When Denise Chattams lost her Ohio home of 18 years, her family had to split into pairs to stay where they could: a friend’s house and a daughter’s apartment.
The high school teacher, then 55, shared a bedroom with the toddler nephew she’d agreed to raise. Her elementary-aged niece and elderly mother crammed in with a relative. Denise and her mother had agreed to raise the young children to keep them from being adopted by strangers. That decision eventually overwhelmed the family’s finances, leading to foreclosure and bankruptcy.
“I promised my mom I’d make it right,” Denise recalled. To herself, she thought, “I don’t know how.”…