ELYRIA — Catherine Taylor can’t help but cry when she reminisces about her parents — a middle-aged, childless couple who adopted her as a baby and raised her as their own.

As she walks slowly around the Mussey Avenue home they left her — her pace slowed by debilitating arthritis and two very bad knees — she recalls stories about growing up with Revis and Fannie Jenkins, who couldn’t read, write or drive, but who always had enough on hand to share with others.  

Taylor, 53, has struggled mightily to hang onto the house that she inherited after her mother’s death in 1984, but it looks like the long fight is over: On Aug. 20, her home will go up for sheriff’s sale, foreclosed on by the county because she couldn’t pay a $1,622.62 tax bill from 2005.

“I love my mom and dad, and I’ve cried for a long time,’’ Taylor said Thursday. “I feel like I’ve let them down. This house is paid for, and they loved it. We always had people living with us — my dad could not stand to see people do without. We had whole families living with us in a two-bedroom.’’

Fixup took all her money

Taylor’s struggles started to mount years ago, when officials from the city ordered her to fix her aging home.

She was taken to court in 2004 for housing code violations — she needed new windows and her porch overhang was rickety — and Elyria Municipal Court Judge Lisa Locke Graves told her she’d waive $200 in fines and 30 days in jail if Taylor would fix up the house or sell it before August 2005.

So Taylor set out to repair it — taking out more than $6,000 in loans to bring the 108-year-old house up to code.

But paying on that loan every month out of her $680 disability check didn’t leave money for much else, and she fell behind on her property taxes.

County records show she made a tax payment in 1996, and then nothing until 2000. She paid again in 2001 and 2002, but then failed to make another payment until 2005.

In January, the county treasurer’s office sent her a notice that she needed to pay her tax bill or face foreclosure, but Taylor said she just didn’t have the money.

She went looking for help at various agencies, but none was available.

BRUCE BISHOP / CHRONICLE

Catherine Taylor outside her home. With her, from left, are Stacey Fernengel and Amanda Davis of Legal Aid and Taylor’s niece, Angie Stover.

“I couldn’t pay the taxes. I was paying for this,” she said, waving at the upgrades to her house.

Finally — with a credit card in hand — she showed up at the county office on July 15, intent on paying her bill even though she wasn’t sure how she’d make the payments. But the county doesn’t take credit cards, and Taylor didn’t realize she could get the credit card company to send her a check from her account.

At that point, a desperate Taylor contacted the Lorain County Legal Aid Society and a representative told her how to get a check from her credit card.

But, by the time Taylor had the credit-card check, the foreclosure process was under way. To stop it, she needed to pay another $2,000 to cover fees.

She had found the money but it couldn’t buy her more time.

“We had the credit card company send her checks so we could put the whole deal behind us, but nobody was waiting for Catherine. When we got them, it was too late,” said Amanda Davis, an attorney with Lorain County Legal Aid Society.

Davis said county officials were too inflexible and that they should have worked with Taylor.

“She wanted to make these repairs. She tried. It’s not like she just sat there without trying,” Davis said.

But Katie Keys, Lorain County chief deputy treasurer, said the county regularly sets up payment plans and does its best to work within the parameters of a person’s income to keep them in their homes. Taylor never called her for help.

Taylor also could have sought a Homestead Exemption, which lessens the tax bill for the elderly and the disabled, Keys said.

“We are not in the real-estate business,” Keys said. “We are in the tax business. We would have been happy to put her on a payment plan. We don’t want her house.’’

Lorain County Treasurer Dan Talarek echoed the sentiment and said his office has been very creative at figuring out ways to get taxes paid by those with little income.

And while he said he’d love to erase the court costs involved in the foreclosure, he doesn’t have that authority. But certainly, a judge could do that on Taylor’s behalf, he said.

“The court costs are problematic,’’ he said. “I just wish something could have been done a little sooner. But the law is the law, and I can’t change things.’’

Where will she go?

All that means little right now to the divorced Taylor, who is resigned to the fact that she’s going to have to walk away from the home where she was raised.

There isn’t a lot left inside the home to remind her of her parents — both of whom died at age 93, four years apart —except for the house itself, she said.

Oh, she can walk in the kitchen and know that she’s treading on her mother’s turf. Her mother used to shoo everyone out — mealtime was hers, and she wasn’t to be bothered, Taylor said.

And the basement, that’s where her father’s wine-making stuff still sits. He used to go and pick blackberries himself — even after he got older — and make wine from them. But he never drank it, she said, laughing. He just gave it away.

In their later years, her parents stayed in that home and she took care of them, making certain neither ended up in a nursing home.

And she darn near raised her own sons there, too.

She said she devastated her parents by getting pregnant at 17, which forced her to quit school. They so wanted her to get a good education — something they didn’t have — but none of that mattered when her twins, now 36, were born, she said. Her parents, particularly her father, simply couldn’t do enough for the boys.

“Once they got here, they were his world,” she said.

As for where Taylor will go once someone else owns her home, she cannot say.

She’s trying to rent a home with one of her sons, but that isn’t a given. And her income doesn’t leave a lot of options. She cannot yet apply for Section 8 housing, which would allow her rent to be reduced based on income, because she’s still considered a homeowner. And afterward, if she’s considered homeless, she wouldn’t qualify.

Even if she does become eligible for Section 8 housing, the likelihood of receiving immediate help isn’t likely. Taylor’s name will be added to a waiting list with more than 700 names on it, said Jessica Baggett, managing attorney of the county’s Legal Aid Society.

Taylor, who grew up seeing her family extend help to anyone who needed it, said she simply cannot understand why there isn’t any help available for her in her time of need.

“I think it’s God telling me it’s time to move,” she said.

“I was always told that you reap what you sow. If it were anybody — not just me — why wouldn’t you work with people? Why wouldn’t you work with someone so they can keep their homes?”

Contact Julie Wallace at 329-7155 or jwallace@chroniclet.com.

Contact Jason Hawk at 329-7148 or jhawk@chroniclet.com.

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