JonLowder.com

That Old House

A fascinating story about the efforts to relocate one old house in Greensboro.

First the overview:

2005: The Guilford County jail is expanding onto our block.
We try to avoid eminent domain by planning to move the houses out of downtown and develop an office building.
This plan evolves to swapping properties with the County because our land is closer to the old jail, and their land is in front of a National Landmark.

July 2007  We swap properties with the County.

2008  We watch the banks shut down lending nationwide just as we need to move

Dec 2008-2011  We relocate and renovate our home at our expense to an adjacent lot.

June 2009 We give our Queen Anne to Preservation Greensboro Development Fund which is then moved to Cedar Street with City help from neighborhood bond money. It is beautifully renovated and quickly leased.

October 2009 We get our brick duplex whisked out of the way at the last minute with City funds and place it on our land.  Plans are in place for us to proceed with that renovation at our expense as we finish the work on Mother's house.

We've done all this in the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

March 2011 - I've just finished the floors, my brother is installing phones, and Mother is planning her garden.

We get a letter from the County: 
They didn't plan for parking.
They want their land back.

Then a more detailed update that ends this way:

The are were two more lot owners that we tried to work with one nearby and one further away; both situations had great advantages but also obstacles that in the end, swayed the owners away from the undertaking.

All summer long we leap-frogged variance meeting with Minimum Housing Standards meeting to request continuances again the "Repair or Demolish" order brought about, not by the City, but by neighbors.  at present, on October 9th, the committee will not grant any more extensions and will vote to enforce the "Repair or Demolish" order and we will have 90 days to comply.

February 2013
So far we've had 2 extensions on top of that while we try to formulate a solution with various public and private entities, but to no effect. 

Foreclosing the AARP Crowd

The economic meltdown this country has been living through for the last four or five years has been especially cruel to those citizens who probably won't have time to make up for their losses once the economic recovery begins to pick up steam. If life's hard for those who are in their 30s and 40s, imagine what it's like for someone in his 50s or 60s, trying to figure out how to rebuild the nest egg that was obliterated by the market crash, long term unemployment, an underwater mortgage or all of the above. That's what makes this item so disheartening:

According to AARP:

• About 600,000 people who are 50 years or older are in foreclosure.

• About 625,000 in the same age group are at least three months behind on their mortgages.

• About 3.5 million — 16 percent — are underwater, meaning their home values have gone down and they now owe more than their homes are worth.

AARP said that over the past five years, the proportion of seriously delinquent loans held by older Americans grew more than 450 percent.