I have been on Daily KOS a very long time, virtually from the beginning first with my old nym of Genghis Mom and now with Snackdoodle, I think of you as friends and some as family. I am sorry to have to come asking for help but the situation is desperate. Some of you may remember my writings about our nearly 15 year battle with our mortgage lender and the housing meltdown. My home is my only asset along with a 22-year-old car and it was sold October 22. We are expected to leave, but the fact remains JP Morgan doesn't own our note. Our only option at this point beyond moving which we aren't willing to do is to go back into court for the illegal foreclosure and sale, and the breach of our HAMP loan. We have an attorney finally to do this but he needs $5,000 minimum to start. We can't raise the money fast enough because we need to file ASAP so I am asking for your help and will be forever grateful.
www.gofundme.com/…
or Paypal using cclark1 at cox dot net
UPDATE I
I thought I would give everyone an update. As of today, we have raised $1425 on Gofundme and $200 via Paypal for a total of $1625 of the $6000 we will need.
I thought too you might enjoy knowing a little more about us and the house. When we bought the house from my mother it had been split into three apartments. Our thought had always been to put the house back to the single-family home it was meant to be. When the upstairs tenant moved that first summer we decided to take down the wall and reclaim a bathroom and what had been two bedrooms and a big hall turned into a kitchen. It was almost too easy. We also cleaned up the backyard which was a mess and put in a patio with pavers.
Left to right our downstairs tenant Fred, my oldest son Chris, my brother-in-law Terry, me and at the BBQ with the mullet is my youngest Bill. My sister-in-law Dianne was the photographer.
In 2008 we were hit by tornadoes all over town and our neighborhood fell victim to 115mph straight line winds that did about 40K in damage to the house. The wind and jet-propelled ice beads striped off shingles, raised the roof a couple of inches, blew down our beautiful Black Hills Spruce and broke every window on the West side of the house. The video was taken just minutes after it happened.
You can see the neighborhood is friendly. The cinematographer is Chris, Bill is the one in the cap making the phone call, I am the husky female voice saying I am taking Jack in the house and of course my grandson and Mom. It took a little while to get things fixed it was over a year to get our roof replaced because there were so many damaged in town. We weren’t the only ones with a blue tarp roof in the neighborhood the next spring.
We decided to replace the stucco and batten boards, they were cracked and chewed up by ice pelts flying at 115 mph. This is what the house looked like as we were working on replacing and repairing.
New windows on the front upstairs. a new paint scheme and eventually a porch on the left side to replace the one that was there years ago.
When Fred our tenant in the basement apartment moved we took the opportunity to remodel it and make it an 1100 Sq Ft 2 bedroom instead of a single. I was getting close to retirement and the plan was to rent the apartment to supplement my SS. We would live in the main part of the house while I was alive and when I was gone the kids could move to the basement apartment and rent the upstairs. My 401K had taken such a hit on the market downturn it made better sense to use that money to redo the apartment because it would pay more every month than the 401K. Our neighbors across the street were having problems, her husband was disabled and waiting for his SS disability, I had been helping them pay their rent but I couldn’t do that indefinitely. We thought if we could get the apartment done ASAP we could move them into the apartment. So my youngest wrecked out the old apartment and completely remodeled it in about 5 weeks. To keep the labor costs down he did the majority of the work himself. It turned out really nice.
The market rate for it with utilities included, cable and WiFi is about $1100 a month. They moved in and lived there rent-free for a year and then when he got his SS they paid $500 a month for the next 4 years. It was enough time for his wife to get a promotion, their son to get out of high school and to get on their feet financially. We haven’t been renting it because things have been so up in the air on the house.
So now my family, starting with the current pets, we have always had at least a dog while in the house. When we bought the house it included her dog a big old love sponge Rottweiler named Zeus.
We have two cats, Murphy and Rocket. Rocket is a big baby and terribly immodest.
Sleeping on the arm of my recliner must be handy for scritches and pats.
He also likes my mobility scooter and I am thankful he doesn’t have opposable thumbs!
This is my son Chris, my grand Gabriel and our rat terrier Jack, who also liked having stories read. Jack went across the rainbow bridge three years ago.
This is my silly Scottie Frodo, he is now about 18 months old.
And this is Chris with Frodo, they love to wrestle. Frodo growls and grumbles and it sounds like a battle to the death if Chris stops wrestling the growls stop like a switch was turned off. They are hilarious to watch.
So this is what has been happening at our house the last few years, have many more pictures but the object wasn’t to bore you.
UPDATE II
We are heading into the final push, $340 from Paypal and $3520 from Gofundme for a total of $3860, almost there. I can’t thank you enough for your generosity and words of encouragement, they mean the world to me.
It has been cold here, got a little snow over the weekend but it didn’t last long. This picture is from a few years ago and from my front door. I think snowy days in old neighborhood is particularly pretty.
It seems like every winter we get at least one “warm” snow. You know the big flakes and temperature right at freezing so it is pleasant outside. I like to walk the neighborhood then, it is magical. Now the weather has turned cold the critters who normally live in the wooded portion at the back of our lot move into our garage.
I will continue to keep the updates coming thru to the end. When I first started blogging about the mortgage meltdown and our situation I didn’t think it would take this long to get it settled. Thank you again for all your support.
UPDATE III
Fund so far $525 Paypal $4025 Gofundme or after fees $3886 total $4411
Sorry, it has taken so long to get back, been very busy here. To catch you up on what has been happening. At the end of November, we were served with the four-day request to move, the first step in evicting us. Friday, December 7th the Sheriff returned to serve us with the notice of our eviction hearing December 21st. The weekend the Sheriff came to visit I was in Ord Nebraska with Bill at the quarterly SCC meeting of the Nebraska Democratic party. We were elected to additional committee positions, so looks like we plan on staying. It was nice to get away to a different kind of stress, we came back on Sunday.
We have been going thru everything concerning the house and have decided to fight this based on Time-Barred debt. We have been researching every possible thing and yesterday Bill went down to the courthouse and find out what the actual process is for removing our eviction hearing from small claims court to Federal District Court. While the clerk’s office wasn’t very helpful we did find out the filing fee is $450. We will need multiple copies of the pleading and to save money we will be providing the copies. There is also the matter of process serving. The sheriff is the cheapest way to go at about $50 per person, private process servers are two to three times the cost. We just don’t know which would be the best way to go yet but with 6 defendants named $300 looks a lot better than $600 or more.
We want to get the pleading completed today so he can file tomorrow. The pleading is like the Cliff Notes of the case, just the basics, the proof to support the allegations and what we want the judge to do. Once the pleading is filed for District Court then Bill has to go to the County Court where the eviction will be tried. He has a form to fill out for the removal to District Court, it is then removed from the docket. We weren't able to find out if there is a cost to filing for the removal, I am guessing if there is it will be $100 or less.
Once this is accomplished we will have to complete the complaint which puts meat on the bone. There is no additional cost in for filing that I can find. Getting a court date will be 30-60 days in the future which also gives us time to continue looking for an attorney. I am hoping once we have filed and been accepted in District Court it will make it easier to find someone to take it over, or at the very least let us get help by the hour if needed.
The reason these suits don’t come up very often isn’t that the crimes haven’t been committed but rather people don’t know their rights, can’t find a competent attorney, don’t have the money to fight and in many cases like our’s, parts of our complaint had to be sorted out by other courts before we could proceed. All of these things work in favor of the banks.
My son Bill is slowly working his way through Harvard Kennedy to be a super organizer, but I am encouraging him to change his major to Public Policy. We need good people with a conscience to help shape legislation. I will be helping Bill with the pleading so I won’t be checking this diary as frequently as I usually do but I will get to everyone.
Thank you again!