We’ve been talking about finding a house for $30,000 in the city somewhere from which to infiltrate and help the neighborhood.  I know that it’s hard to believe that such a thing exists.

So where do we find a house for so cheap?  This is 2008 after all.

The three rules of real estate work both ways:  Location, location, location.

The key to finding a $30,000 house is flexibility.  Fortunately for us, we desire to be in the worst part of the city.

$30,000 houses are in neighborhoods that tend to show up on the news.  They’re in neighborhoods where most of my friends and family (no offense) wouldn’t stop to buy a Coke.

Instead they’d use phrases like, “Wrong exit!  Honey, roll up your window, lock the doors.  Green light.  Green light.  Yellow Light!  I’m going!”

Against all sound advice we’re attempting to place ourselves in the worst area possible.  These are the people that we feel most called to help.

As of late, we’ve found that the best things happen when we take steps against all sound advice.

$30,000 houses do exist.  Fortunately, Columbus is a fairly safe city.  The news really has to try hard to come up with stories.

I worked at NBC for a year, I have a fairly good sense of the way that the news searches for and inflates things.  The scarier the stories are the better ratings.

Generally, bad things happen to people that are involving themselves in bad things.  Violence, in Columbus at least, is usually not random.

Location, location, location.  Columbus is a city with a lot of very old neighborhoods within the city, and a lot of blooming suburbs.

That means that the money has moved out of the city to the suburbs, and lower income people have taken over these magnificent old houses.  Without the money to properly maintain them, many of them are falling apart.

Old, crumbling houses in declining neighborhoods equal good deals for us.

Don’t get me wrong, our location choices are not a result of the price of houses.  We feel called to be a part of the lowest-income neighborhoods in Columbus, whether we buy a house, rent an apartment, or set up a tent in a vacant lot.

Regardless of the price of houses, these are the neighborhoods of which we desire to be a part.  The price of houses is just a bonus.

$30,000 houses do exist.  We simply have to be willing to go to the right block.

Location, location, location.