Kicked out of home at 14, teen bought a rundown house for $5 and refused to be defeated

The teenage years are supposed to be one of the best years in a person’s life. Aren’t those the times when we should be carefree, make friends, hang out with those we love, and simply enjoy life the best we can? In theory, yes. But in reality? Teenage years can be extremely difficult for some people, and I’m sure most of us are well-aware of that. The reasons are various. The inability to make friends, to be accepted by the peers, or simply being part of a dysfunctional family.

For a fourteen-year-old teen named Tommy Reed, it was the later.

The moment he reached this milestone, his stepfather decided he no longer belonged in the home. Not only there was no birthday cake, no celebration, no family or friends invited, but he was also delivered the news that changed his life forever. His stepdad told he he needed to move out, right there and then.

The worst part was that Tommy never deserved to be treated like that. He was an incredible young man who did chores around the house, had good grades, and was well-behaved. But because of some reason, sometimes a minor thing like a broken plate, his stepfather despised him. And now that he reached 14, his stepdad believed he could do alone in life, because he was old enough to figure his life out all by himself.

And just like that, Tommy Reed found himself standing behind a slammed door on a cold night in a tiny town in Ohio.

Tommy looked to his mother and prayed for a miracle, a last-minute intervention from the woman who gave birth to him. But she didn’t say anything, not even a single word. And at that moment, her silence hurt him more than his stepfather’s shouting.

Was it even possible for a mother to let her child be treated that way?

What Tommy was left with that night was his backpack, a small flashlight, and $12.63 in his pocket.

He was scared, alone, and had nowhere to go.

He wandered through the streets of the small town for hours.

He walked past the humming gas stations where weary night-shift workers manned the counters. He walked past empty parking lots and the skeletal remains of old factories.

Out of the blue, he was homeless.

Tommy reached the outskirts of his hometown where streetlights became less frequent and weeds began to sprout through the cracked sidewalks.

And that’s when he saw it.

A small house sat by itself at the end of a street no one walked through. The house looked as though it had been abandoned for years. Its roof was sagging in the middle in a rather dangerous way, and the porch itself appeared to lean forward.

All of the windows were already boarded up, and the yard looked like it hadn’t been touched in years.

But something caught Tommy’s eye.

In the yard, there was this piece of wood that said the house was city property, condemned, and the the fee was just $5.

Tommy read that more than once, because he thought it was a joke. How can a house cost just $5?

Well, it turned out it wasn’t a joke after all.

Apparently, the city had this program to try to get rid of houses that are abandoned or whatever. If you’re “insane” enough to take one on and fix it up, you can transfer it for five bucks.

I guess most people would have seen that sign and thought it was like a disaster waiting to happen.

But Tommy didn’t. All this teenager saw at that point was a roof, and more importantly, a place he couldn’t get kicked out of.

Tommy walked into City Hall the first thing in the morning.

He waited in line, and when he reached the front of the line, he took out $5 from his pocket and said, “I want that house.”

The woman behind the counter laughed, and she probably waited for a punchline, but Tommy was d*** serious.

She starred at him for a while and then went through the forms of the government program. She read the papers over and over again, and it didn’t say that the person who wanted to buy the place needed to be of certain age as long as they signed the liability waiver.

She then started making phone calls, a bunch of them, and then other people working in the City Hall came. They all went through the forms once again. Some of them questioned if a 14-year-old could in fact buy that house, but others seemed to be relieved someone was even willing to take that old ruin off the city’s hands.

And just like that, Tommy got himself a house. If you could even call it that.

He was excited, but what he didn’t know was that this purchase won’t fix his problems, at least not right away.

When he returned to the house, he started realizing that it was called a house just on paper, since it definitely didn’t resemble one. At least not one suitable for a human to live in.

The roof leaked, and when it rained, it filled with water, so Tommy had buckets all over the place.

The only place that wasn’t wet was a tiny corner, so Tommy slept there during the night.

The thing about Tommy, however, was that he knew how to fix things. And it wasn’t because he wanted to know it, but because he was the one who did it back home. So, the first thing he did was to try and fix the windows with the scrap wood that was all over the room.

He became obsessed with fixing the place as much as he could.

But then there was another problem. He didn’t attend school during the time, so when the school noticed he was missing, a truant officer came to the house with the school counselor, Mrs. Patterson.

Mrs. Patterson probably believed that she would be dealing with a runaway kid from a bad neighborhood.

What she got, however, was a skinny fourteen-year-old kid doing his best to fix up a house.

There were stacks of salvageable wood, tools that he apparently borrowed from somewhere, and scuff marks on the walls.

Once she realized what was going on, Mrs. Patterson sat down and talked with Tommy instead of contacting child services right away.

Before she knew it, she got him into a vocational work-study program.

He would go to school in the mornings, and then he would be able to learn from real-life wood workers.

Being as bright and as determined as he was, Tommy said yes, and it wasn’t long before he learned a bunch of skills, including carpentry, plumbing, and even some basic electric work. He was willing to learn everything as long as there was someone to teach him.

It did take some time, but things finally started to change for the better. Tommy tried and failed, because he wasn’t that skillful yet, but he did manage to fix some of the basics in the house.

Out of nowhere, the people who lived nearby and knew that house existed but never did anything about it, wanted to help Tommy.

One day, an older man, Mr. Jenkins, approached Tommy. He was carrying a toolbox and said he worked as a carpenter in the past. When he learned about Tommy from a neighbor, he wanted to see it himself how a teenage boy was trying to fix a house on his own.

Mr. Jenkins started visiting Tommy almost daily, and helped him with the work.

For the next four years, Tommy’s place resembled more like a construction site than a real home. There were always tools around, and always something to be fixed. But for Tommy, it was the only place in the world where he felt safe.

Little by little, things fell into place. By the time he was sixteen, he’d managed to get the plumbing working well enough to have running water in the house. A year later, he figured out the electrical system, and the lights stayed on for the first time in his life.

When he graduated from high school at the age of eighteen, he surprised many people by graduating at the top of his class. In his valedictorian speech, he said something that everyone in the room remembered: some people were given a future, but some people had to build one for themselves.

When the city inspectors came in, for who knows which time, they finally gave Tommy thumbs-up. Some of them couldn’t even believe it was the same house they had written off.

Tommy didn’t stop there. Over time, he became one of the youngest licensed foster parents in the state.

Over the years, dozens of teenage boys came and went in that house. Many of them had nowhere else to turn, but Tommy gave them a place to stay. Why? Because he knew firsthand what it was like to be homeless and not loved.