Thankful

It's Thanksgiving and today, I am thankful for my home. I do not know how much longer I will be living there, because, owing to deferred maintenance on the part of the landlord, it is in need of far more expensive repairs than he can afford, and he's talking of selling, which for sure means that I will be needing to move. Another landlord would never allow me the deal I have now on it. I found out that my apartment was, at one time, a three bedroom apartment, and the downstairs unit was a two bedroom apartment. I find it hard to believe that five people once occupied the house, because there's really only enough parking in back for two cars at the most. Where everyone else's cars went, I do not know. But it would explain why I have such a spacious place and so many huge closets. I have a really nice deal on it, but one fear of it being sold is that some unscrupulous slumlord would buy it who would continue to allow it to deteriorate. Another fear is that someone would buy it and pour so much money into it that the rent would soar to unaffordable levels. Either way, if the house sells, I'm out an apartment that I love and I'll have to sandwich myself into something much smaller and not necessarily nicer. I'm very worried about the prospect of losing another home to it being sold and it's added a new level of stress on to what has already become a stressful situation. I do hope that the landlord doesn't sell, but if it's become too much of a money pit for him to where it's no longer worth it to keep, I do understand. I just hope that maybe he can put a little money at a time into it over a long period of time to where he can fix up all that is wrong with it. It's nothing critical, but the place does need a new roof, new windows and insulation. For now, though, that stuff can probably wait and some inexpensive temporary measures can be done to address these problems. We'll see. In the meantime, I am grateful to have such a huge and spacious place for the price I pay for it. I'd never ever be able to find anything comparable at that rent. This is a college town and the construction of numerous upscale apartment complexes geared toward students has driven rents up all over town to astronomical levels. Two bedroom apartments in the new complexes cost $1400+/mo. It's like living on one of the coasts anymore. Crazy. Landlords are scrambling to compete with the new apartments and at least two friends of mine own rental units that are priced at similar levels to this. With a monthly pension of only $1700/mo., I just can't afford these kinds of rents. I'm willing to live in a century plus old home that is badly in need of repairs if it means keeping the rent low. In the meantime, I am praying that the house is not put up for sale. The minute it does, I'm going to be hunting for new quarters, and that will more than likely mean that wherever I end up, it's going to have to be a considerably smaller unit than what I have now. I'll probably have to sell most of my possessions, most of my clothes, most of my furniture and squeeze into some tiny place where I won't be happy. For now, I'm just going to take matters a day at a time and be grateful that I have the place that I do. It's everything I wanted when I went apartment hunting last year and it took me a year to find it and it was two weeks before my scheduled eviction that I finally found it. Now I want to stay there as long as I can manage. It's my home and I don't want to lose what I worked so hard to find. I'm grateful to be there.