Dwight and Callie sit by the fireplace at home.Dwight Butler was a highly skilled and highly paid steel-worker in Maryland who traveled a lot with his work. After visiting Oregon, he liked it so well, he settled into a well-paying local job and bought a house.
All was well until he was knocked off a scaffold. The disabling injury he received prevented him from returning to his work. Without his former salary, Butler took steps to adjust his mortgage from a variable to a fixed rate. Because a vision problem made it difficult for him to read clearly, he didn’t understand the adjustment made was not a favorable one.
“I didn’t see trouble ahead until I started falling further and further behind in my house payments and I was getting threatening letters,” he said. “Instead of the 1st of the month, I paid on the 15th and the next month it would be the 18th. I could see I needed help and I didn’t want to lose my home. A friend told me to call Community Services Consortium to see if they could help me. I called.”
Karen Ramsden from CSC Emergency Services entered the picture. She helped Butler set up a budget. “I followed it,” he said. “She was a really good person to work with. Probably the most important thing I did was quit using credit cards; in fact I cut up my credit cards. She also put me in touch with Jon Polansky from mortgage counseling at CSC’s Housing department."
“Jon had a plan, although there were no guarantees. We called the bank and we pursued my mortgage problems. It took just about a year of me calling every week and not giving up. I finally got a mortgage that I could afford. It was just about half of what I was paying before. "
All was well until he was knocked off a scaffold. The disabling injury he received prevented him from returning to his work. Without his former salary, Butler took steps to adjust his mortgage from a variable to a fixed rate. Because a vision problem made it difficult for him to read clearly, he didn’t understand the adjustment made was not a favorable one.
“I didn’t see trouble ahead until I started falling further and further behind in my house payments and I was getting threatening letters,” he said. “Instead of the 1st of the month, I paid on the 15th and the next month it would be the 18th. I could see I needed help and I didn’t want to lose my home. A friend told me to call Community Services Consortium to see if they could help me. I called.”
Karen Ramsden from CSC Emergency Services entered the picture. She helped Butler set up a budget. “I followed it,” he said. “She was a really good person to work with. Probably the most important thing I did was quit using credit cards; in fact I cut up my credit cards. She also put me in touch with Jon Polansky from mortgage counseling at CSC’s Housing department."
“Jon had a plan, although there were no guarantees. We called the bank and we pursued my mortgage problems. It took just about a year of me calling every week and not giving up. I finally got a mortgage that I could afford. It was just about half of what I was paying before. "
Help didn’t stop there; Polansky put Butler in touch with CSC’s Housing Rehabilitation program where he successfully applied and qualified to have plumbing and roofing work on his house done. Polansky also put him in touch with an agency he could trade work for firewood to heat his home.
“CSC has done a lot for me, they helped me save my home, fix it and heat it. All of the people were so good to work with, Karen, Jon, Kathy and Scotty, I can’t thank everyone and CSC enough,” he said.
Butler gives back to the community as a board member of FISH in Albany. He works part time for OSU taking tickets to athletic events “I like to work," he says I’ve worked since the age of 12.” He lives with his dog, Callie.
