From The Appeal:
I moved to Washington state when I was 8 years old. My mom had arrived shortly before me, fleeing my father’s abuse in a rusty, dented Toyota pickup truck, with nothing but a tent and a bag or two of clothes. She pitched her tent on a farmer’s property, where she picked strawberries until she could afford a place for the two of us. To say we were poor would be an understatement.
As I got older, we made enough money to move to a trailer, then an apartment, and finally a rental house—but our financial status never really changed. We relied on food banks, food stamps, and duct tape to hold worn-out shoes together. I struggled in school and turned to petty crime to make ends meet. I soon became a regular in juvenile detention centers. By 22, I was in prison serving a 45-year sentence for taking another person’s life in a drug robbery.
Facing decades behind bars, I was certain I’d never own a home. But 17 years into my sentence, I met Chelsea—the woman who is now my wife—and homeownership began to seem like a real possibility.
We started as friends, fell in love, and began to set and achieve goals, as normal couples do. At first, buying a home was just a dream, like the world travels we often talked about. We knew that having our own home was the only chance we’d have to build a stable life together once I got out of prison. Many landlords refuse to rent homes to people with felony convictions, which can make it virtually impossible to find a place to live after incarceration. But buying a home would take a lot more money than either of us had: Chelsea was a graduate student and I was in prison. Still, we saved every extra dollar we could. Continue reading >>>
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