Mold

Gabriel Caban has had three constant companions in the nine short months he’s been alive. There’s Beatriz Caban, his 27-year-old mom. There’s the black-and-white blanket he refuses to sleep without. And there’s the mold that grows in the floorboards and walls of his apartment — the mold that has sent him three times to the emergency room, the mold he’s been breathing in his entire life. On Nov. 17, 2023, an eight-months-pregnant Beatriz Caban moved into Sunset Ridge Apartments, a 312-unit low-income complex nestled in the northeast corner of New Haven, Conn. She found mold for the first time that day, along with a bucket in the laundry room next door, filled to the brim with water dripping from the ceiling.