Lost neighbors

I am lucky to live in one of those "everyone knows everyone" types of neighborhoods. Many of my neighbors have lived here for 50+ years, and raised their children here. Others are here still raising their kids, so it's a nice mix of people. Anyway, I ran into my next-door neighbor last night, as I was shovelling snow. Since we hadn't seen each other in awhile, we started talking.

He mentioned a house a little down the street from me, and asked if I had noticed the furniture piled outside. I'd noticed it just after Christmas, and assumed that whoever lived there had gotten a new living room set or something, and was throwing the old stuff away (this was one of the few close neighbors that I have that I don't at least know by sight or first name).

Anyway, my neighbor told me what happened: the people who had lived there had gotten evicted for not paying their property taxes, and someone else had bought the house for the unpaid tax money. My neighbor said that the family had a "heap of cats" and now one (at least) of the cats is running loose in the neighborhood. Luckily for the cat, another neighbor has taken to feeding the cat and putting out a little shelter for him.

My next-door neighbor also said that there had been someone in the house who had been bedridden for quite some time, and family members had been taking care of her. Since I used to work as a community health nurse, as well as a housing advocate, I can be pretty sure that in this case, the local Protective Services would have been contacted, and at least the bedridden woman would have shelter.

But it really saddened me to know that this had happened, and I'd had no idea about it. When I was a housing advocate, the tax laws changed in The Mitten, and many people were suddenly faced with paying extra taxes. I took calls for months from people who needed help with their taxes. Some of the people had just been careless with their money and were suddenly in a panic. But others--too many others--were people who were struggling through life in some way: with a disability, with working multiple jobs just to put food on the table, with gargantuan medical bills, etc.

Even the people in the local counties that I worked with were overwhelmed. As one county treasurer put it, "We do NOT want to become landowners!" Everyone who was involved in this worked very hard to help people to keep their homes. Since I am now living in a much more populated county that I had been in at the time, I can only guess that the people here couldn't have received the kind of individualized attention that some of the people that I'd worked with had received. But still a part of me wonders if I could have helped this family had I known what was happening. I know I can't save everyone, but it really bothers me that this happened right down the street from me.

And of course the wider issue, to me, is: how many others are facing the loss of their homes, or electricity/gas shutoff, or hunger, because they can't pay their bills? I know that there area houses for sale, not only in my own little area, but all across the Mitten. I also know that many of these homes have been on the market for months, even over a year, and the "for sale" signs are still there. This in combination with all of the layoffs and "downsizing" really make me wonder how many people out there are in a desperate situation.

I am lucky to be a registered nurse, as the forcasted demand for nurses is only going to increase in the coming years. But I can't help thinking about all of the other people, many who are highly educated (especially in the engineering and tech fields) who are suddenly looking for work. I certainly don't know what the answer to all of this is, since much of the work industry in this area is changing and I don't think it will improve in the short term, but sometimes it just makes me feel helpless...

...and thankful for what I have: a nice home, good friends, healthy parents and relatives, and a little money in the bank.