Repair our home

To whom it may concern,

We were hoping not to have to write a letter. We aren’t ones to ask for

help. We have just tried to do everything we can think of. We would love

to stay in our home, the place we grew up, the place we want our kids to

grow up.

A little backstory. My family moved to the wood river valley in 2000 from

Salt Lake City. I was getting ready to start 8th grade in school, I met

several friends and even my wife though I had no idea at the time we would

be together. I went to high school, and I joined the army at 17 years old.

I went to boot camp at Ft. Knox back when it was the home of the Calvary.

I turned 18 just after graduation and served my first 4 years in the

National Guard reclassing several times throughout my career. After I was

done in the National Guard I went to the army reserves where I stayed for

an additional 8 years.

I married my first wife at 27 years old. While we were away going to

college, me studying drafting and her going into nursing. We thought we

had the rest of our lives ahead of us. My wife and I were expecting a son

and when she reached 27 weeks, she collapsed. I called 911 and started CPR

on her but alas she never came too. Turns out she had an aneurysm that was

missed. Then she became brain dead and relied on a ventilator.

Fortunately, the doctors were able to save our son. For me to be able to

raise him I had to move back to the place I have always called home. To

the Wood River Valley. For two and a half years I was lost and just

working to provide for my son.

One afternoon while going to lunch I ran into this lady who was so happy

to see me. I hadn’t felt joy since my wife passed, besides getting to hold

my son for the first time. I was on autopilot most days until this lady

rebuilt a fire in my soul.

We had to live with our parents because with the medical debt that piled

up, high my credit was shot. So, we endured living with family till our

credit was at a good place.

Then we started to look for a house. We looked at a lot of fixer uppers

and a lot of houses that could fit our budget on a one income family. We

know that’s not so common these days but my wife has seizures; being

neurodivergent it is very difficult for her to hold down a job, let alone

work enough to pay for childcare. So we decided that her job is to provide

childcare for our family of now three sons.

Seeing home prices skyrocketing, we felt we didn’t have much time. We

found a place. Little did we know that there were structural inadequacies

and code issues. Two years after moving into this home we finally got a

good amount of snow that caused an ice dam, to where it started to rain in

the living room and so we had to call in a mitigation company. We went

with Servpro due to their commitment to get the job done. To get the water

and mold out of our house. While Servpro went in to demo the walls so they

could dry out the structure. We initially thought the ice dam was all of

our problems; they continued to follow mold and found more problems.

The roof and exterior walls were not sheeted with vapor and moisture

barrier. There are issues with exterior wall framing and headers and the

big problem is the home was built with trusses that are not up to the

standard set forth by the city of Bellevue. We were advised to get a

structural engineer to assess the trusses. After having a structural

engineer, assess the trusses he has determined that they are inadequate

for snow load requirements for Bellevue.

Shortly after purchasing our home, we caught Covid and were out of work

for a couple weeks. This put a large financial strain on us. Being out of

work with Covid again two more times in the the past three years caused us

to get a little bit behind on our mortgage. Our mortgage company was

willing to work with us and what we ended up doing was a loan modification

which placed a lien on our home to be paid at the end of our current

mortgage or at the time of selling our home. This has made it impossible

to refinance our home in order to pay for the repairs. And money was

already tight before the condition of the house was apparent.

We wish we didn’t have to ask for help, but we just can’t seem to come up

with any way to get our home repaired so that it is possible to live in.

We’d be grateful to find a solution.