Help Save Oliver Hill Farm!
A few months ago in June I blogged about visiting Molly and Bill McGovern and their delightful little family farmette, Oliver Hill. This weekend I received a plea for emergency help from Molly. They were able to buy the farm because they purchased a sub-prime loan: at the time, this was their only option. Last year, they lost their baby son Oliver to SIDS, and then Bill lost his job as a result of all the time he took off to take care of his family during the crisis.
Not to be kept down, Bill started his own business as a home health care aide, Oliver Hill Home Health Care. As an aside, he is thriving in the business: he's a big teddy bear of a man with years of emergency medicine experience. He specializes in helping older men with their health needs in their homes: for those of us who know Bill, this job is a perfect fit for his warm, compassionate personality, and his clients and their families have nothing but praise for his work. Molly has been holding classes in sewing and in the fiber arts for young girls in the area now that family life is settling down after the tragedy of losing their young son.
That's the good news: now for the bad news.
Even though the McGoverns have duly made every mortgage payment on their farm, they are in danger of losing the farm in two weeks, because the company that owns their mortgage is going under, and is demanding full repayment of the loan. If they can't pay the loan in full by October 1st, McGoverns will be out on the street -- in two weeks.
So Molly decided to swallow her pride and ask her fellow Catholics for help in paying off their mortgage. You can click here to see her letter at her blog, HeavenNotHarvard.typepad.com.
The loan is only for $53,000. While that's a big chunk of change for any one person to handle, it's definitely an amount that could be raised if many people make small donations.
Molly and Bill have set up a PayPal account (okay, I have it working now) to handle donations to help save Oliver Hill farm. Enter the email address bill@oliverhill.net to donate. If you are able to even make a small donation of $10 or $20, I know it will help them. Placing her complete trust in God, Molly hopes that they will be able to use any overpayment of the loan to help other families who are in the same situation: as Steve Wood recently warned on his August 23rd radio show, the sub-prime loan industry is in the process of collapsing, taking many struggling families with it.
Please consider making a donation to them: and if you feel so moved, please spread the word.
Comments
SF - I understand what you are saying, but the particular problem here is that the loan is a sub-prime loan, not a conventional one.
I do know that the family has talked to several attorneys and financial advisors already -- and they have been for the past weeks once they were told the news. It's only now, as a last-ditch effort that they've started to ask others for help, since they have no other recourse.
Her mother, who sings in choir with me, says the same thing we're hearing here: attorneys have told the family that they have no recourse. Apparently, though the family were making their full payments, the company was failing to pay out the taxes and homeowners insurance which were rolled into those payments. It's staggering to me that this kind of thing can happen with no legal protection for the homeowner.
I am a laywer, though not in Ohio, and would be willing to look at their loan documents and related papers from the mortgage company.
David
Be Warm, Be Filled
291 Belleview Blvd.
Steubenville, OH 43952
Mark it "for the McGovern family" in the memo.
Many thanks!
I read the Active Rain real estate blog regularly and saw this idea. Is this something that could be done in Steubenville? If someone could foot the cost to rent the local theatre, then the McGovern's might be able to get a chunk of change from the proceeds.
Here's the link:
http://activerain.com/blogsview/208366/Rent-a-Theatre-Save
A reader from the deep south,
Ellen
Mrs. T - thanks for posting. This is why the story rang true for me: my husband and I had just been reading stories of this happening to other Catholic families.
David,
Since you're a lawyer and have kindly offered, if there is a legal recourse for families in this position, it seems like people should know about it, especially the McGoverns and Mrs. T's friends! It sounds like a good cause for a Catholic lawyer to investigate, because it could be there is simply a lot of misinformation around on this issue.
If you do talk to the McGoverns and find out anything they can do, I'd be more than happy to pass on any legal strategies that folks can use to those who are writing and speaking about this issue now, like Steve Wood and Phil Lenahan. I'm serious.
You can email molly_mcgovern@yahoo.com. I can be reached at regina@reginadoman.com.
I do appreciate your thoughtful offer.
I think I've linked to your original post about the McGoverns' farm at least twice since you posted it, because I love it so much -- everything in the photos you posted just sings of family creativity and joy, which is that much more poignant when I consider how the joy and the Cross are so entwined -- in all our lives, really, of course, but in some lives so much more visibly. On a much more superficial level, I've learned to recognize beauty and warmth in my own house, which is also kind of smallish and low-ceilinged and darkish -- but also has a lot of red!
All that to say first, thanks for that original post, and second, that we are praying and wanting to do all we can, because home is home.
Sally
All the info about the McGovern's situation is no longer up on her blog... is it no longer a need? (Sorry to bug you with this but you're how I found out about it in the first place!)
Kristyn Hall
pleasantviewschoolhouse.blogspot.com/
It reminds me a lot of yours, but without the Catholic perspective.
I finally found out what's going on: try this link:
http://www.heavennotharvard.typepad.com/
Sorry about the confusion!
K.