Update on the Homeless Situation - My city government actually works sometimes

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Following up for all the people who wished me well after I posted on Sunday about my situation living in an "abandoned" property. I am back home in the apartment that I love, with the gas turned on in my name - which means that as of now, I'm paying the heat for the three apartments in the building (one of them unoccupied). This is actually a reasonable trade-off in my eyes, since no one is stepping up to collect my rent. Essentially, here's what happened: After we notified the city health department that there was no heat in the building and that the landlord, who was responsible for the heat, had essentially disappeared, the city set to work to track down the landlord. When they found him, he claimed that he no longer owns the property. Court records, however, show that the property has not been foreclosed. The mortgage has been sold several times, and it took the city health worker almost two weeks to track down the company that now owns the mortgage. She actually managed to get a little further than I did - but not until after I finally got a line on the management company that sent an inspector out to the property. Through it all, the city health worker touched base with us a number of times to let us know that she was still working on our issue. Last weekend, with temperatures slated to drop into single digits, she went to her supervisor, and they pushed through emergency shelter paperwork to put my family and the family that lives upstairs up in a motel over the weekend. On Monday, she and I began separate rounds of phone calls. By the time I reached the gas company to see if I could put the gas in my name, the city attorney had already called them and laid out the situation to them. They agreed that as long as there was no outstanding account under my name, they could turn on heat to the apartment in my name without requiring payment of the outstanding bill ($5,200) in my landlord's name. In the meantime, the city had also contacted several other resources, including a new Housing Resources non-profit that is working hand-in-hand with the city to address situations like ours, where the ownership of the home isn't clear. The organization works with neighborhood non-profits and community development corporations to preserve tenancy in houses that are in any stage of foreclosure. Their goal is to prevent homelessness and to prevent loss of value to other homes in the neighborhood when a house is left vacant. In some cases, they've lent money to the CDCs to make necessary repairs to homes, have facilitated purchases of homes by non-profits who then take on managing the property, and intervene in situations like mine, where the landlord has just walked away leaving tenants in a lurch. I've also been assured by both the city and by this corporation that if the landlord or the mortgage company attempts to evict me, they'll represent me in court to be sure that all of my rights are respected, and that if either of them attempt to collect rent from me for any month that I was without utilities, or that I have paid for the heat, they will stand with me in court. We spend a lot of time on here complaining about the shortcomings of government. I figured it would be nice to give credit when it works for the people (in this case, me ).