Pursuing the American dream

Meet Josh Flowers. He is the father of two children and has a beautiful wife. Life has been hard for this Central Valley family in the last few years and Josh wanted to share his story to give others hope. He is thankful for GRID Alternatives, its volunteers and supporters.

Hi,

We are the Flowers family. We are super excited – we just purchased my parent’s old home, it was the home I grew up in.

The past four years have been difficult on my wife and I – we thought we were living the American dream when we purchased our first home. Unfortunately, we are one of the many families that suffered from the housing bubble and ended up losing everything.

Although I wanted to continue to fight for our dream, I knew we had to rebuild our finances so we moved into my parent’s home. We decided we did not want our home to ever be taken away from us again so we built a house for cash. My father and I set out on a mission to build a house on his property. It took a year and a half of hard work, but we were very proud of our accomplishments.

We received word that the home passed inspection and were excited to move in….. Unfortunately, shortly after, we received a different letter that showed the property our new home was built on had a foreclosure notice. We learned the hard way that when you build a home for cash, the county does not check the recorded deed before issuing permits. For the second time, the bank took our home.

So here we were back to square one – all the time, money and resources invested in our second home gone. Aeound the same time, my parents were selling their house because they needed to downsize. I grew up in this home which was built by Porteville College in 1989. It is an older home and requires a lot of Tender Loving Care; my dad told me the energy bills were too high for them. When he told me the monthly amount, my mouth dropped and I realized I could not afford the bills. But thanks to GRID Alternatives, my family and I will be able to keep the house. I am very grateful for their program and for all the volunteers and donors who make this happen. Thank you all.

The Flowers family had their system installed in October 2012. Josh is looking forward to his kids growing up in the same home he did and sharing memories with them.

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