Emergency Home Repair Funds for Tricia and Spence

Hi. We're Tricia and Spence, and we're trying to raise emergency funds so we can stay in our house.

At the end of March 2024, we bought a house together. It's the first home for both of us and the place we, along with Tricia's kids and our combined 3 cats and a dog planned to start building a life together.

As with any house, it had its problems, which we expected and planned for. We had money saved to upgrade the electrical service. When the water line turned out to be lead and have a leak that needed replacing, we had a plan and were able to do it. On Sunday when we learned that the sewer pipe was backing up into the basement, we were able to get a plumber to come and fix what they thought was the problem. It was a stretch, but we were just able to do it.

Sadly, the plumber has informed us that the problem is much much worse than what they thought.

It turns out, the sewer line going out of our house has collapsed and needs to be replaced. Normally not a huge project except our house is on a hill. And the gas line lays right on top of the sewer line so it has to be dug out by hand. And the layout of the sewer line means they'll also have to tear up the street and re-pave it to get a new line connected. The total? The estimate starts at $60,000. And worse, this damage means that the house, the house we just bought is not really habitable because we can't use toilets or really any drains without sewage backing up into the basement.

We were in shock. We are in shock. We've applied for financing and have been turned down. We've looked at emptying our 401ks, etc. and even then wouldn't be able to get a quarter of what we need. We've looked into holding the seller responsible for it We have tried to come up with every way we can think of to come up with the money to get this repair done on our own and we just... can't.

So... we hope for the generosity and kindness of our friends and random strangers on the internet. We're hoping that, if enough people share this and enough people give something, ANYTHING, we can come up with the money for the repair and to live somewhere for the week the repair is made.

We thank you for any help you can give, be it donating to the fundraiser or just sharing it with others, from the bottom of our hearts.