Photo: Scott Webb | Unsplash
With support from her neighbors, Linda Taylor recently was able to buy her home of 18 years. It's a heartwarming tale; Taylor has originally owned the home, but fell prey to a real estate deal she didn't understand and lost ownership of the home. Then, after renting the place for 15 years, her landlord instructed her to vacate the house by April 1st of this year. The landlord wanted to sell the home for $299,000, a sum Taylor couldn't afford. "I could not sleep, I could not eat. I felt really defeated," said Taylor about her predicament. She shared her struggle with a neighbor, Andrew Fahlstrom, who is a housing rights organizer, contacted neighbors to see what they could do to help Taylor. As word of the grass-roots campaign to save Taylor's home spread around the block, neighbors were eager to help -- and they did. They wrote and delivered a letter signed by about 400 neighbors to the landlord, urging him to start negotiations with Taylor for her to buy the home. Community `member`s fundraised and in just four months, the neighbors raised $275,000 for Taylor -- enough for her to buy her home and cover needed repairs. "I knew my neighbors loved me, but I didn't know how much," she said.
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