Don’t Let the City of Terre Haute Take Our House!

My son Jake and I are in a very serious situation. In fact, it’s desperate. I would never consider asking for help if I could in ANY way do this on my own. We have been trying to rehabilitate a condemned house for a while. Neither he nor I could qualify for a conventional mortgage; he has no credit history, and I've been dealing with health problems for a while. Renting seemed like an endless trap. But my son is a carpenter, so we found a cheap condemned house with potential. We pulled together the little money we did have. Jake cashed out his young 401k, I pulled out savings, and we bought a condemned house to redo into a “Family Home.” For the last two years, the two of us, with Jake taking the lead on most of the renovation work, have been fixing it up as our time and money allowed. Jake was commuting to Bloomington from Terre Haute daily to work for Golden Hands Construction full-time, so the work was mostly being done on the weekend. This had all been going fine with the city until they decided to raze and seize several distressed adjacent properties. They made an exception for our property after we fought the city. After the house next to ours caught on fire, their attempts to put out the fire left considerable damage on our house. This added a significant amount of time and money spent on repairs.

The city wants to demolish old homes, so after two years, blood, sweat, and tears, and tens of thousands of dollars, they are now putting us on an unbelievably short deadline to complete a large amount of work. Jake has quit his job and is working full-time on the property now, as am I, but the reality is that we’re not moving fast enough. We barely have enough money for food since we’re putting every dime into this project, let alone hiring the help we need or buying the rest of the supplies. It’s not a situation where we can just get it livable and finish it while living in it; it has to be to code before the city will un-condemn it. The city had us pay a bond on our last permit and only gave us three months to complete the roof and exterior. As of now, we are a month into our deadline. We firmly have about 8-10 weeks to get this done, or at least close to the finish line.

It’s with a hopeful spirit that we believe we haven’t come this far just to lose it all, because if we lose this, we’ll be homeless by spring. I’m asking everyone if you could please contribute anything you can spare, so we can afford to hire some help and materials in order to pull this miracle off. And if financially contributing isn’t an option, any amount of physical help or leftover materials you might have would be immensely appreciated. I’ll be 55 years old on the 28th, and I've never had to rely on the generosity of others on this level, and it is with a hopeful heart this finds you able. The only reason I’m asking is because there is no other way. There’s absolutely no other way but to call upon the help of my friends and community.

Thank you all for taking the time to read this. Please consider passing it on if you know someone that might have a heart for this, and you know that I’ll pray for the return of the favor tenfold. I pray that this will find the right eyes. Please feel free to DM with any questions. The account I linked has been opened specifically for this, and if you donate, I'll be happy to share receipts! Hope to see you at a holiday housewarming!

Cash App: https://cash.app/$Jeannelou70

Venmo: @Jeanne-ThornberryNicoson-1

Paypal: Paypal.me/JeanneThornberryNicoson

Much love and gratitude,

Jeanne and Jake Thornberry