home sweet home

Update: 7/15/15 We closed on a house!!! Could not have done it without the support of our community fundraiser, and a grant from Windham Windsor Housing Trust! We are now facing a long punch list of repairs that need to be done. Please support this phase by donating and/or sharing this widely! I had this text at the very end of the fundraiser, but I'm pasting it here as we are in our final stretch of fundraising, and our first stretch of home rehab:

This bit is taken verbatim from a wonderful couple's home-buying fundraiser, and I think it’s so perfectly written: If you have relative money-abundance in your world and want to help, perhaps decide what feels easy & comfortable and then consider doubling it. If you are poor/struggling/in the same boat as us: please please do not give us anything that will make paying your bills harder. We see you and love you and deeply value you. It is our experience in the world that it is ALWAYS poor folks supporting other poor folks while those with “enough” look the other way, and we would love from the bottom of our hearts to see a different thing happen here.

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tl;dr, We're fundraising to buy a house because I don’t have enough savings to get a mortgage loan and I'm a solo parent without access to wealth. We are aiming for $10K and you can give on this page that keeps a small fee, to the Venmo or PayPal links below, or even send a check. Thank you so much!

***** home sweet home *****

Dear darling friends and family, Moss and I dream of a house of our own! We have been imagining this since he was a baby, and we talk about it all the time. He’s been building and decorating homes in multiple video game worlds since he was a wee one, and I’ve made too many wish lists and vision boards to count! Until now it’s all been imaginary play, like “What would your dream house look like?”

Homeownership has been a dream I never thought I’d realize, especially as a single mom with massive student debt who’s worked exclusively in education and nonprofits. Setbacks from COVID, skyrocketing rent, invisible disabilities, and student loan debt have prevented me from building savings and kept me in a cycle of living paycheck to paycheck.

But in October 2023 our dreaming started to become thinking, planning, praying, hoping, and scheming! I was blessed by the true miracle of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program! It waived over $215K in federal student loan debt that had me living under crushing monthly payments for decades and prevented me from ever being considered for a mortgage loan. While I still sadly carry $34K in high-interest private student loan debt, my debt-to-income ratio is no longer prohibitive to mortgage loan grantors!

I’m getting there… but I still do not have the savings needed to meet lenders’ minimum requirements. The minimum banks need to see is $3,000. We hope to raise that minimum so I may apply for a mortgage loan. I am working with our local nonprofit the Windham & Windsor Housing Trust and I took their awesome first time homebuyers class and I’m working with a housing counselor!

And even with the awesome assistance offered by many programs (first-time home-buyer grants, shared equity for low to mid-income buyers, etc.) there are big costs associated with closing and moving, so we have set a $10,000 fundraising goal. Anything that might come in over that will go directly to the fine folks at Navient, my private student loan company.

It has taken me 6 months to get the courage to put this ask out into the world, as I am hyper-aware of the acute unmet needs in our community. It is truly humbling to ask for money, but I know I have felt so good when I’ve had something to give. As I approach my 49th birthday on April 29 and look ahead to Moss’s impending teen years (13 in July!) I wish for secure, safe housing for us, our sweet dog Marco, and our loving kitties Chester & Iris. I wish to be out from under the thumb of landlords. I wish to have a little yard to play badminton in (maybe with you!?) and I wish for transformative justice in the world. Living in more secure housing will allow me to flourish, get out of the survival mode I’ve been in for years, and take on more work in the community. Having a solid home base for my baby who’s got some big needs as he finishes middle school and enters high school will be so nourishing!

Thank you for reading this. Thank you for your support in all the ways. It truly means so much to us. If you feel called to give, and are able to give, we would be so very grateful. If you would kindly share this with folks in your network who have capacity to give, and who want to help out a rad queer single parent, please share! 

And GoFundMe is a for-profit company. It will charge a 2.9% payment-processing fee on each donation, and deduct 30 cents for every donation, so if you'd like to eschew that, these are $0 fee and we get 100% of your contribution:

Venmo: https://www.venmo.com/u/SaraJaneSJ-Muratori

or find me @SaraJaneSJ-Muratori (last 4 of phone number is 5972)

Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/sarajanemurgatron

Check: message me for address please ❤️

I will post updates here with thank yous and shout-outs if folks give outside of this page!

A few post-scripts:

I don’t harbor illusions that it will be easy to be a single mom homeowner in rural Vermont, and I know that a house can be a nearly full-time job, but my heart and soul and nervous system cry out for challenges like frozen pipes and overgrown gardens rather than breakable leases, rising rents, and neighbors scream-fighting and poisoning us with their air freshener.

This bit is taken verbatim from a wonderful couple's home-buying fundraiser, and I think it’s so perfectly written: If you have relative money-abundance in your world and want to help, perhaps decide what feels easy & comfortable and then consider doubling it. If you are poor/struggling/in the same boat as us: please please do not give us anything that will make paying your bills harder. We see you and love you and deeply value you. It is our experience in the world that it is ALWAYS poor folks supporting other poor folks while those with “enough” look the other way, and we would love from the bottom of our hearts to see a different thing happen here.

Finally, In case you’re interested in the video games I mentioned, Moss started building and decorating in Toca Boca, expanded to Minecraft and Sneaky Sasquatch, and is now a very active home-builder/decorator/farmer/gardener in Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley! :)