Live Free or Die in New Hampshire! Just Hope You Don’t Need any Help!

I have spent the last week working on a writing project to help desperate homeowners find financial assistance to pay their mortgage. As a creative financer myself (family of 4 living in southern New Hampshire), I have concocted valuable ways to make money stretch beyond the forces of nature. I thought that I could use my life experiences, research abilities and my Internet savvy to help. For the most part, my project is going along quite well. I’ve hit a few bumps in the road, as well as quite a few dead ends, but all in all, it’s going according to plan.

Some of the feds on Capitol Hill don’t want to “bail out” American families who got in over their heads with a mortgage that they didn’t completely understand, or assumed that the real estate bubble was going to keep expanding thus creating equity in their homes and leaving lots of room for refinancing down the road. These feds are typically of the conservative nature and would much rather bail out the mortgage lenders in a few years than help the citizens that pay their salaries.

Here’s what happened.

In 2005, the feds began to raise interest rates (which don’t directly affect mortgage rates). When this happened, it sent a small panic through the real estate market…one that was just enough to put a brief halt on home buying. This effect rippled like a tidal wave, gaining massiveness as it headed for shore. Potential home buyers stopped in their tracks, for if they waited a bit, they could get a better deal, either on a house or mortgage rate. This went on to create a drop in home prices, leaving many people with a loan on property that was substantially higher than the value of the property.

Next, all of the ARM mortgages that had “teaser rates” to get people to sign (usually equipped with a hefty pre-payment penalty for paying off the note too early) began to adjust. A typical adjustable rate mortgage will add 3 percentage points to your original interest rate as soon as the initial rate expired, then potentially 3 more points at phase 2, leaving homeowners with a mortgage payment that’s up 50-100% from the original. When a homeowner makes attempts to refinance their mortgage, they realize that the necessary appraisal to qualify for a decent rate is nowhere what their home is currently worth.

So now, we’re in trouble. Not only are these homeowners suffering, but everyone else is, too. Home equity is almost a thing of the past.

Add to this problem the ridiculous price of fuel (including home heating oil), and you have a family in dire straits.

When fuel goes up, everything goes up. We have to recoup the losses for everything, including groceries at the supermarket. Some people don’t realize that the products on the shelves at your favorite stores all come in on trucks, which require fuel to get there. The fuel charges are, of course, passed on to the store to which the products were delivered. The store (or corporate) owner needs to raise the prices of everything within its walls to get the money back. So basically, we pay for their fuel…and our fuel…and the fuel needed for the post office to deliver our mail, and the fuel to have the garbage man pick up our trash. Yup, we pay for it all!

So I was thinking, “What if I could find some energy programs for people who are having problems paying to heat their home this winter? Then they could take the money that was originally intended for this monthly bill and put it toward their mortgage!” So I began my search.

I found that there are a lot of non-profit agencies (not government related) that offer such programs designed specifically for those who are not currently on a government assistance program. Most of these are at the state or county level, or simply work within a specific geographical area, like a state.

I’ve found 15 programs for Massachusetts thus far, reaching from Boston to North Adams, overlapping as they go. In New Hampshire, I’ve found ONE, and it has a 10 to 15 year wait list.

So does the New Hampshire slogan, “Live Free or Die” really mean exactly that? We pay taxes just like every other state in the country, and our property taxes are ridiculously high comparatively. Basically, the rate we pay for that equals all combined taxes for the average employee of Massachusetts. But we have not one-tenth of the resources for such emergency programs.

And this isn’t my first bout with New Hampshire services, either. My 10-year old son has a form of autism and the services available for him are horrid. I thank God every day that he has amazing teachers at school who really care about him and what they’re doing. I was told that he needed a diagnosis from a “medical doctor” to be able to continue in his special education classes at school. He’s been diagnosed by dozens of medical professionals, including clinical psychologists that specialize in the Autism Spectrum. Massachusetts doesn’t have this rule, for anyone specializing in the field (within reason) can diagnose and recommend treatment and therapy.

The waiting lists up here are ridiculously long. So I’ve decided to get him a diagnosis from a proctologist.