BY MELISSA SANTOS / CROSSCUT
Originally published May 18, 2021, on Crosscut.com
When Carol Porter filed for bankruptcy in 2015, she didn’t expect she would lose her Issaquah home in the process.
That’s because, for more than a century, Washington law has contained language to protect people’s homes from being sold to pay off their debts.
But the law hasn’t kept up with the state’s rising home prices. As a result, only $125,000 of the equity of Porter’s home was off-limits from her creditors — an amount far shy of what the property was worth.
After Porter’s home was sold as part of her bankruptcy case, she ended up moving out of King County and resettling in Walla Walla, where she now rents an apartment.