"Renovation Realities" - Haiti style

Some may be aware of our housing drama from a few facebook posts over the past week. For everyone else, here is the whole “scoop”…

Over the summer, we decided that at the end of our lease we needed to find a place that would be more suitable for the long term. In September, we located and began negotiating a contract on a different house to live in, that is very close to the current guest house.  It takes a long time here to finalize these things, so we got started early. Finally at the end of October, we gave our initial deposit, made a list of the needed repairs (it was an incomplete remodel from earthquake damage) and had the owner sign off his agreement to finish it out. We asked to move into the house by Nov 15^th, while fully prepared to give until the end of the month.

So, November 15^th came & went – NO surprise to us – then we began checking more frequently & found out that little to none of the repairs had been finished. We met again with the owner to find out when it would be done and were promised it would be ready by the end of the month.

Last week we were given notice that the owner of our original house wanted us out immediately. We had signed the rental agreement last year in November, but didn’t move in until Dec 28^th, so weren’t sure exactly when he expected us out, until the ultimatum came. We scrambled and put everything into moving out. Thankfully we had the guest house to fall back on, & no guests scheduled at the time!!

A double move is never ideal, but we find very few GOOD reasons to complain about our life here in comparison to others’.  So began the wait…more visits to the owner …to the house…moments of frustration, rawness & re-evaluation surfaced as other realities that we have been facing here crept in. We went to look at the “progress” which seemed to be picking up, and found more piece-it-together, messy workmanship. Finally we came to our limit. The owner blamed it on his workers, but he owns a hardware store, so we couldn’t figure out why he didn’t have a list of reliable craftsmen.  

On Friday, we decided to see if the owner would discount the remainder of our annual rent and just let us do the rest of the work ourselves. There is a large team coming in early January, so we have to be out of the guest house by then. To add more to the mix, we had developed a plan with World Orphans to house the overflow of this upcoming team (18 high school boys) in our new place, since it is only a few blocks away. This agreement covered our difference in rent for the year. Everything seemed held in the balance with the house timing and ability to pay rent.

That brings us up to today. This morning, we found out what was really going on. The owner has been putting little to no resources into the house repairs, because he wanted us to ask for our deposit back - he admitted to having had an offer and a full advance by another party to rent the place for a year at $5k more than he had agreed to from us. They were also taking it "as is". He said since he didn’t know us, that he figured he would rent it to us for just a year & then push us out with a huge rent increase next year.  After looking all day yesterday at what else was available & the prices for rent, we decided to step out on faith & offer to take it at the agreed upon price with no further repairs. He said that he would honor the initial agreement & since we were going to do the work now, he would (verbally) agree to rent it to us continuing on in the future, rather than pushing us out next year.

Not at all a perfect situation, but we have a deep peace about this house & the potential that it brings for our ministry here. We are excited to see how God’s plans for its use continue to unfold as we move in. There are several interesting ideas in the works…

In the meantime, we now have a monumental task ahead of us. While we have a good amount of remodeling experience, we have never done it here in Haiti! Ted has tiled floors & kitchen countertops, but never bathroom walls. Looking at the current work, it’s not hard to do better, but if anyone who has experience would like to take an impromptu trip down to help out we would gladly welcome it! We’re going to spend the holidays putting our spirit of adventure – and the hundreds of “This Old House” reruns we’ve watched – to the test!  Our own version of HGTV's Renovation Realities, is going down this month, right here in Haiti.

Thank you all for your prayers the past few weeks. It sounds much easier as I type this out, than it has truthfully been for us. Another layer has been stripped away. We continue to be made new every moment here.

Right now we're just glad to have a home to move into before the holidays!

...more "before" photos here.