Home Closing Anniversary

Three years ago today, I achieved a dream that I thought had been denied to me due to becoming totally and permanently disabled. I closed on my house and became a homeowner of a duplex that has helped me to find financial stability right when I needed it most.

The first year on disability, I faced financial ruin. I had to default on credit cards, deal with creditors, and find a path forward on a disturbingly low income. But even with going to food pantries and trying my hardest, my rent at that time was 63% of my monthly SSDI allotment. To put this in perspective, home loan approvals typically allow 30% of your monthly income to go toward housing. My rent was not astronomical—it was only $800/month, which had been incredibly affordable up until my situation changed.

**Side note: that 63% was just for rent, not for heating or electric, and it didn’t touch the fact that I’d drained all my savings because a requirement of SSDI acceptance is that payments don’t begin until 6 months AFTER you are approved.

My landlords offered to sell the house to me, not knowing what had befallen me, because I had kept paying them—I was all too aware of how precarious my position was. I looked into mortgages, but all of them denied me, including one targeted at people with disabilities (they told me my income—my disability income, mind you—was too low). I looked into Section 8, public housing, even retirement homes that would accept a disabled person in her late thirties…

Then the pandemic happened. Everything only got even more complicated.

I was making plans to become homeless. At my lowest, I was in tears with a financial advisor who uttered the words that would completely change my life: Have you heard of NACA?

NACA is the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America and their goal is to stabilize communities by making home ownership accessible for low- and middle-income people. With their mortgage there is no down payment, no closing costs, no private mortgage insurance, and lower than market interest rates. Getting NACA approved is a journey—it’s a character-based approval system, so it requires more work than a traditional mortgage. But when they told me that it wasn’t about whether I could get a mortgage, but about how much I could borrow, they were telling the truth.

I could easily fill a book with all I learned going through the NACA process and what I’m still learning as I navigate grants in order to fix up my once-dilapidated house—it was certainly not a smooth, nor an easy journey.

But today, I celebrate being on the other side of the worst of it. Today, I revel in the relief and joy at knowing my house is my home, and that I’m safe here—something I’ve never felt about anywhere else I’ve ever lived.

Sometimes dreams really do come true.