Carmen Blohm and Elias Olmeta bought their home on Hunt Road in Peterborough in 2012. Since then, the space has housed Blohm and Olmeta with their children, Blohm’s parents for a time, and after a large renovation, her sister’s family now lives in the.
The plight of perfect strangers has always pulled on the heartstrings of Hope Pettegrew.As a 20-year volunteer for the Monadnock Area Transitional Shelter, Pettegrew has seen her fair share of stories about people down on their luck. But there’s one.
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Nowhere to go: Family searches for new home after mid-pandemic eviction
Melissa French and her family were evicted from their Peterborough home so their landlord could renovate. Staff photo by Abbe Hamilton
Melissa French and her family found a new home about a month after being evicted. Staff photo by Abbe Hamilton
Melissa French, of Peterborough. Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021 Staff photo by Abbe Hamilton
Melissa French’s family never quite bounced back from the 2008 housing crisis.
They spent the past decade in tenuous housing situations before finding an affordable place to live in Peterborough in 2015. The stability allowed French to put down roots for the first time in years, even joining the Monadnock Area Transitional Shelter (MATS) board in 2018, but she was forced to face the region’s grim rental market once again this year when she received an eviction notice from their landlord, who wanted the house empty by April so he could renovate and sell.
Published: 2/24/2021 4:35:46 PM
Melissa French’s family never quite bounced back from the 2008 housing crisis. They spent the past decade in tenuous housing situations before finding an affordable place to live in Peterborough in 2015. The stability allowed French to put down roots for the first time in years, even joining the Monadnock Area Transitional Shelter (MATS) board in 2018, but she was forced to face the region’s grim rental market once again this year when she received an eviction notice from their landlord, who wanted the house empty by April so he could renovate and sell. It took an exhaustive monthlong search and crowdsourcing funds to move and pay down some credit card debt, but she finally secured a rental in Dublin to move to in April with her husband, three kids, and a cat. To French, her experience highlighted the serious consequences of the Monadnock region’s lack of affordable housing.