Help Ms. Helen Fight To Save Her Home!

Hello Everyone...I need YOUR help today!!!!  

My name is Dwan, and I am launching this  campaign on behalf of my mother, Helen Long. I want to tell you a quick story about an amazing woman and mother, a woman faced with the burdens of a series of unfortunate and tragic events. Events beyond her control that could potentially leave her and my younger brother homeless by June 2021. Over the last several years my mother has been silently fighting a battle with her mortgage company and entities who are unwilling to help her resolve the matter that would allow her to keep her house. In the midst of this battle, she has fought breast cancer, a brain tumor and cared for her dying mother who passed in this very home in 2015. My mom purchased  her house in Pearland, Texas after many years of renting and leasing in the Greater Third Ward area of Houston, Texas. She moved to Third Ward in 1981 with my older sister and brother as a young single mother. She worked hard to care for her growing family.  As a hair stylist and caterer she was able to make ends meet.  However, Third Ward slowly became more and more gentrified, forcing families out of the area, who could no longer afford the high rental and lease amounts.  She devised a plan to save and work even harder to achieve her life long dream of homeownership in order to break the cycle of renting. Her goal was to leave something behind for her children and future grandchildren. In 2006, she found the home that would become a safe haven for her family and a symbol of pride for all the years she worked and sacrificed. Needing to secure a loan and being told her money and savings were adequate but her credit was not, she enlisted the support of a close male friend and partner. A friend who was eager and willing to assist in her dream by lending his credit and signature for the purchase. In order to obtain her loan through the lender, with little to no knowledge of the entire process of purchasing with a co-borrower, she was allowed to use her friend to get her loan, but knew nothing of what co-borrowing really meant. Countless first time homebuyers have been faced with the same dilemma of having the savings, but not the creditworthiness to make a purchase on their own. In this event, they are forced to get cosigners or give up that dream of ownership.  Many Black families and people of color can also relate to predatory lending practices she is facing, like high interest rates and terms that will keep the borrower from accruing any equity in their property. 
And this friends is the point of this story. My mother is locked in a lengthy battle to refinance her very high interest loan and cannot do so because her friend passed away a month after closing on her home in 2006. After his untimely passing, she was ill-advised by her lender that there was nothing she needed to do immediately to remove his name from her home loan and to wait 2 years to refinance and his name and ownership would "fall off." Well here we are 13 years later and several thousands of dollars spent on dead-end legal counsel. My mother is at risk of losing the house she has called home for 15 years as of June 1st 2021!! As a family we have done all that we could do, writing letters, making phone calls, reaching out to any known family or heirs of the deceased, and hiring attorneys who just didn't know Texas Real Estate Law well enough before taking her money! All efforts so far have been futile in resolving this matter. We've hit a dead end so to speak and need the help and support of everyone reading this campaign. These funds will help buy my mother more time to fight the banks and entities who would see her be homeless before they offer a resolution to a technical issue. Your contribution means hiring competent legal counsel to remove any obstacles keeping her from refinancing her loan. If you have ever been to her home for a party, eaten her food at a church function or repast. Gotten your hair done by her or just know who she is from her children...we need you! If you know her you know she has a huge heart and would help anyone in need. Or if you just so happen to be reading this and have no idea who I am or who my mother is, please know that this is a worthy cause for the matriarch of our family. Her home has held us all together and been shelter for so many. Today, we need you and I ask so humbly for your assistance. 
If you are not in a place financially to give, please know that sharing this campaign means just as much to us.
I thank you all so much for taking the time to read this, for caring and for your contributions.

Sincerely Grateful...a daughter trying to help her mother,

Dwan Valentine