Could the 15 year old find a classmate's family that could take him as a boarding student? You'd need 3 years tops, right? Might be worth asking around, you might find a kind soul who has room and would give you a deal.
I have property in Brooklyn. I could possibly take on the older kid for 12 months, rent free. There's already a family living there that I'm letting stay there because they have young kids. Floppo would have to be willing to separate his family though. Also the kid would have to see if he could mesh with a family of strangers with young kids. And he'd have to figure out the other two years on his own. I can't help out an entire family of four though. Also with no practical end date in mind. The older kid, clearly he needs three years, so there's an end date, and teenage boys don't need much and can adapt.
I used to be a landlord, and I got out of rental property a long time ago. I don't know this specific situation honestly, but it's not an easy job or side job by any measure. But I understand the dynamic though. To take less in rent but have a situation you don't need to deal with very much. The pandemic also hit a lot of smaller level landlords very very very hard. Also a lot of people with rental property had their other business interests tank. Lots of people essentially ended up being financially massacred out there. Back when I registered on these forums in 2006, there were simply more people posting and more working class people participating. Sometimes I genuinely don't think many of you ( not all but far too many), the consistent regular posters left, understand the basic working class American. I'm talking about the people whom are paycheck and a half away from being homeless.
My place in Beacon Hill right now is empty, but that's Boston. My first inclination is to offer 6 months, to let Floppo find his footing in a new city, but part of the dynamic here is I'm not sure his wife will leave. So I'm taking the perspective of a business person, an employer and also someone who used to be a landlord. I'm past the point in my life where I want to be landlord, so I don't charge rent to people if I help them out. Six months isn't going to break me, I'm not living there right now. I'm not inclined to see an 11 year old be homeless. Or potentially homeless. But if the wife isn't working ( for whatever reason) and there's a resistance against "scut work", I don't think she'd want to leave after six months are over. Even if I changed that and offered massively reduced rent ( another logistical headache to be honest) , I don't see someone taking that tone is also going to be someone who will budge.
So that's another hurdle here that's going to be unspoken but an open reality. Anyone who might rent to Floppo is going to want to know the financial situation. The wife doesn't work and doesn't have a stable career. If something happens to Floppo, do they have to kick out a mother and her young kid too? Also while I'm not an architect, I'm an employer and I've had to deal with architects in my life and deal with people who left that industry. The schooling is very tough, very competitive and the average one doesn't get paid very much at all. A lot of them get laid off and fired all the time and many struggle to find regular work, part of the consideration is that the companies are also trying to stay afloat too. It's just a very tough industry. So that's a consideration that other people are going to look at quietly in their heads. If I give Floppo six months, just so he can find work and build up enough savings to set up a new deposit, first and last months rent, etc, etc, what if he can't find work? Or work that will actually support a family of four on his own in Boston? Then some of the lawyers here will start rabbling up about looking for some loophole to squeeze out more time by making things difficult for me. I'm a lawyer and, predictably, I know what nearly all lawyers do. How they think. How they hunt. How they scheme. No good deed goes unpunished in front of a lawyer.
People are not inclined naturally to throw kids out on the street. So one of the first things I do with people is assess their potential threat to sue. For anything. When potential landlords meet Floppo and his wife, they are going to mentally doing a checklist to see gauge, from first impression, on how much maintenance will these people be and what is their likelihood to sue or drag lawyers into any dispute. Now many of the remaining regular posters here are lawyers, so it's not within their framework, most of them, to see legal wrangling as a big deal. But the majority of landlords out there are NOT lawyers. There are solid decent landlords out there who will turn away anyone seen as too much risk/effort. If I see a potential family, and the wife doesn't work, and let's say she has a lot of expensive stuff, and just sensing the tone and measure of the entire dynamic, I might pull back. So would many other people.
I'm not here to insult Floppo's wife. ( Other people here are clearly doing that and they are doing it for sport, no wonder so many good posters left the forums in all the years I was gone ) But I am saying many people are putting themselves in Floppo's shoes and NOT in the shoes of others out there who might be able to help his family out a little. His wife not working, for whatever reason, is a personal matter internal to his family. But it stops being a personal matter to a potential landlord. Then it becomes a risk assessment. So the wife getting work immediately, will not only bring in income, but it will make the potential options for finding a new place far easier.
I could possibly offer the older kid, the 15 year old, 12 months rent free, a single room, in Brooklyn. I would consider a gesture of that magnitude to be pretty generous in my book. It's hard to say because part of that would be meeting the entire Floppo family and the kid and them everyone meeting the existing people staying there already, etc, etc. I'm naturally inclined to help kids. Part of that is no one lifted a single finger for me as a kid. I've been there and I wish that upon no one's kids. I carried that burden all my life, the legacy of how I grew up. There's a part of me that wants better for kids today, even kids not my own. I'm not inclined however to help someone maintain their lifestyle. That's just straight talk.
This is a pretty tough situation. A lot of complexity. What I will say is this, no matter what happens moving forward, I would suggest Floppo not talk about it much. In front of his family, just say everything is fine and work the problem. The last thing that is going to do any good is Floppo showing any kind of stress, fear, doubt or any indication that he doesn't have an answer. That's not fair, but it's how it works. If Floppo starts going on about this at his work now, or with people he's known locally, etc, etc, that's only going to hurt him in the end. Saying stuff here in the forums is as little different. But this is effectively personal dirty laundry, i.e. family stuff. Better to keep it in house and to isolate out the expected fear/doubt from his wife and kids. If someone says that's not fair, well it's not fair. That's the price of being the head of a household.
