Homeless Homeowners

It is possible to own a home and be homeless.  We're about to do it!  Here's how:

We do not have enough money to get a decent mortgage for a decent house.  We were also too poor to carry cash to a city tax auction and compete with contractors and "investors" for dregs.  We are, however, clever enough to dig into the system and buy a city tax auction house outside of the auction so we could prepare and get a personal loan to pay for it.  We are also persistent enough to make it work!  However...

The city said the house was in "normal" condition.  It is not.  The city said they had NO inspection reports, they said they did NOT go inside, and they could not tell us anything about the property.  We can tell them that there is no plumbing, no heat, no doorknobs, a roof that needs complete replacement, and a back porch that is dragging off the back of the house.  We have also found out that the only reason the home was boarded over was because of neighbors begging for it--for years.  Lesson learned: the city knew the condition of the house, they let it get worse, and they had the nerve to ask for any money for it.

We love our house!  We spent all our first months, from September to December, cleaning out the garbage, attempting to get contractors to give us estimates, and bringing over boxes of our stuff we won't need right away.  We tried to apply for the grant that would get us just about everything we'd need to fix the house and live in it, but you have to live in the house to get the grant.  ?!?  After a HUGE struggle, we got special house insurance for a house that was being fixed up that was cancelled after a month because they said the house needs to be fixed up and we need to live in it.  ?!?

So we're now renting our apartment, paying for a personal loan, and paying taxes on our house.  We haven't been to the house in over a week because temperatures are less than 10 degrees, and, as you may remember, we have no heat.  The struggles of low-income people to make it out of their low-income living conditions is real.  Really real.  Because what happens when we can't afford to rent?  We use up all the money we've managed to save for fixing our house.  We can't move in if we can't fix it.  We can't get a home equity loan or house insurance or a grant until we live in it.  What do we do?

The plan: visit the department that manages the grants and tell them we're about to become homeless homeowners unless they put us on the grant waiting list (yes, there's still waiting!)  We look to rent a scary-cheap apartment in the same city as our house.  We wait until the temperatures go to above freezing, go back, keep cleaning, keep moving, try to fix more windows, try to remediate the basement ourselves, and maybe even try to dismantle the back porch ourselves.  In the meantime, keep plugging along, trying to increase our income.

Homeless with a home.  In 10 degree weather (lows below zero.  Fahrenheit, in case you were wondering.)  How does it happen?  People like us struggle to get up.  How will we make it work?  Through ingenuity and persistence, like we've always done.