her house. And engineers. And lawyers.

January's bill alone was $13,000.

"Who in the world has $13,000 sitting around?" she asks. "After I've already been paying two to five thousand bucks a month!"

But she doesn't really have a choice. If she doesn't pay up, she knows her lawyer could walk, and then she's lost her entire six-figure investment in legal work -- and will still live in a cracked house.

She surveys her kitchen: the places where engineers have cut away the linoleum, the cracks and the holes.

"This has been going on for two years," she says, and her blue eyes flash. "And I've never asked my builder for a dime. I've just asked them to fix the house."

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"The Desert Is Desirable," the U.S. Census Bureau concluded in December, and the headline wasn't just silly government alliteration (even if it was, in fact, silly government alliteration).

Arizona is booming. The state added a net gain of 199,413 people in 2005, or 546 people every day. According to the Census Bureau, we're the second-fastest-growing state in the nation, behind only Nevada.

Evidence is everywhere: In the ever-worsening traffic. In the new schools opening every year. Most of all, in the homes that seem to sprout up overnight, mushroom-style, in every direction.

The home-building business is booming: Greater Phoenix alone -- now so sprawling it stretches into both Maricopa and Pinal counties -- added 63,570 new homes last year, according to RL Brown Housing Reports. That's an increase of 63 percent from 2002, itself a record year.

Anthem, the vast Del Webb development north of town on I-17, is one example. Nine years ago, that hunk of land seemed as remote, and as empty, as Manitoba.

Today the traffic that gluts the freeway serves as indisputable proof of the development's popularity. More than 20,000 people live in Anthem already, and still construction continues.

Once building is complete, the spot that once grew only saguaros is expected to hold more than 21,000 homes -- and as many people as Sarasota, Florida.

But while Anthem's growth is real, and property values have soared, residents haven't been without problems.

Like Shari Wilson, some have discovered, to their horror, that their new homes are showing unexpected damage. Walls are cracking. Doors refuse to open. Driveways split so badly that they need to be replaced -- sometimes, repeatedly.

Blame geology.

Some of the hottest areas for development in the Valley -- including parts of Anthem, Gilbert, and Surprise -- suffer from problematic soil.

Soil that won't stay still.

Soil that expands, and contracts.

Soil that collapses.

And that can't help but have an effect on the foundation resting on it. Not to mention the house sitting on top of that.

Phil Pettice, chief inspector for the Arizona Registrar of Contractors, says that, as recently as 10 years ago, builders consciously avoided areas with expansive soils.

"But then the cost of land became so expensive, they started moving into those areas," he says.

The same thing happened in the Tucson area, says Jack Holden, chair of Arizona Building Officials. (He's the building official in Marana, just north of Tucson.)

"You see the land with poorer soils, 10 years ago, the only thing you'd find there is a farm house," Holden says. "But then the building boom hit, and you had these mass builders come in, and now you've got hundreds of houses there."

The problems have been real.

New Times reviewed files from a dozen court cases, examined two dozen formal complaints on file with state regulators, and interviewed home inspectors, engineers, and lawyers.

We visited homes plagued by cracking and settling, from Sun City to Chandler, and examined photographs of many more. We talked to homeowners who see the damage affecting their biggest investment, and are frightened and frustrated.

Michael Dicks, a Phoenix construction-defect attorney, believes that "thousands upon thousands" of homes have been affected by soil problems -- or will be showing damage in the near future.

Personally, he estimates, he's handled almost 2,000 cases where soils have been a factor.

If a builder has taken shortcuts where certain types of soil are involved, Dicks says, "it's not a question will it have problems, it's a question of when it manifests itself. It's a time bomb, with each home having a different fuse."

Not all are as bad as Shari Wilson's. But that's small consolation to a homeowner who's counting on a home holding its value . . . and is now counting the cracks that seem to expand on a daily basis.

Already, estimates Clarke Booth, who recently resigned after two years as an inspector for the Arizona Registrar of Contractors, soil problems are at the root of at least 5 percent of all complaints the agency receives -- close to 500 complaints every year.

And that doesn't count the homeowners who skip the complaint process and just file a lawsuit. Once the house is up, Booth says, fixing soil problems can be very difficult.

"When it happens, it can be very bad," he says, "and very costly to fix."