In Reply to: Financial Guidance, Pls (aka Point In Right Dir.) posted by UCLA78 on August 26, 2025 at 09:15:43
First, thank you to those who've chimed in on this. Some responses:
* He won't sell the house. It was his pastor's (and wife's) house, and they knew each other well since my friend was born. Also, he has filled up the backyard with clutter, junk, tools he uses, tools he doesn't use, etc. A fair amount of that clutter used to be in MY backyard, but I made him remove it. He'd have to find a place for his "stuff" (apologies to George Carlin) if he were to move. And yes, I realize that all that clutter would make it hard for him to get any kind of loan secured by that house, and probably hard or impossible to get an HEI or HEA
* Regarding a financial plan that includes a regular income stream, yes, I know that he could just yank it all out and ignore the plan. OTOH, he has matured considerably over the past 15-20 years, e.g. getting a part-time job that contributes to SS so eventually he'll get the 40 quarters of credits needed to collect SS benefits. I tend to think he'd respect the plan and not just withdraw the money in one swell foop
* He doesn't have a landlord mentality, so I don't see him kicking the friends out or especially going through legal channels to evict them. He has a great deal of sympathy for people who are downtrodden, and I don't think he'd go after them in that way. He'd suffer himself rather than do that
* He has been paying the property taxes, with money earned from recycling, his part-time job, and his handyman jobs. The "tenants" are paying the utilities
* He's too stubborn/headstrong to consider allowing me or anyone else to be Power of Attorney for him. He'd contest an involuntary conservatorship petition, and he'd win. I am the most consistent person in his life, and he values my opinions, but he can be impossible to convince to do things he doesn't want to, even those that would be obviously in his own best interest
* As for his social worker, I guess that's me. I've never had a formal social worker-client relationship with him, but it's pretty much my de facto role in his life. Over the years I've known him, I've tried so many times to get him to go to mental health counseling, but he's one of those people who says he doesn't need it because he's not crazy. Of course, during his years of using meth, he was sure he'd be declared "crazy" if he saw a mental health professional, and that he'd be committed to an institution. That was his paranoia talking. I did, of course, point out to him that people who think they might be crazy aren't, and only those who ARE crazy think there's nothing wrong with them.
I'm probably at the point where I'm doing as much good as banging my head against the wall a few thousand times. I just thought/hoped that there might be some way for him to benefit from owning a house worth $1.25M free and clear, to give him financial stability in his life.
Thanks again.