And a second good-sized box will head out the door. Every little bit helps!

A couple of years ago some of you read about my friend who lost his house to foreclosure. He found an apartment and got moved, and in the process the bank offered him $2000 if he would empty the house to "broom clean." He couldn't turn it down, and I helped finance the dumpster, and was paid back after he was paid. He had a roommate in that apartment, because his own credit wasn't good enough to get in. That roommate left last summer because he was up north at his parents' home to attend a wedding and was injured in a motorcycle accident. He now lives with his parents and goes through the PT required after such an accident. My friend could afford the rent without him, and enjoyed using more space, but this month the lease came up for renewal. In a rather odd way, it became clear that the longest he could get a lease was for 7 months. It seems that the building will empty out at that point and the new owners may plan to tear it down.

So - the good news is that my friend was able to find and rent a new place on his own. It's about 20 months since the foreclosure and that time of paying bills on time has given him enough credit that he can get it on his own. They did ask for a larger deposit. And since he is only moving the contents of the apartment (he has a storage locker for a lot of stuff from the house) it will seem like a breeze. I'll help him out if he needs it, but this will be a simple process of a couple of truckloads, not all of the work of filling dumpsters. This apartment is still in a not-so-great neighborhood and lots of Section 8 renters, but after another year or so he'll be back to full income (he has been paying himself back from borrowing against his 401k - withholding nearly half of his income to payback for work on a roof he no longer owns). At that point, with a better score and full wages, he will be able to move to a nicer place. It has been a slow process, but overall, tolerable. He has a roof over his head and is getting on with his life.

SRS