ABBEVILLE, La. (KFLY) -- A mother of two spoke out after renting a home with a landlord posting on Facebook Marketplace only to discover the place is not livable.

“We come today to find out that they have changed the locks and we cannot even have access to this house. When we first initially came to look at it, it was full of mold, bed bugs, just every type of creature you can imagine. There were no utilities put in the house, and she took a $650 rent and deposit and is refusing to give us our rent back for the first month or deposit and she's part of a Junior Auxiliary League. That's the initial reason why I chose to rent through her, because I had faith that she was a good tenant renter. That's not the case,” said Callie Trahan. “We’re in a homeless situation now because of the condition of this house. I have kids and this is not a livable situation. We have health problems and asthma and for her to say, 'It's never going to be the Taj Mahal', shame on her. Just because we don't have a lot of money, she puts us as dehumanizing who we are as people, and I don't think that's okay.”

Trahan said the house wouldn’t be fit for her kids along with her elderly mother who has heart conditions.

“I'd give it two weeks for her to make it to live in this house. There's no way," she said. "There's just no way we can live here. It's disgusting and for her to be part of an organization that's so giving and for her to turn around and be this monster of a human being.”

Trahan said the experience was a nightmare when she checked the home. She claimed the landlord delayed her inspection of the house for several days.

“We couldn't even stand in it for longer than five minutes," she said. "The smell of mold was protruding from the entire house, we couldn't breathe. I had to wear a mask because I was so scared that I was going to get sick.

News 10 was informed the landlord's name is Tammy Domingue. She released the following statement:

"I feel like this lady is refusing to move into the house because the neighborhood is a more predominantly black neighborhood, and if not for this, she wouldn’t have found all kinds of things wrong, just nitpicking everything. The house is livable and suitable, but not the Taj Mahal with granite countertops.”

Callie said the landlord's claims are far from the truth.

Marcelo Davis, the director of the Christian Service Center said he learned about Trahan through Faith House, and he was helping her with getting furniture to move into her place when he learned she could not live in it.

“I said, 'So what are you going to do?' And she said, 'Well, we were trying to ask the landlord to give us our money back', and she said that the landlord wouldn't give them their money back," Davis explained. "I was appalled at that because they hadn’t moved in. They had just met the landlord on Monday. The landlord went and met them at their hotel room that they were staying at and had them sign the lease, give them the first month's rent and the deposit, which amounted to $1300, and these are people that are living on Social Security and disability."

Davis said he reached out to the landlord and asked her if the property was still available for rent to see what she would say, and the landlord said it was, which means after already signing the lease with Trahan, the landlord is trying to re-rent the place.

“When I did finally reach out to the landlord again, she wouldn't call me back," Davis said. "She wouldn't return my text messages and come to find out that she's a member of Junior Auxiliary. I was appalled. To find out that she also has other rental properties here in Abbeville and I reached out to former tenants of hers who had nothing but complaints, never fixed anything, and had boundary issues, and so this has to stop. This is not the first time she's finally done this to a family. This is probably the 10th or 50th time, and I've spoken to other leaders in Abbeville about this landlord, and it's the same thing: Do not do business with this person.” 

Trahan hopes her story can help someone else who plans to rent a home.

“Before you go ahead and you message anybody on Facebook or anything for a house to live in, make sure that you go and see it in person before you hand over any money, because it's more than likely a scam," said Trahan. "If it's too good to be true, it's too good to be true. I trusted her, because she's part of a very great organization, the Junior Auxiliary League, and for her to be a church member and all of the things that she says she's involved in it portrays she was a good person but no, that's not the case, and she changed the locks on the house. That's even worse.”

News 10 checked with the Junior Auxiliary League to see if Domingue is a member of their organization and never received a response by news time.

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