There is a stigma about being homeless that I feel the need to write about this week. In late February 2016, the home our family was living in and thought we were buying was hit by a devastating sewer backup that flooded the entire basement. The people that were holding the title to the house were angry, stating that we were negligent in the care of the house. They asked us to move out on very short notice despite the fact that we had what we thought was a $25000 equity in the home.
We had always had the people who open the sewer line out 12 previous times, costing us over $4200. We believed that the people who held the title to the home did not follow the agreement we thought we had.
Suffice to say, under our state's law, which grossly favors the title holder of a rental home, we had no leegal rights. Upon consulting an attorney specializing in home ownership disputes, we were advised that we should not fight for the money we supposedly had put into the home.
We did not contest the title holder's case, and we were slapped with a $67000 judgement. We had bought the home on a rent to own basis, and when one of the two owners sold his interest in the home to the folks who sued us, we thought the agreement we had with the two owners would be honored.
Instead, the owner who bought out the other owner terminated the contract and said he would apply the money we thought was building equity toward a reduction in the price of the home in the sale of the home to us. Instead, the owner used the sewage flood to ask us to leave. Never mind that we had spoken to the couple several times about the sewage backups and the mold in the basement that was emerging after the repeated problems with sewage backups.
We left the house as required by the owner. We had two kids who, fortunately never entered the basement and obeyed our instructions to stay out. The result of this action by the title holders was that we had to find a place quickly to live in and work out of until we could find a new home to rent.
The stigma of having a large judgement against us made other landlords and apartment managers refuse to consider us for an apartment. We ended up in a motel in a part of our city we wouldn't have even considered from March 4 of 2016 until today, July 14 of 2017. Almost everything we had went into storage.
We went to another attorney to see how we could deal with this harrowing situation. He recommended filing chapter 7 bankruptcy to remove this financial judgement obligation. We filed, and were successful in removing this onerous pile of excrement from our list of debts.
We lived in a small hotel room for 17 months, taking kids to school, my wife to work, and eating anything a hot plate, microwave, or crock pot could handle. We kept fairly quiet about our situation, informing only people who needed to know about our long hotel stay. After the bankruptcy was discharged in June of 2017, we felt free to begin looking for somewhere to live, having learned the hard way about rent to own agreements.
The property management firms in our small city took one look at our wounded credit situation and accepted money for our apartment applications, and then never returned our calls, most likely due to our financially horrible history with the house we lived in just before we entered the hotel. This problem of low credit scores caused many companies and individual owners just to act upon the papers of the very few applicants who had clean credit histories. Many individuals made great efforts to make improvements of their credit scores. These people often were rejected due to them being poor and working class people finding very few property managers willing to take applications and to seriously looking at the scores without rejecting the applications.
Our family was treated fairly by a couple who had invested in dicey applicants to give them a chance to realize their potential instead of ignoring them or turning them down. The folks were independent owners who gave our family the chance to explain our history honestly.
We move in today, and I can say that while we were technically homeless for almost 18 months, our experiences were nothing like the chronically homeless people in our town. We have developed empathy for people living in their cars while perhaps struggling with some form of post traumatic stress disorder. These are folks who need our support and our town's support to get back on their feet in all domains of their lives. Please consider helping such folks by supporting the nonprofits that serve homeless families or individuals in your community.
We had always had the people who open the sewer line out 12 previous times, costing us over $4200. We believed that the people who held the title to the home did not follow the agreement we thought we had.
Suffice to say, under our state's law, which grossly favors the title holder of a rental home, we had no leegal rights. Upon consulting an attorney specializing in home ownership disputes, we were advised that we should not fight for the money we supposedly had put into the home.
We did not contest the title holder's case, and we were slapped with a $67000 judgement. We had bought the home on a rent to own basis, and when one of the two owners sold his interest in the home to the folks who sued us, we thought the agreement we had with the two owners would be honored.
Instead, the owner who bought out the other owner terminated the contract and said he would apply the money we thought was building equity toward a reduction in the price of the home in the sale of the home to us. Instead, the owner used the sewage flood to ask us to leave. Never mind that we had spoken to the couple several times about the sewage backups and the mold in the basement that was emerging after the repeated problems with sewage backups.
We left the house as required by the owner. We had two kids who, fortunately never entered the basement and obeyed our instructions to stay out. The result of this action by the title holders was that we had to find a place quickly to live in and work out of until we could find a new home to rent.
The stigma of having a large judgement against us made other landlords and apartment managers refuse to consider us for an apartment. We ended up in a motel in a part of our city we wouldn't have even considered from March 4 of 2016 until today, July 14 of 2017. Almost everything we had went into storage.
We went to another attorney to see how we could deal with this harrowing situation. He recommended filing chapter 7 bankruptcy to remove this financial judgement obligation. We filed, and were successful in removing this onerous pile of excrement from our list of debts.
We lived in a small hotel room for 17 months, taking kids to school, my wife to work, and eating anything a hot plate, microwave, or crock pot could handle. We kept fairly quiet about our situation, informing only people who needed to know about our long hotel stay. After the bankruptcy was discharged in June of 2017, we felt free to begin looking for somewhere to live, having learned the hard way about rent to own agreements.
The property management firms in our small city took one look at our wounded credit situation and accepted money for our apartment applications, and then never returned our calls, most likely due to our financially horrible history with the house we lived in just before we entered the hotel. This problem of low credit scores caused many companies and individual owners just to act upon the papers of the very few applicants who had clean credit histories. Many individuals made great efforts to make improvements of their credit scores. These people often were rejected due to them being poor and working class people finding very few property managers willing to take applications and to seriously looking at the scores without rejecting the applications.
Our family was treated fairly by a couple who had invested in dicey applicants to give them a chance to realize their potential instead of ignoring them or turning them down. The folks were independent owners who gave our family the chance to explain our history honestly.
We move in today, and I can say that while we were technically homeless for almost 18 months, our experiences were nothing like the chronically homeless people in our town. We have developed empathy for people living in their cars while perhaps struggling with some form of post traumatic stress disorder. These are folks who need our support and our town's support to get back on their feet in all domains of their lives. Please consider helping such folks by supporting the nonprofits that serve homeless families or individuals in your community.
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