Help Jane Secure a Safe Home

About Jane:

There is a woman who lives near our church and has been on and off again homeless in Champaign-Urbana for many years. Some of you who live in the area may have had some experience with her out in public. Her name is Jane and she struggles with heightened anxiety and obsessive behavior, and likely on top of that, given her life experience, PTSD. She is in her late 70s. She was in my dad's class from elementary school to high school.

Some time ago I began meeting weekly with Jane at church. As time went on she began to trust me more as I weathered her storms and was able to get her to talk more candidly about her life and struggles. 

Due to her hoarding and a general lack of organization on her part she is always, it seems, on the verge of being evicted from her Section 8 apartment. She is afraid, terrified really, that she will be homeless once again. 

The Vision:

I met with some other people who were vested in helping Jane and we came to the conclusion that the best situation for her would be a small house that would not entail her having to share space with others and to have someone for a landlord that she would trust enough to help clean and maintain the space. 

This seemed like a tall order, possibly an impossible one, but I began looking for a home that could work for her. 

As it happens I found, through unexpected circumstances, what appears to be the perfect house in a decent neighborhood on Illinois Street in Urbana. The owners were no longer living there, and they had purchased that house from my father well below market value over 30 years ago. They are selling me the house for a price that is also well below market value, and are pleased that it will be used to help someone in need. 

The Need:

So Laura and I are purchasing the house with the aim to make it a comfortable home that Jane could live in, and for the home to be dedicated, long term, for this purpose or for whomever might have a similar need, should Jane pass away or need to go to assisted living at some point. 

We are able to cover the purchase of the home (with some help from our church) but the house does need some refurbishing so that it will be safe and comfortable. Primarily what it needs is a heating/AC system on the main floor, windows, and electrical on the 2nd floor. For the heating system I would like to install a ductless mini split, which will run several thousand dollars for purchase and installation. The windows in the house are single paned and clearly very old. They need replacing with new frames as well. Those would need to be purchased and likely we would need them installed professionally too. The second floor would need outlets installed since it has no power running there currently. We would also want to paint the house, which we can provide the labor for, but would need the paint and supplies.

There are also a couple dozen 'mini' repairs that would need doing, none of them major, ranging from fixing some bad steps to installing new smoke alarms, fixing some broken soffit, etc., etc. Each of those will cost something and I am sure that will add up to something significant taken as a whole. Some of these things we can easily do ourselves, but some of the projects may necessitate hiring professional help. 

Happily, nothing seems to be significantly wrong with the home. The current owners have maintained it well enough that all the plumbing and electrical work. Also, thanks to the hailstorm a few years ago, it has a new roof. The reason it doesn't have an HVAC system is because the owners heated the house with a wood burning stove.

The long and short of it is that we would like to update this house such that it could be a home for Jane, and should that not work out or come to an end, then to whomever may be on the brink of homelessness and could benefit from living there. And we do need financial help to make that happen.

Thank you all. May God bless the work of our hands and your generosity as well.

Seth and Laura Kerlin