Three years ago, at age 55, Terry Fox stepped into her very own house.

She hadn’t thought it was possible. She’d always wanted a home, especially after growing up in the housing projects of Coney Island. “It just seemed like people in houses were more stable and happier and better adjusted,” she explained. “It’s like a safe place.”

As a child, she watched The Brady Bunch, Leave it to Beaver, The Andy Griffith Show, and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. “Everybody in the neighborhood knew each other,” she said.

She doesn’t have many happy childhood memories. “I don’t remember a lot of it,” she said. “I always felt isolated and alone. I never felt close to anybody. I had to be in the house most of the time. I had to be quiet. I was afraid to do anything or I would get in big trouble. And when I was allowed to go out, I was only allowed out for a little while. I had a few friends, but it wasn’t like we talked about ideas or anything. We went out and played and that was it. We played handball and stuff. Went running.”

She was expected to do what she was told and be quiet.

When she met her ex-husband in her early twenties, she expected a different family experience in a home of her own. “He promised me a house,” Terry shared. “I thought we would work well together because he seemed to be hardworking and I was hardworking, and I just thought being hardworking and doing what was best for each other would work out. I thought if two people loved each other and they showed love to their kids, everything would good. And it’s better when there’s love, but when there isn’t, it hurts everybody.”

They would have eight children together over 23 years of marriage. But early on in their relationship, Terry found that things weren’t what she expected. “I think when two people get married, we should always make decisions on what’s best for the family, everybody involved,” she said. “He was still making decisions based on himself. When we first got married, he wasn’t coming home in the evening, and when I asked what was going on, and he said, ‘Oh, I started going to school.’”

When she asked where the money for school was coming from and what he was going to school for, he told her to go read a book. “I always felt like nobody wanted to know about me,” Terry shared. “Or even care. I was isolated in my marriage. I had to stay home. I worked and then I had to quit my job in the city when we were married. He threw out a lot of my clothes. When I didn’t work with him at the cleaners, I had to stay home all day. I didn’t have access to money. I had no money. It was bad.”

She was a part of a community while living in New York City that didn’t help. “At the time, I thought I was doing what I should be doing,” Terry said. “Maybe I didn’t express myself. I don’t know how people didn’t understand what I was saying. I guess people just said the same thing, ‘Just do what he’s saying and everything will be okay.’ But it wasn’t.”

The years progressed and children arrived. In 1991, he took her from New York City, away from her family and friends, to New Jersey first, then to Pennsylvania in 1996.

There, they bought a house through Why Rent, a company owned by Gene Percudani, who would be sued by the state of Pennsylvania in 2002 after defrauding hundreds of families who had relocated from New Jersey and New York. Percudani owned several real estate companies that took advantage of unsuspecting families, using practices like double mortgages, promising a train to NYC that never arrived (and still hasn’t, nearly twenty years later), and using his own appraiser. The homes were appraised against other houses out of the area or even against houses that didn’t even exist. The homes were overpriced and couldn’t be sold as a result, despite promises made by the companies. “We tried to sell after three years, and we couldn’t sell it,” Terry said. “Some people ended up losing their homes and ended up in homeless shelters. He didn’t spend a day in jail and he didn’t have to pay a dime. It was very sad.”

Her ex-husband was told he didn’t have to pay the mortgage while the case made its way through the courts, but that he should set the money aside to have when the case was settled. “He never did,” she said. “He didn’t pay the mortgage for three or four years. We were living there rent-free because of the stuff that was going through the courts and the way it was handled, they didn’t kick us out.”

But Terry also didn’t know what was happening with the house or with the court case because her ex-husband had a private PO Box. It would be years before she learned of the personal financial abuse she was suffering. “I had no idea he had credit cards with my name on them,” she said.

And even if he hadn’t taken out credit cards in her name, there was enough with his name on it, since in Pennsylvania, individuals are responsible for their partners’ debt. “I had to put everything in foreclosure,” Terry shared. “He didn’t want to. He said, ‘I’ll pay it,’ and I said ‘No, I’m putting everything in foreclosure because it has my name on it and I want to be done with it.’ I went into bankruptcy.”

Bankruptcy took her even further from her dream of owning her own home. She had to wait seven years before she could rebuild her credit. To buy a home, she had to have the right credit score. And she had to have held the same job for three or four years. Before she was eligible, she walked into a coworker’s home in 2014. By then, she’d been divorced officially for four years, but separated from her ex-husband for eight years. “I had to drop off something for her,” Terry shared. “She brought me into the house and it was really cute. She showed me around. And I thought to myself, ‘Wow, this is a really cute house. This would be something I would look at. This would be perfect for my family.’”

By 2017, that perfect little house was under foreclosure after her coworker had gotten a divorce and moved out. The ex-husband had stopped making payments on the house.

Terry wasn’t looking for a house. She was working full-time as a bus driver and selling real estate in her spare time. She lived in a one-bedroom apartment with her youngest daughter, paying $400 in rent. She worked with another real estate agent who told her he had a house she needed to look at. “‘I don’t know if I could afford a house,’” she remembered telling him.

She got in touch with a lender who told her that everything looked good. She’d been at her job for long enough, and her credit score had finally recovered. But he didn’t let her make an offer yet. He wanted to get the loan approved first. “That’s how you usually not have a deal go through,” Terry explained. “They just check a few things then they put an offer and then they go deeper and something messes it up.”

She completed the paperwork and was approved for the loan. “I was afraid somebody might put an offer in before me because the house was only going in for 55,000 dollars,” she said.

It had previously been $150,000, before the real estate crash. “Mortgages were low, the percentages on mortgages are low,” Terry explained. “Everything just fit right.  It’s hard to have the right conditions to buy a home. At the time that I got it, it was in foreclosure and just all the conditions were right. Some people try to prepare for things and you just can’t. I didn’t think I would be able to and it ended that I did. Just to think where I was before I bought the house. I was living in a one-bedroom apartment. I made the living room into another bedroom for my daughter.”

But nobody else put in an offer. The bank requested certain repairs, which cost a rehab loan. She closed on the house, and all told, the little house she wanted cost $65,000. “It didn’t feel real,” she said. “It’s surreal. It’s kind of odd.”

She has a yard now, with a lot of sunlight. “I didn’t expect ever to own a house,” Terry said. “It can get overwhelming. Even then, when my basement flooded, I ended up meeting a friend at McDonald’s and he pumped the water out of my house. It seems like help comes when it’s needed. My chimney needs to be fixed and I have a friend coming when it stops raining to fix that. The boiler went when I got my tax return, so I was able to get a new boiler in. It just works out.”

She hopes to get some fencing for her yard eventually. “It’s an old country town and a lot of people grew up here generations and generations,” she explained. “I feel like I’m being watched constantly. Maybe I’ll get a barrier put up so I can enjoy my yard more and not worry about or care what the neighbors are doing and I can just sit in my yard.”

Things might not be perfect, but having her own home has helped Terry in many areas. “Whatever problems I had before, I still have,” she explained. “It allows me to have my pets. It allows me to have to not worry so much if I break something. It allows me to be more creative with what I can surround myself with. I don’t have to worry about things if I want to build something. It gives me less anxiety about things.”

She has her two cats, Pumpkin and Spice, and her dog, Booca. One day, she hopes to move somewhere warmer. She would like to continue to heal. And she would like to be able to visit her children regularly. “I would like to help people in some way, but I feel like I haven’t become the strongest me that I’m able to become yet and I think I need to work on that too,” Terry explained. “I think I lost my voice in everything that’s happened. People ask me what I like to do. I don’t know. People know what they like and what they don’t like. Right now, people don’t like being in quarantine. I like it. I like being in my house.”

The future is a little uncertain. “You just never know,” Terry said. “Now, I lost my job. Who knows what’s going to happen in September with everything going on. I’m happy to have a roof over my head and food to eat and I have great kids.”

But she is continuing to work on herself and her home. “I always underestimate myself,” Terry said. “I think that’s an issue too. I think I self-sabotage too much. I think I’m still working on figuring things out and trying to combat those thoughts in my head. I’m trying to figure out what’s true and what’s not true. And at times, it all seems so overwhelming.”

Having her own space has helped. “Everything is a project and you get to learn new skills with every project,” she said. “And it’s just nice. It’s just nice.”

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