Will Extreme Makeover Harper Family Lose Home?
This seriously hurts my feelings. A very deserving family was chosen to receive a new house from ABC’s Extreme Makeover. The community banned together to demolish and rebuild a new four bedroom home for the Harper Family in Lake City, Georgia. Beazer Homes raised $250,000 in contributions for the family, including scholarships for the couple’s three children and a home maintenance fund.
Less than four years later, the family could potentially lose their free home to foreclosure. After fifteen months the family put their home up as collateral for a $450,000 loan to invest in a construction business. On August 5th, the home is set to go on auction on the steps of the Clayton County Courthouse. Mrs. Harper says they worked out a deal with the bank to keep the house, but has plans to move because the family is being harassed. Understandably, the community is upset at what is taking place. Wouldn’t you be?
My question is, why in this economy would they put in jeopardy the one thing that was guaranteed? People came together to build them a beautiful FREE home in six days. All they had to do was cover the property taxes, maintenance and utilities. The kids even got scholarships to go to school! You can’t blame the banks on this one. If the community and local businesses hadn’t come together to help this family, then this wouldn’t be a story. We have to do better. I know too many poor people with no equity in their homes struggling to keep what they have. Getting your $450,000 hustle on at someone else’s expense is not cool. The Harper’s should be ashamed of themselves. I’d like to hear more of what they have to say about the situation they’ve placed themselves in.
Here’s a video of what the Harper’s stand to lose. This video is of the story on a local Georgia news station.
July 31st, 2008 at 2:48 pm
I was too angry to post this story on my blog. I am trying to keep my blog atmosphere on a positive note. I am really tempted to add this couple to my SYAD list.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I don’t personally know them so I don’t want to be seen as “judging” them BUT good Lord!! The house was free, and your kids scholarships are free! All you had to do was get a job and pay the taxes!! Seriously, stupid moves were made there. I have one child in college so I know what it cost! That just made it bad for other deserving people! Wow!
You can take people out of the ghetto but you can’t always take the ghetto out of the people!
Sad…
July 31st, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Attorneymom & regina,
Thanks for the comments. I don’t consider it judging them. They obviously made some bad decisions and it’s sucks that all of the time and money people put into the project is going down the drain.
I don’t understand it.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Comments on Twitter:
BWBConference @tjohnson3 they are going to lose that home. They lost the house the minute they signed the home equity loan. They are not alone about 9 hours ago from web in reply to tjohnson3
BWBConference @tjohnson3 Theo thats what happens when you mortgage a secured asset to pursue an unsecured business dream about 9 hours ago from web in reply to tjohnson3
August 6th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Yeah, that is crazy! The real victims here are the Harper kids. They finally get a great place to live and their parents make a really stupid decision ( I think they forgot that their McMansion was free and that they never had money, otherwise they wouldn’tve went to the bank like that). The kids had their scholarships taken away and they will now have to move into another dump, because you know the parents can’t afford anything close to what they had. They weren’t on ‘deal or no deal’ they were on extreme home makeover. And if you need a loan that big from the bank and know you have nothing to give, then its not a good idea. Shameful!
September 8th, 2008 at 9:43 am
While I agree that the decision this family made was a poor one, let’s not be so quick to judge. Remember, this is a couple who worked hard to move out of the projects in New York to provide a better life for their children, so I wouldn’t exactly call them deadbeats. In an effort to give them the benefit of the doubt, consider the possibility that this business venture was a dream they wanted to pursue for a long time, but never had the capital to finance it. Maybe they saw it as a way to permanantly provide for their children, something they could pass on to prosper their family for generations. How do we know that some slick-talking “business partner” whom they trusted didn’t convince them that this was a sound investment to make only to take advantage of them? The thing is, we only see what they did as a poor decision because it failed. Had the business succeeded, it would have been a “calculated risk”, or better yet, an “extension” of the gift that had been given to them. They would have been the epitome of the American Dream! Who knows what caused this family to do what they did? Whatever the situation, I just find it hard to believe that, after everything that family lost (a son), and everything they went through, greed and ungratefulness had anything to do with it. Then again, I could be totally wrong…
September 8th, 2008 at 11:22 am
OhioMom, that’s fair, but why put the whole house at risk? They could have refinanced a part of it and gotten the rest from a bank. I know loans are hard to come across, but I just can’t see putting up my home.
If it were a home they’d purchased and worked hard to get, then cool, that’s on them. But a lot of money was generously given to them and I can understand the town’s frustration. It just seems like a slap in the face to all the people who wanted to help them. I like Extreme Makeover and I like seeing what they did for each family. It’s touching and this just puts a bad taste in my mouth.
September 15th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
I’ve never understood how any of the families who have benefitted from the Extreme Makeover homes could afford to pay the taxes, utility costs and maintenance fees required to operate them. I can only imagine what it must cost to heat, cool or light the mega homes these people receive on the program.
Dr. Phil just interviewed this couple in an attempt to understand how they could have gotten into this mess. They stated that their taxes went from $1000 to $5000 a year when the taxes were supposed to have remained fixed. They said their monthly operating expenses on the place were $5000 to $6000. They took the cash they were given and paid off the mortgage on the that was demolished. But the biggest thing that came out was that they made a bunch of bad money decisions that failed.
While they scrimped and saved to get out of the projects, what they managed to save was probably just the bare minimum to buy the house with a bad sewer problem. They likely had no concept about how to manage that kind of new found “wealth”.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
It’s inevitable that when extreme home makeover and your community gives you a gift such as this, that your operating expenses and taxes are going to go up. But no one considers that in most cases, you no longer have a house payment. In the case of the Harpers, even though their “taxes went from $1000 to $5000 a year when the taxes were supposed to have remained fixed and they said their monthly operating expenses on the place were $5000 to $6000″ they needed under $1,000 per month to cover these costs! If each of the Harpers worked for just 24K a year making $12 an hour they could have covered that. All they had to do was keep the jobs they had or get jobs to insure that their kids would be provided for in that new house that was so much more than a home. They took it for granted. When you are given such a gift, you shouldn’t even consider a “calculated risk”. You should count your blessings and do everything you can to protect them.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Are you kidding me???? They had a FREE home and they blew it. Their operating expenses went up to $5,000 – $6,000 a month???? What the hell were they doing? They obvisouly have no idea how to save on energy. My company has a bigger building than that and the operating expenses (water, garbage, PG&E etc etc) is less than that and this building is twice the size of their house. In addition, taxes going from $1,000 a year to $5,000 a year is nothing. All they had to do was keep the job they had and they would have been living the easy life. They go on Dr. Phil looking for more hand outs. I mean I feel for them for losing their son. There is nothing worse than losing a child. Nothing. But they obviously are still looking for a free hand out and making excuses for their own stupidity. Now I guess they’re back to the projects where they began. I feel for those poor kids. They shouldn’t have to suffer because their parents are stupid.
October 14th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
They were given $100,000 for expenses which they used to pay their mortgage. So all they needed to come up with was $5000 + $6000 and living expenses? There were two adults in that family. They couldn’t pull that off? I cannot help but think that greed, ignorance and low self esteem had to be a factor in making such dumb decisions. $450,000 to create a business? So now you have a home payment (say $3000+) and now business expenses as well. Someone walked into their home and convinced them to do it. Someone made some money- someone had to have scammed them. I don’t feel sorry for them because they don’t deserve a home like that. The Harpers confirmed that by their actions. What I do wonder is if the parents can ever forgive themselves for what they’ve stolen from their children.
October 23rd, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Having read all the replies and reasons I can only say what this come down to is one simple word/concept “CHOICE”. We are all given the dignity of choice. No one put a gun to these peoples heads, whatever “reasoning” they care to pander to the media does not change the fact that they made a foolish, self centered choice. It speaks to their character or lack thereof that they did this, and by their choice have shown that they are truly unworthy of what was given them. As a side bar ABC should really make better choices in the building of these echo unfriendly behemoth houses. No family of that size requires that kind of square footage to live in. A more modest home would have been much wiser, I say this being fully aware that the name of the show is “Extreme Home makeover” not Modest. It just goes to show you cant save people from themselves
November 28th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
i think it’s a bit harsh to judge b4 you know the facts, today’s economical state just shows how bad it is out there. maybe they were just trying to give back a little by going into construction. it’s not like they wasted the money on drugs or overspending on themselves. i’ve seen so much construction put on hold because there is nothing out there to build. I think it’s a shame that this is happening to them they were trying to invest in a future that is economicaly bad right now and maybe were miss advised, like i said who are we to judge we are not in thier shoes and i wish them all the best and i hope this all works out for them.
January 15th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
People really shouldn’t judge this family. So what they got a free house. From what i know of Exteme Makeover they only do this for good honest people with some form of history. This family choose to use the house to make an even better life for themselfs & Due to the state of the economy they could loose everything.. Did they do it for greed? No!. Did they do it to indulge? No!. They did it to build a future.
How dare anybody come on a site and slate them for trying to build a future for their family. You don’t know anything about these people.
The credit crunch screwed them over. These people have done nothing to be ashamed of. A gift is a gift and what the recipient wants to do with that is upto them. What a bunch of judgemental assholes on this site.
January 19th, 2009 at 1:36 am
Wow frank! Judgmental assholes?
The whole purpose of a blog is to express your opinion about things you find interesting. MY issue is with the fact that they did it on someone else’s dime and time. The purpose of the show was to make a struggling family’s life a little better by giving them a home and a way to pay for it.
The future for the family was set in motion by ABC. Scholarships, a home, paid utilities. Come on! I was disappointed because it seemed to be a slap in the face to all who made it happen. I have no issues with taking risks to build a dream. The most successful people in the world are where they are because of it. But the future of the family in my opinion was moving in the right direction when they said “Move that bus!”
January 24th, 2009 at 5:40 am
It’s one thing to get an equity loan on a house that you purchased with your own sweat equity. It’s a totally different story to put the house up for an unsecured loan for the value of the home when it was donated/given to you. This could put the generosity of Extreme Makeover in jeopardy not to mention dramatically decrease the kindness of strangers. Can’t they put some kind of clause in the contract that the family signs that they can’t use the house as collateral for a loan of any kind for any reason??
In today’s economy, a construction company was a very poor investment. Didn’t this family research starting a construction company and how hard it would be to get it off the ground before jumping into it or was this just a pipe dream they’ve had and saw a way to make the dream come true regardless of the consequences.
Are you sure the kids will lose their scholarships? They shouldn’t because they should be in the kids’ names not the parents so those at least should be safe.
March 1st, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Regardless of the outcome I think it is apalling to be gambling with your home. What makes it worse is that 1,800 people donated their time and work so that they could have this home. The mind blowing issue is really why did they have to use ALL the equity of the house? Although I don’t agree with using ANY portion of the house, why couldn’t they use like 10 % or 20% of the house’s equity.