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Some Kind of Watershed on the Imp-possibility of Safe Housing


Over the past 14 months I’ve gotten a look at every house I found that was:
1. Already built,
2. In my price range & size range (600-900 sq ft),
3. Judging from the ad, might qualify for a first-time homebuyer loan (which I could get, because sailboats don’t count as homes in this context. Considering how much work sailboats are to live on, I think that’s just precious.)

All 4 of them.

In 14 months of sporadic, but persistent, looking… only 4 houses turned up within my parameters.

Well, actually, only 3 were in my parameters. It just looked SO pathetic, I threw in the house I looked at that taught me just how horrific it could be to buy a repo. I don’t know why I felt a need to count that.

So, really, 3 houses. Only 3 even seemed possible, but they weren’t. They turned out to be marginally too fuddup for the loan, too moldy, or too close to too many Isy-toxic things.

Broke my heart.

The Market

In all this time, there were 2 houses I wanted to view that did, in fact, meet all 3 criteria, but they had a buyer and 5 alternates before I even had a chance to reach for the phone. Good, small homes go FAST here! (If anybody’s looking for steady returns on moderate investments, consider building some, eh? I’d be happy to project-manage that business. It’d be a great example of doing well while doing good.)

Double the target size and price point, and I’d have LOADS of options. The market is littered with 1200-2000 sq ft pocket palaces for a quarter to a third of a mil. Those buyers can be as fussy as they please around here.

The Reality Check

Here are some grim financial realities which bring new depth to the yawning chasm of the imp-possibility of me finding a safe home:

1. Frail, reactive body on SSDI.
NOTE: It’s illegal for anyone on SSDI (which normally brings in government-sponsored health care) to have over $2,000 in personal assests (exempting already-owned house and car), ever at all, even for 1 day, or they can stop your health coverage.
You read that right, folks. In the USA, poor and sick/disabled people are brutally barred from saving up, even in the interests of getting a car or home if they don’t already own one. (That was a GOP mandate. How’s that for fiscally responsible? /headdesk/)

2. Only legally-recognized close relatives are allowed to contribute to a mortgage. No matter how well connected the PDSP (Poor Disabled Sick Person; or, if you’re from California, Person who’s Disabled, Sick, and Poor), or how wide and generous their circle of friends, *nobody else* is allowed to contribute, or else the PDSP *gets no loan.*
NOTE: this was nominally an anti-terrorist maneuver, to keep cells from easily acquiring property. Which makes even less sense than most modern American anti-terrorist legislation… ‘cuz somehow the financial data-mining that’s actually been built into your central processing chip since the turn of the millenium, and is now supplemented by every data stream you dip into, is magically unable to track the source of these gifts, in this one realm of financial transactions? Huh?? And somehow it assumes that terrorists can’t find other ways to meet their logistical needs — a counter-factual assumption, at best. I grew up with actual terrorist threats framing our daily lives; this mickey-mouse magical thinking irritates me at the best of times.)

3. First time homebuyers (c.f. the snarkery in the opening paragraphs) get automatically lined up for a loan called FHA, which banks appreciate because the loan is insured by the feds. All houses bought with that kind of loan have to meet certain standards before purchase.
NOTE: this is generally good, as it ensures that first-time homebuyers start out in a code-compliant home. For me, it’s disastrous, because the standards don’t account for occult mold or proximity to fossil fuel output and EM radiation — but they heavily favor fresh paint and conventional insulation, cheap and reasonable ways to meet the code criteria. These amount to life-or-death issues for me.

4. Ordinarily, it’s extremely difficult — in fact, well-nigh impossible — to get a “one mortgage” or build loan, which you can use to buy a lot and have your own home built on it. Too many people have taken the money and run, or gotten overwhelmed by loads of decisions and delays they’re not used to, or lost their way somehow. This leaves unfinished properties dissolving where they stand, and frustrated loan officers doing much the same thing.

Now, when those loans ARE made, payouts are structured to keep the owner one large payout behind. The idea is to make sure the owner has “enough skin in the game”, a metaphor I always hear in this connection, which is peculiarly apt and especially painful for someone with CRPS.

Also, you need a builder on board who is prepared to advocate with the bank. How many builders really want to face a freaking bank just to get a picayune, weird little job like mine?

Also, my builder would have to be someone comfortable enough with low-tox building to help me be rightly understood when I talk about using high-grade materials in what’s otherwise a cheapest-possible design.

The Current Scenario

So, here’s what I bring to the table:

1. Frail, reactive body needing a small home with nonstandard finishes. Have some resources and loads of information.

2. Some relatives are able and willing to contribute, thank heavens and them!

3. Friendly mortgage broker, glad to work with me and guide me in inserting my info into their system in the most fruitful possible way. (Applied Mortgage in Northampton, MA. I recommend them very highly!)

4. Doctors willing to provide letters on letterhead stating that I do, in fact, have demonstrated needs that affect my safest home environment, and it would be good to work with me on that. (If only their fax machines worked.)

5. Info and analysis by the bucketload, which only needs to be extracted from my brain and the web and dumped out into tables, spreadsheets, breakdowns, overviews, digests, summaries, etc., about just what’s needed and just why it matters and what it really does to me when it doesn’t happen right. With references and bibiliographies for key concepts and key resources. In colors and patterns that are meaningfully coded to the info. In as many copies as they like. In origami folds, if that would help. Tied up in a neat little ribbon — green, as a hint. Sound good?

Of course, given 3 functional hours each day, putting that together is so much easier than it sounds… NOT. If I don’t go out and run errands or appointments, or eat anything the least bit wrong, get only a short walk in as exercise, my voice recognition software has no trouble with my allergy-hoarse voice, and I take 20 minute breaks every 30 minutes absolutely faithfully, I can try to eke that out to as much as 5 productive hours per day!

Who knows, it might happen!

Sysiphus was an amateur.

Because, folks, poor though I am, tiny and unprofitable though my mortgage would be, simple as my other needs are.. there is NOBODY ALIVE who could have more skin in this game than me. And I need the chance to prove that to the bank.

More and more lately, I miss my Dad. I don’t know what he would have done or what he would have taught me in the process, but if he were alive, I would be safely housed. “Legitimate need? Doing your best? Got a rational budget? Okay, let’s figure this out.”

He was very staunch about facing hard realities and, working capitalist though he was, had many thoughtful conversations with his daughter about “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

According to him, he loved that idea.

It was his favorite dictum about distributing resources, and he dearly wished it were realistic on larger economic scales. He worked in a world where it wasn’t useful, but he clearly wanted me to know that he honored it as an ethical guide.

He articulated to me how he used it as a parenting tool with his three gifted, demanding, and wildly different children. He said he’d never parent me the way he parented Older Brother, and Younger Brother was yet another proposition; he tried daily to treat each of us according to what he understood of what we each had, and what we each needed. He knew his perceptions weren’t perfect, and so it was a constant process to keep trying to improve his insight, as he kept trying to keep up with our development.

He explained all that nuance, admitted all that depth of thought and his practical limits, to his 11-to-13-year-old girl… in the late 1970’s. In some ways, he was way ahead of his time.

Through all the stormy years we had afterwards, I never forgot that, at root, he had that much faith in my mind and that much trust in my morals.

He’d be so proud of my diligence in all this.

Now, all I need is a reputable builder who’s up for this job, and enough working-brain-time to put all this medical and practical material together — preferably in the next week, due to the timing of the hard credit-check.

Neither is really in reach, but I’m here to keep trying. Wish me success!

Bonus Points

If I can get this done this summer, and recuperate in a safe home for awhile, then I’d like to put together a plan to make small safe homes all over these hills; I know people who can find the funding, and I know customers who’d be banging our doors down. It’s just that I can’t properly or legally use that program for my own benefit, so I must have my own home first.

Tell you what, I bet the whole process could be neatly documented and charmingly presented in an attractive book on the subject. It’d be one blueprint for a win-win way to help stabilize local neighborhoods, reduce blight, mitigate housing crises, generate middle-class jobs, stabilize local economies, reduce medical costs, and make many people more calm and content. All of which is economically positive in so many ways… and morally spotless.

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