The housing crisis that has resulted in thousands of foreclosures throughout the region in recent years has been devastating for people who lost their homes or whose neighborhoods have been blighted by increasingly shabby vacant properties.

But the persistent real estate market downturn has been a major lifestyle boon to at least one constituency: fungi.

With some foreclosed homes languishing empty for two years or more, many owned by far-flung international banks unable or unwilling to see to their upkeep, potentially hazardous mold is quietly spreading and flourishing in the damp darkness behind boarded-up windows and locked front doors.

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