First Housing Tentacles

I started the search for affordable housing by calling Diane Westmoreland of S.H.A.R.E. of North Carolina. I don't seem to find a web site for them, so maybe I need to offer to do one! Anyway, Diane is the one who does their publicity, and they are the most visible force for affordable housing in the West End neighborhood, so I thought it was a good idea to start there.

SHARE builds homes in the neighborhood, nice places that are eligible for various housing support programs offered by the city, state and feds. I'm not looking for a place to buy, however, and neither are most of the folks who are looking for housing in the West End. I need a place to rent.

"I think it might be possible to find you a nice place for $800," Diane said to me early in our conversation.

"Uh...no...$800 is what I have to live on all month," I clarified. Oh.

The West End has a total of just over 600 places to live, including some apartments, lots of individual houses and a few duplexes. There are over 170 empty houses in the neighborhood now. I know because we do a mailing to every house in the neighborhood, and we're down to about 430 that the Post Office can deliver our newsletters to. Many of the empty places are just that...plain old unoccupied, not on the market to rent or sell. Just nobody living there. As you can imagine, that's part of the neighborhood problem.

Don Stevenson, my former executive director, and I toured one of them a few months back. There was a big old hole in the roof, water damage, and lots of debris around. It was for sale for $25,000. Later, some workmen showed up, put on a new roof and now the place is for sale again.

Jim Summey, the guy I call "the crime fighting preacher," board chair and acting executive director of West End Ministries told me at staff meeting that his church, English Road Baptist, owns a place I can rent for $250. I haven't seen it, but it is definitely in my price range. I figure that with my take-home pay ($396.19 every two weeks), I shouldn't pay more than $300 a month in rent, figuring to put at least $100 a month in utilities. I am probably not going to have an all-electric home or anything exorbitant in the electricity department, but I have to have enough left over for food and some gas for the van.

Iris, a great West End resident and teacher in my computer center, tells me there's a two-bedroom place next door to her that is going for $330 a month, but I don't need that much space and at that price, with utilities, I'm afraid I'd be eating rice and beans the WHOLE month, not just the two weeks when I'll be paying rent.

My husband Jean-Francois is not planning to do this experiment with me. In fact, since his semester ends at the beginning of April, he's likely to skip town for a couple of the months so as not to miss me too much over here on Blain Street. Darn. I was hoping for that easy camaraderie I once found in Iceland, where I met a married couple who lived next door to one another. Seemed to work beautifully for them. Everybody got his own space, but they were also near enough to have dinner, share a movie or a play, and enjoy each other's company.

I'll be walking the streets of the neighborhood soon, checking out the For Rent sign. For now though, with the temperatures over 90 degrees Farenheit, about 33 Celsius.

I'm also thinking about how to eat cheaply. I'm wondering if there might be a group of women in the neighborhood who'd be willing to contribute to pay the gas for us to go to the farmer's market in Thomasville. It's a great place with a wonderful Asian atmosphere and low, low prices. I also heard about this site, www.angelfoodministries.com. For $30, you get a pile of food, and I checked it out. I have no interest in the breaded chicken breasts or the instant mashed potatoes, so maybe this isn't for me.

Iris reminded me that I'll be eligible for the every-other-month food pantry box, the Friday bread giveaway, and the Thursday community meal offered by West End Ministries. Maybe that and the farmer's market will be enough to get me through. I'll need to do laundry, and I'll be sorely tempted to bring my stuff over here on the weekends and do it at home. But that would be cheating somehow, so I'll have to think about that. My son Raf, who lives on about this amount, $800 a month on SSI Disability, has a washer and dryer in his apartment. Or maybe I can barter some kind of a deal with someone in the neighborhood. I'll mow your lawn and you let me use your washing machine. Hmmm...I'm looking for swaps, barters, connections, and deals.

There's lots to explore in this Experiment in Frugal Living.

Comments

[Gilda]

I think with your already frugal ways, you can make it, without too much effort, on $800 per month, especially if you can get that place owned by the Baptist Church for $250/month.

Some thoughts about figuring out your REAL income and costs of your Experiment...

It doesn't look like you're going to make contributions to the mortgage on your Blain St residence while you're doing this Experiment...so when you go and spend weekends there, that would be a "cost" item, in the same way as doing laundry there would. It's a cost to JF and it's an "in-kind" income to you.

In fact, anything that you get free during the month-from JF (mortgage share, your Y fees, etc.) from the food pantry, the soup kitchen, etc., should be assigned a $ value and considered as "in-kind income" to you and needs to be added to your $800 income per month. That way, you can get a more accurate value of your REAL/TOTAL income and costs.

[trish]

Do you do this kind of thing? The bookkeeping sounds like a headache, but you're right that it's great to get a true picture...Plus, everybody working in nonprofit orgs needs to think this way all the time, and keep track! Still...I get a sort of lazy resistance to the idea, but I will try.

[Iris]

You are right about the angelfoodministries..the 30 dollars seems like a little but if you don't eat what is in the package it is worthless and besides when I looked into it I found I could use that 30 dollars and get way more at Cloverleaf or Dollar Bottom store...most likely any store... Every eat the spam fried ...yummy , I remember as a kid having that for supper...I still like it....