ALBERTVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) – A family in Albertville with five young children lost everything they owned when a fire ripped through their home in July. Unfortunately, the tough times are far from over.  

For the past six months, the Baher family has been living in a rental unit while trying to get their home repaired.

“When your kids ask you – ‘is our house finished mom? I want to be able to go home.’ Because they don’t have a home right now, that’s a question that happens daily here,” said homeowner and mother Lydia Baher.

What the family called home was destroyed by a fire and for the past six months, the family has struggled to get it repaired. The insurance company finally got a contractor to start the work on the house, but the repairs are still in limbo.  

“He said he was going to go forward with it but just never contacted us again,” said Baher.  

Baher says the contractor told them that the insurance policy is thousands of dollars short of the cost to rebuild. When she and her husband tried to get the estimate readjusted, the claims adjuster was stricken with COVID-19. 

“There wasn’t another adjuster. They have a lot of shortages in the company,” Baher explained. 

Coupled with contractor staffing shortages and building supply chain issues that have nearly crippled some companies in the state of Alabama throughout the pandemic, the couple has tried to make repairs themselves with little success.

Their coverage to stay in rental units and hotels comes to an end very soon. 

“This blindsided us but check your coverages with COVID-19. You may think, ‘oh I’ve got good coverage’ like we did. It’s not because everything has tripled and quadrupled the amount it was before and finding people to do work is hard to with Covid because they are sick. We just don’t know what we are going to do. It’s been very, very hard.”   

The family has set up a GoFundMe account to try and raise funds.