George Dallas is 77 years old and 50 payments behind on his mortgage.
“Nobody even believes that,” the Red Top resident said. “They say, ‘Man, they should’ve taken that house years ago.’ ”
A nagging nerve problem forced Dallas to stop working before he was ready, at 71. He soon found that relying on Social Security and a pipefitter’s pension left little behind after making his $800-a-month mortgage payments.
He tried cash-advance stores but couldn’t manage the interest. He filed for bankruptcy but couldn’t keep up with the required payments.
Now seeking financial assistance at counseling centers and churches alike, he hears the same thing: There just isn’t any money.
If this man (and others like him) are coming to us in the churches, and hearing that “we have no money,” then we are not telling him the Truth. The churches own real estate, art collections, CD’s as a result of wills and estates, and we have paid professional pastors who draw salaries, benefits and housing allowances of some kind. We have money; we just don’t want anyone to really think about it. So we “pawn” off our resonsibilities to men like this one on the government, so we don’t have to really acknowledge that “we are (and always have been) our brother’s keeper.”
Shame on us.
Maybe. However he retired at 71. Why on earth did he not pay off his mortgage before he retired? Why is he living in an 800/month house, instead of a 400/month apartment if he hasn’t paid it off? He makes 2000/month and has failed to make mortgage payments for 4 years. That is actually pretty good money for somebody who doesn’t need a car to get to work.
Yes we are our brother’s keeper, however part of the problem is that our brother wishes to be “kept” in style.
I suspect that even a $400 per month apartment would be nearly impossible to find anywhere. A room maybe, but an apartment?
My wife and I are retired military, and I receive 100% disability compensation from the Veterans’ Administration for service-connected disability…..along with our Social Scurity benefits. We bought our home five years ago after making a very healthy profit from the sale of our previous home; making sure that we did not get an adjustable rate mortgage.
With the downturn, we’ve done fairly well, and with prudent management, we’ve put quite a bit away for just such times as this. And we didn’t invest in stocks, but mutual funds and California tax-free municipal bonds.
Call it smart thinking, I guess.
It depends on where you live. Here in Missouri you can get a rental 2 bedroom house for 400, a trailer home for 150 and an 2 bedroom apartment with utilities for 300.
I also wonder where this man’s family is. It seems to me that at the age of 70+ most people have somebody they are related to, who still care about them. If my mother needed help, she knows she can move in. Part of the other problem is that there were many families that broke up during the 70s-90s whose spouses and children received little assistance from their absent fathers, and feel little responsibility now.
I might add that the median family income in these parts is 33,000 before taxes. That would be total family income, with the expectation that it would be used to support children.
Mr. Dallas’s income puts him in the second to bottom quintile of households in the United States, who have earnings between 19,168 to 36,000. That means that some 30% of American families have earning less than Mr. Dallas, with the expectation that they would support a family on those earnings, not just an individual.
If he has missed 50 mortgage payments, I’m surprised that he is still in the house.