UPDATE: You Helped Bo Keep His Home!

UPDATE: Thank you to all those who helped us help Bo! We were able to get funding to help him out, and he is safe in his home now.

I was raising money for my very good friend and former neighbor, Bo. He needs your help with his mortgage, or he is going to lose his house and become homeless by mid-September!

Here’s his story. He and his late wife, Shirley, had bought the house together. She died suddenly and tragically fifteen years ago, and, despite the financial burden of it, he had kept up the mortgage payments regularly because he knew that Shirley loved that house as much as he did. He works as a subcontractor painting homes, both interior and exterior, for a local construction and maintenance business. He is a simple, salt-of-the-earth kind of person who works very hard, is a strong believer in God and Christ, and doesn't even have the money for internet service, despite the fact that where he lives in Cornwall Bridge, CT, is a cell-reception desert. He relies on his landline and can only use a cell phone when he is away from his home. We lived in my husband’s siblings-owned house next door for a few years, and became very close with Bo. He and my husband call each other “Brother.”

One day, unbeknownst to Bo, his mortgage was sold to a different mortgage company. It was quickly sold to someone else, and got passed around like a baseball card. He had trouble understanding what had happened, and who the people were that were demanding his money. He and Shirley had taken out a second mortgage at one point, for some improvements, and he thought they were from that bank. If he had regular internet service, he might have received an email about these changes, but that is not the case.

Bo is a proud man, and he didn’t have the amount of money they were demanding of him nor a way to get it, and he wasn’t sure they were the people he owed anyway. He was also too proud to ask his friends for help understanding the situation. So for a while he simply swept this issue under the rug, perhaps hoping it would go away.

It did not go away. The company who now owns his mortgage started to call his phone, demanding his money. He begged them by phone to give him time, to please let him resume his regular payments. He even made a “good-faith” payment, but they sent his check back uncashed. They started sending him threatening letters, even sending someone to the house to serve him with legal papers.

That is when a bewildered Bo finally came to my husband, asking if this was a serious thing or just baloney--he really didn't understand. My husband, who has a lot of education and experience about legal issues, took a brief look at the materials and told him this was indeed serious. We thought he owed significantly less money than he does, and offered to help him out.

Perhaps embarrassed by his inattention to the situation, Barret did not inform us initially of the length of time that had passed since he had last made a payment. My partner secured legal representation for him, and we then learned that the situation is more grave than we initially understood. The lawyer went to court for him, and even the judge agreed that it can be very confusing for people when their mortgages are sold and resold. Despite that, the law was not on Bo’s side, and the judge ruled for the bank. Bo is now facing foreclosure.

We are now in a situation where we do not have enough money to cover the debt, as we had initially offered. Bo has only about a month and a half to get it.

We realize that this is a big ask. He is a proud man who doesn’t want to ask for money, but we do! Please help us help him so that he can pay this debt and not be kicked out of the only home he has, which he and Shirley loved so much.

In return, you will get the money you donate back plus at least 9% interest on a five-year note. Our lawyer will write it up as a new mortgage with all of us helping him out as the mortgagers. He has agreed that he will pay us back.

Please donate, and then share this GoFundMe page with everyone you know. Thank you very much!