The Wilson School library that I volunteered in had been given a generous funding to purchase some new magazine subscriptions for the school year. I was also on the PTA. We were in the middle of discussion on what magazines to order with the funds when the Principal came in the room. He let us know that we did not need to decide because he already ordered them all. 

Wilson was a K-3 school. No one over 8 years old. The magazines he ordered are pictured here. Most if not all of them were weekly. That makes them more expensive. Most were for an adult black male that liked sports and politics. When asked what criteria he used to choose these for such a young grade level he said, "So the teachers can do research for the lesson plans."

Cleaning up the playground and other ways to get into trouble....

Back sometime in the late 80's my children went to Wilson School. It was sort of in the hood. No, I guess it really was. Every day I would drop them off and noticed all the trash that was on the school property. A couple times a week I would work in the classroom or the school library, to help out. On those days I would get a closer look and noticed there was broken glass all over the playground and  trash everywhere. There was a big dumpster in the parking lot. The kids in the neighborhood would come around and talk to you if you went there after school. If you were looking for the janitor, he could always be found sitting in the boiler room doing pretty much nothing. 

One day I loaded up my home trash cans, went to the store and bought a few rakes and a snow shovel. Loaded a cooler up with Popsicles, ice cream sandwiches and the like. Drove my pick up truck over to the school on a Sunday and with my three sons we started to clean up the school grounds. Soon, some of the neighborhood kids joined up. I promised them a treat if they worked hard. We took load after load of junk to the dumpster. After a productive afternoon things were starting to look pretty good and the dumpster was full. I gathered up the tools, passed out the treats and we sat down to look over a job well done. 

Monday morning I went in to the library to volunteer a little and a little bit into the morning the Secretary came into the library and told me that the Principal wanted to see me in his office.  That is what I thought would happen. He would figure out who cleaned up his whole playground and thank me. Maybe even give me a gift card to K-mart or something nice. Nope!! When I went into his office he asked me if it was true that I had something to do with the clean up over the weekend. Why yes, yes I did. Then he got kinda pissy and asked me to not ever do that again. What?? What are you talking about? Is it a bad thing that the playground and parking lot are clean? It took all of us all afternoon. 

He then explained to me that the school board was making a scheduled visit that day to see if he really needed more funding to hire another janitor. He was letting the playground get that bad in an attempt to have the school board see that the one janitor was overworked. Really? The one that is always in the boiler room reading the newest copy of Playboy? 

Some things really don't make sense to me. I am sorry that I screwed that up for you.

Free isn't always Free...... or the tale of 406 W. Washington

We moved in the day my first son was born. June 23, 1979. Well, technically I didn't move anything. I was at the hospital. We were supposed to move in a month before he was born but the due date was wrong. He weighed in at almost 8 pounds, so the due date had to be wrong.

My Mother had gifted me one of my Grandmother's apartment buildings. For FREE!! She even fixed a lot of things up first. She took a grassy lot and had it turned to gravel for a parking lot, all new aluminum siding, all new storms and screens,  a fence with gates all around the yard, new carpet in the hallway, some new bath and showers and a new boiler to heat the building to the tune of about $10,000.

I had just gotten married a few months before and now I have a place to raise my son.

Free isn't always free. I paid about $40,000 in property taxes in the 28 years. Most of that time I was at risk of losing it for non-payment of property taxes. Always had to keep up on that. The Consumers bill ran about $200 a month (on average for heat) for a total of $67,200. $28,000 for water and $10,000 for garbage service. That was just for the regular bills. That doesn't include maintenance and improvements. I was always buying stoves, refrigerators  water heater, paint, plumbing, etc. 

Even though she made a ton of improvements on the property, there was always something that needed fixing. Carpet needed replacement, plumbing broke, the roof leaked, the basement flooded, walls always needed to be painted, plaster cracked, the plumbing always clogged up, etc. There was always something.

On the other end of the issues I had to learn to rent to folks, collect rent, enforce the lease, etc. Tenants were always breaking things like appliances, windows, door locks, etc. They fought with each other. They fought with me. They had domestic violence issues. A few went to jail. More than a few went to jail. One went to prison.

It was quite a ride for 28 years. I am not sure that I ever met the perfect tenant. They all had issues, as did I. I was a victim of domestic violence, so they all tolerated our crap too.  The stories that unfolded between 1979 and 2008 could fill a book. I ran into all kinds of folks. Some that I would rather not ever see again.

I had 3 sons in a pretty quick period of time. I raised them there. We planted trees, hung laundry on the line, they played in the sandbox, rode bikes down the hill, planted a garden and walked the dogs. It was home. I had painted each wall about 5 times before it was over.

Ten years into it, I filed for divorce. In court, the judge asked me and my husband how much improvement he had done on the building in 10 years. We both answered the same. He had laid a stick down floor in one bathroom and dropped a ceiling in another. That was it. I had done the rest. The judge gave me the building.

The City of Jackson has the right to inspect rental properties every 2 years (or something along those lines). They were behind on getting around so they had not come ever. Right after I filed for divorce they sent me a notice that there would be an inspection. I had to feed three growing boys so I tried to fight it but that didn't work. The inspector came and wrote me up for about 15 pages of violations. All of them had to be fixed by a licensed contractor. There was a lot. I proceeded to knock them off one at a time and would have to go to City Hall to explain what I had gotten done and ask for more time for the rest of the list. Each time it would take a few hours to wait your turn to see the board to ask for more time. This went on for a few years. Maybe three. Every extra dollar I had went into trying to fix up one more thing on the list. It finally got to me. I went up to the inspectors office to ask for some kind of hold. I could not do this constantly anymore while trying to raise three children alone. It was weighing on me heavy. I started crying, from the frustration and he said, "Let me see if I can help." He called a church that had a group of retired volunteers that came to my house and knocked off the rest of the list for no charge. How sweet was that? We were done!!

They came back every two years and did it again. Eventually I got an inspection with no violations. They usually charge for the inspection and on that one it said, because you did so good there is no charge.

Well, I was plodding along still trying to keep the FREE house up and running. I had paid the heat, garbage and water bill for 28 years. Tenants started to  take advantage of me and let all their friends use my washer and dryer (while I worked for 12 hours a day), they moved in numerous friends that had no place to go, some of my stuff was taken and the economy was starting to take a dump. It was getting very difficult for me to keep my head above water. I had moved to the smallest studio apartment that had no working kitchen (it had been gutted) and no real bathroom to speak of. I ate out for 6 years and took a shower in the apartment below me. It was getting bad. I just could really no longer keep this up. I tried.

Anxiety set in and found myself in bed and could not get up and did not know why. The pressure had taken it's toll and I had full blown sciatica pain and uncontrollable anxiety. I could not go to work. I could not stand up. I laid in bed and tried to figure out how to deal with this one. One day I thought, if I own this house free and clear I could go to the bank and get a loan on it. Then fix myself and go back to work. That is what I did but no bank wanted to talk to me. I talked to friends and ended up with an "unconventional loan" that required no proof of income. Things were looking up. This might just work.

I did not like the original terms of that loan so I answered an ad for another one. The ad asked the question..."Are you not happy with your current mortgage?" That is when I ran into the smooth talking predatory lender. I had no idea there was such a thing. I don't think anyone else did either. That is where the real mess started.

I kept getting paperwork in the mail that the unconventional loan had changed hands. I did not understand it at the time but what are you gonna do. They were playing musical chairs with the loans. It was right before the mortgage crash.  

Late 2007 I had a tenant that had been there for 10 years and always paid me on time, go to jail. It was not easy but I bailed him out, got him a job and helped him so he could help me. I thought I was going to make it but the bank had a different plan.

I was getting behind. In everything. I could not keep up. I was in too deep. Being a proud independent woman, I maintained the thought, "I got this!!"

Well, I didn't.

The servicing company and I had many conversations. Most of them heated. Someone about once a month pulled in the driveway and took a photo of my house. I was a month or so behind and had to figure out something. In the mail I got some of those checks from your credit card company. I still had good credit. I filled one out for the two months payment and mailed it. It did not get recorded on the payments. I was wondering what happened when the next bill came and it was those two months and another one added to it. I called to see what happened to the check. The answer was that they don't accept payments from a  credit card. So, I asked what I was supposed to do now. They said send the full amount to us. So, I mailed a check with the full amount. It got returned a few weeks later attached to a letter that said, "We no longer accept your personal checks because you are in default." I was in default because they refused to cash the credit card check.

Meanwhile, I am working my ass off sewing, Trying to rent an apartment. The economy is crashing fast. The tenants that I had could not pay because they had lost their job. I am now on anti anxiety drugs.

When my personal check got sent back I had another conversation with the servicing company and asked what I can do, really. I was not trying to lose my home. She informed me that I would have to send a cashiers check via registered mail by a certain date for  the total amount of $3000 something. I worked hard. I was determined to do this. Every time I got a significant amount of cash I went and got a cashiers check and laid it on my desk until I got the total amount. I mailed it off on the right day and waited for the past due balance to be documented that it was paid. A couple weeks went by and I still saw no evidence that it was taken off. I called to see what was up.

A woman on the other end of the line asked how she could help me and let me know it was being recorded for training purposes. I asked her to look up and make sure that the payment was recorded. A few minutes went by and she came back on and said that she found no record of a payment by me. A year of frustration had built up in me and my response to her was, "What the FUCK are you talking about? I sent that in two weeks ago." She got kinda snippy and asked me if I just used foul language with her. I said, "Yes I fucking did." She then stated that tonight when I lay my head down to sleep I should have a little talk with Jesus about my attitude. THAT fucking pissed me right the fuck off. There was now smoke coming out of my ears. I think my comment to her was that she is the one that better be having a talk with Jesus tonight for participating in stealing my home.

A week or so later a letter came in the mail. It was a brief letter. Attached to the top edge of it was the 4 cashiers checks that I had sent them. The letter said......"We requested one cashiers check, not 4."

It was cold that Spring night. I went down in the basement to kick start the boiler that always acted up. It would not start. I looked under it where the burners were to see if it had the pilot light on and saw a pile of wet insulation plopped on the burners. I think it was done and would cost me thousands to replace.

I gave up after 28 years and started packing. I had six months to get out.