It's been a crazy month.
The highlights:
- Ian finished his first draft of his dissertation. Yay Ian!
- Rachel was accepted into a masters program at Eastern University in the Womens and Gender Studies Program. Yay Rachel!
- We've had crazy housing issues. See below.
As few of you are aware, the home we are renting an apartment in was foreclosed on last December. While this was surprising, ...oh wait, no it wasn't, let's see, lack of maintenance, more than an average amount of house inspections, collection/settlement letters...
Anyways, after the six month redemption period ended in late June, we received a letter from a broker representing the new owner (the BANK) telling us NOT to pay our rent moving forward and offering a rather large settlement offer if we were out by July 16th.
We panicked!
We paced!
We went to an attorney.
Turns out the offer was legit, but gosh, we weren't ready to move so suddenly, Ian was in the final hours of finishing his first draft of his dissertation, and our new place wasn't available until August first. Luckily, after much back and forth between us and the broker's voice-mail, they finally agreed to give us the full Cash for Keys settlement offer for an August 2nd move out date. So, now we get an extra 2.5 months rent, essentially, for moving when were originally were planning to.
Last Saturday, I woke up to a large truck pulling into the driveway and a crew of men mulling about the house, knocking on doors and peeking in windows. I was trying to get our barfy cat to the vet, I myself wasn't feeling so hot, we had to pick up our food share, and Ian had literally worked all night and had only been asleep for a few hours. The men had been hired by the new owner, per their work order, to remove anyone/anything remaining in our building, even though legally we all had a right to be there until the end of September! As Ian and I were home and our place was clearly "occupied," we were spared their wrath (Process: If tenants are there, they cannot take anything from apartment, must file response to owner of property and try again another day). We were informed if a Sheriff drove by though, they could essentially take all of our stuff to the dump(!) and we couldn't prove we had a right to be there. I'm super glad we were home.
Our downstairs neighbor, poor-dispossessed-law-student-man, has been in Vienna for a few months. They got into his apartment and took everything. We were unable to stop them, had no one we could call that was "on our side" because it was the weekend, and were too scared to call the police, worried that we would then be forcibly removed.
Of course when we shared all of this with our broker on Monday she was horrified. Apparently the request that bank made was to change one set of locks on one of the tenants that had already moved out. Whoops! A stressful day, to say the least. Vixen and I eventually both received appropriate medical care during the day; we're both on antibiotics. Ian eventually calmed down.
The Future Masters Student
I was elated to finally get notification of acceptance to Eastern Michigan University (EMU). The plan is to get all of my classes finished in 3 semesters and graduate Summer 2011. If I'm unable to do this and Ian and I end up moving next summer, I will the ability to write my thesis long distance. I'm also completing an emphasis in Psychological Statistics, which will hopefully gear me up as a great graduate program candidate, or help if I go straight into a research or teaching position after graduation from EMU.
With all of this, I will transition to a part-time position at GreenPath, Inc. I will still work in the housing and debt counseling department while I go to school, because I would miss the long commute. Just kidding. It's for the money.
