Welcome to News Virginian: Serving the Waynesboro, VA region | She can go home again
After an article about Litke and her family appeared in Friday’s News Virginian, Rorrer said he received several calls from concerned people asking if they could help her keep her house. But no one could legally help.It wasn’t a matter of scraping together an extra $150 month. Litke had already offered to pay the difference herself, but that wasn’t allowed. Her overall rent would have to be lowered to satisfy the feds.
“Everyone who offered to help couldn’t help,” said Rorrer. “She couldn’t do anything. She couldn’t even take charity. Which is kind of screwed up, isn’t it?”
So Rorrer decided to do the only thing that would allow her to keep her home by just absorbing the financial loss, hoping this would be the boost she needs to turn her fortune around.
This is at least partially the way it should be. I am glad that this woman is able to stay in her home, that will make a big difference in both her and her children’s future, and Rorrer should be commended for what he is doing to allow her to stay. But this is how it should be, the government really shouldn’t be involved in this case at all. If they weren’t involved, all the people that called Rorrer to find out how they could help her, would have been able to do so, and our generosity would be footing the bill instead of our taxes, which is how it should be. Unfortunately it took getting her story published in a local paper to get people interested enough in the story to offer to help out, and if there hadn’t been the quirk about how the government funded housing, it would never have been in the paper. Makes you wonder about our priorities. This woman’s plight should have been known to all those around her, and they should have been finding a way to help her, instead of it taking a quirk of a government plan that shouldn’t exist.