The nameless and the homeless . . .

To recap:

1. We found a place that was too small, but in a good location. And it had no house.
2. We found someone claiming to own it, but after seven years in her car might be crazy.
3. There was a large and growing property tax debt and it might not be too long before the County does something about the debt.
4. We had no money (none) to do anything about any of this. 
5. Other than this stuff, and a feeling that we were maybe heading in the right direction.

Flash forward about two months. We had met with the woman and I had done a bunch more looking around.

It took a few weeks to find the woman that owned the property. To be honest I am not at all sure that finding her was possible. I went online and looked up tax documents, real estate listings, and everything else I could think of. I found out that the property taxes were unpaid for years, the owner was deceased, and that a citation had been issued because of all the trash, but nothing led me into finding out who owned the property. I found a woman's name listed as daughter, but searching for her name led me nowhere. I did a genealogy of the last name in the area, and it looked promising, but wound up a dead end as well. Ultimately I found her through a Oregonian article from the last decade which gave me a business name, from which I found a web site, which I contacted, who had an old email address, which led to finding the woman living in her car for over six years. But the woman we bought the property from a woman that had no way to go so far as gaining any benefit from the property:

1. She had inherited the land, but had no money to file paperwork to transfer the deed into her name so that she could sell it.
2. She had lost everything she owned and was living in her car for years before we found the property.
3. The County was months away from taking title to the land in a tax foreclosure.
4. There had been other people interested in finding her, but all were waiting for the Couty to foreclose so that they could buy it at auction.

So if we hadn't come along, finding the place by accident, she would not have ever received any benefit. If I hadn't been doggedly determined to find out about the place, she would have received no benefit. If we would have walked away, no benefit.

The fact is that we found something we couldn't walk away from for good and bad reasons. The place was too small, no house, etc. . .  But the woman needed help, the land needed help, we needed land, etc . . . So we made the deal, knowing it was a awfully big gamble and that any number of things could happen and we would loose all of our investments. But the risk, along with the benefits of buying the place should all go well, and the side benefit of helping the land and the woman, all added up to a winner if we won, and a bit lesser looser if we lost.

The land needed us.

The woman needed us.

We needed the land.

We could not get out of helping the woman.

All else aside, we couldn't have run away from this whole thing, would have if we could have, but could not. So our stars aligned with hers, we made the deal.