Replies

The traveling circus of despair! Of course the Obama’s sign on.

Examples:

Camden NJ, http://www.theundergroundrailroad.ca/oneabolitionist/2011/02/extreme-makeover-home-edition-epic-fail.html:

2000 volunteers converged on the area and in 90 hours... there stood the home where once was empty space. In what has become a pop cultural mantra, thousands screamed with Ty Pennington: “MOVE THAT BUS!!!”... and the single father, who was mentoring other single fathers in Camden, had an amazing home.

Then the bills began to arrive.

Extreme Makeover was out of the picture. No phone calls. No follow up help. The family, with children growing up, needed more and more money but it was all being put towards the home.

Here’s where community gets really good: Urban Promise continued to walk alongside this family all this time. It offered to buy the home (after 2 years, because I guess there are tax penalties if you sell an Extreme House before then), assist the father in downsizing to a home where he didn’t have to unscrew lightbulbs to make ends meet, and renovated the Extreme Home into a retreat centre.

A reporter followed up with the story, but she wasn’t with Extreme Makeover. Apparently, after doing some “Where Are They Now?” stories, she discovered this pattern of HUGE HELP... but only once. And the help and home are SO HUGE that the families they are supposed to be helping cannot afford to live in them.

I admit I’m ignorant about the show. I know of it, but never watched it.

Could somebody explain why the family has to have such a fancy house?

One of these THINGS was done in the Phx metro area. Just a mess, later.

I GET that you have 8 kids...but, really...if you are in need of charity...and would love a decent house...why something so fancy and expensive...when the reason you were chosen is because you had little money...

Oh. Forgot. This is liberal thought. Sorry.

We've got that one beat here in Georgia. A Clayton County family got one of those Extreme Makeover homes. Not only were they given the new house, their mortgage was completely paid off. In addition, they were given $100,000 in cash to be set aside for their kids' college education.

They ended up taking out a $450,000 mortgage on the totally-paid-for house. They ended up blowing that cash along with the kids college money. By the time the house was foreclosed on, they were almost two years delinquent in paying the city for garbage pickup.

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/16980412/detail.html
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/18813245/detail.html
http://www.ajc.com/search/content/metro/stories/2008/07/26/foreclose.html

It offered to buy the home (after 2 years, because I guess there are tax penalties if you sell an Extreme House before then), assist the father in downsizing to a home where he didn’t have to unscrew lightbulbs to make ends meet, and renovated the Extreme Home into a retreat centre.

One of the other major problems with making these homes so big is that the property values go up. That means increased property taxes that the homeowner can't afford as well as the increase in monthly electric (etc.) bills.