Lending deal leaves family homeless

Their homelessness now has a start date: Oct. 15.

That's when Kristy Minor, 31, her daughter, 6, and her father, 62, are due to be evicted from the east Marysville house they lost through default on a reverse mortgage.

The family's belongings — those that have not already been purged or stored elsewhere — have been packed for months.

"We've been living out of suitcases now for almost a year," says Minor, who is waiting for food-stamp paperwork to go through while she struggles to make tough decisions.

Like hundreds of parents in the Yuba-Sutter area, Minor is at the brink of homelessness. She is in a quandary about where and how to live temporarily, and how to keep her child safe and accessible to her, without having a stable place to call home.

She looks over the neat pile of luggage and stuffed shopping bags in a corner of the bedroom she shares with her daughter, Kaylee.

"Normally, I lay out her clothes for the next day," she says. "I don't know how I'm gonna do that when I'm living out of a bag in the back of my car."

Minor's dad owns a small RV, which will become his new home on the 15th.

But Minor, who is in her second semester as a full-time childhood development student at Yuba College, is unsure how to proceed.

She has received offers from friends willing to let them stay for a few nights, but the idea of burdening others and moving from one place to another for weeks on end makes her anxious.

She could place Kaylee with her grandfather in his RV on a short-term basis, or leave her with her father's mother in a crowded trailer near Hallwood.

In either of those cases, she says, "I would sleep in my car by Ellis Lake."

Unenviable options

According to Monica Quilty, who heads a homelessness outreach program for the Yuba County Office of Education, most of the county's roughly 400 homeless children live in "doubled-up" circumstances with friends or acquaintances.

"They're on a couch or a floor or sharing a bedroom," she says.

Many parents who find themselves in dire straights leave their children in the care of a friend or family member who has a home, while they fend for themselves in even less stable circumstances.

"Sometimes, mom will live in a truck or car and try to put the kids with someone," Quilty says.

Kristy Minor says she is still not sure what she will do after eviction.

She attended a one-stop information and services event for the homeless at Motor Park in Marysville recently. She learned quite a bit, she says, about what is and is not available out there for her and Kaylee.

It was a welcome little dose of reality, she says, after having waited month after month in uncertainty for the eviction notice to come.

Her daughter doesn't yet understand the uncertainty she and her mom will face once they move out of this house — the only home she has known.

"She's too young to understand," Minor says. "She thinks we're just moving together to a new house."

Quilty laments that the most necessary element of the aid network does not exist in Yuba-Sutter.

"A lot of time, these families are receiving some aid and they can get into really crappy hotels for a short time," she says. "But there are no shelters for them in our two counties."

Reversal of fortune

Kristy Minor and her parents moved into the now-mostly empty four-bedroom house on Ahern when Kristy was just 12.

The early years, she says, were the best.

"We had good times here," she says.

Her mother, Norma Minor, had inherited the property from her father, and intended to keep it in the family. But when she was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2003, everything changed.

Doctor's bills piled up. Maintenance and repairs to the house had to be put on hold. In 2005, Minor's parents were introduced to the concept of a reverse mortgage — an option available to homeowners who are age 62 or older.

Norma Minor qualified.

She didn't understand how quickly the deal — an increasingly popular one among seniors — would strip away the home's equity through high fees and interest charges.

And she did not realize that upon her death, which came in 2007, the entire sum owed would come due.

Norma and Ernie Minor believed that upon death, the home and conditions of the lending agreement would transfer to the spouse.

"If they'd known more about this (kind of mortgage)," says Kristy Minor, "they wouldn't have done it."

Advertising campaigns that target seniors and extol the virtues of reverse mortgages recently have fallen under scrutiny by members of Congress, who want lending reforms.

Thousands of baby boomers are beginning to qualify for reverse mortgages. And taxpayers will be left to pay for losses not covered by borrowers' insurance premiums.

The impact on an already limping economy, lawmakers argue, would be disastrous.

Kristy Minor says her father is heartbroken about his own lack of attention to details of the agreement his wife signed; he is overwhelmed by the loss of his family's home, and its connection to the even-greater loss of his wife.

Father and daughter both are suffering from depression, said Kristy Minor.

"I feel helpless," she says. "I can't do nothing."

She says she will probably need to work. But a job search — especially in Yuba-Sutter, and especially now — takes time. With her course work at Yuba College, and full-time motherhood, that won't be easy, she says.

And the cost of childcare may negate the financial benefit of a low-paying job.

Minor manages a smile when Kaylee cheerfully presents her with some quickly rendered abstract artwork.

Moments later, she looks deep in thought.

"I'm not ready for this at all," she says.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Nancy Pasternack at 749-4712 or at npasternack@appealdemocrat.com.