CARIBOU (NEWS CENTER Maine) – Ruby Pelletier and her husband Valdore built a life together in their Caribou home.
“I was so happy,” Pelletier said. “We were so happy!”
Now the 83-year-old could be forced out of her home within the month, because she fell behind on her taxes after her husband’s health declined.
"I leave every day to go to the veterans [home] to feed my husband," she said.
Pelletier said she was so focused on her husband’s failing health and learning to live on her own that she did not realize she was not paying her property taxes. She now owes the city more than $4,000.
After receiving the latest notice that said she would lose her home to foreclosure, she sent them a check with the amount she could pay only to have it denied.
"I felt that I was so insulted to have the $500 check come back to me in the mail,” she said.
City records show a long chain of notices mailed to Pelletier and her children. City Manager Dennis Marker said both Pelletier and her children have refused to pay the amount in full. Marker claimed it has gone on for too long, and the current rules do not allow Pelletier to participate in a payment program.
"We're trying to serve them at the individual level as best we can, but we also have to make sure that we're applying the law uniformly to everybody,” Marker told NEWS CENTER Maine.
Not knowing where else to turn, Pelletier wrote to Governor Paul LePage, a longtime advocate of the issue, to get help.
"These elderly I'm talking about, these are not bad people,” LePage said.
LePage has backed a bill to provide relief to elderly people statewide. He blamed Democrats for stripping that bill and preventing it from moving forward.
The Governor said he has received countless letters from people like Pelletier and will continue to fight for change that would force towns to help.
"There is no reason to allow this to happen,” he said. “There is absolutely no reason that a town would do this."
Opponents of the bill argue that it is an unfair burden on cities and towns, and would create a larger problem.
The City of Caribou has given Pelletier a deadline of June 15 to pay the thousands of dollars she owes. With a fixed income, she said she may be forced to take out a private loan.
"I'm not mad at anybody, I'm just here putting in my time,” she said.
There is no system in place to track how many elderly people are facing foreclosure in Maine. The records are only available at the local level.
NEWS CENTER Maine reached out to the statewide nonprofit, Pine Tree Legal Assistance, that said its attorneys worked on over a dozen cases involving elderly tax foreclosure in the last year alone.