“You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

— Samuel Beckett (the other one)

They told me to get married. Then they told me to get a good job. Then they told me to buy a house.

I checked the boxes, though my wife would not appreciate my describing our marriage as one.

In January 2025, we bought our first home together in Chestnut Hill. After years of renting and watching prices rise faster than our savings, we found a modest house within our budget in one of Philadelphia’s most beautiful neighborhoods.

We had a mortgage, a small yard and an address that belonged to us.

We thought we had arrived.

Then came the mice. The old furnace. The cosmetic repairs someone had made to prepare the place for sale. Our dog began her campaign against the original red oak floors. Every few weeks, the house introduced another part of itself that demanded money, patience or both.

Those problems felt honest. A furnace ages. A mouse finds a hole. Dogs scratch floors. I repair what I can and live with what I cannot.

The hardest problem did not live inside the house.

Errors involving our property taxes, deed and homestead exemption compounded into months of Philadelphia bureaucracy. The city attached old tax debt to the property after the sale. During a review, it removed our homestead exemption. My wife and I have different last names, which seemed to confuse the city, though our mortgage company managed it without trouble.

Notices arrived with alarming balances and little explanation. Different offices gave us different instructions. We submitted documents, called numbers, sent emails and waited.

One Friday, I went to the Department of Revenue in person. I waited an hour before a case agent called me back.

As I explained the notices, the missing exemption and months of conflicting information, she ordered DoorDash.

When I finished, she suggested that I email another department and handed me a standard printout explaining how to appeal.

That was the entire appointment.

I had arrived with records, letters, names and dates. I left with another email address and another place in line. The city had created the errors, but we carried the burden of finding them and living with their consequences.

We treat homeownership as the final proof of stability. Work hard. Save money. Get married. Buy property. Build equity.

You have arrived. You are safe now.

But one failed furnace, one lost job, one medical emergency or one clerical error can make that security disappear. I expected the house to quiet my anxiety. Instead, it gave my anxiety new rooms to wander through.

None of this makes me a victim. Owning a home brings extraordinary privilege. I know enough about Philadelphia to recognize the view from where I stand.

For six years, I worked in the city’s homelessness and behavioral health systems. I watched people try to rebuild their lives without savings, transportation, family support or a safe place to sleep. They navigated systems far more complicated than the problems those systems claimed to solve.

My wife and I had a computer, access to Regional Rail and organized records. We could visit government offices, understand the letters and argue our case. We had a locked door waiting for us when the offices closed.

Even with those advantages, we spent months correcting the errors.

That forced me to admit something uncomfortable. The system’s failure did not merely anger me. It surprised me.

I had watched bureaucracy grind down the people I served, yet I assumed that a steady job, an education and a deed placed me on the safer side of the counter. I believed that if I arrived prepared, spoke clearly and carried the right documents, someone would eventually listen.

I mistook my access for proof that the system worked.

A property tax dispute did not teach me what it means to experience homelessness. I never lost my bed or my locked door. But it gave me a glimpse of institutional powerlessness. Something was wrong. I could explain it. Still, no one in front of me could or would fix it.

What happens to someone who cannot take a Friday morning off? What happens to a person who lacks internet access, a printer or a safe place to keep paperwork?

An error may look small from behind a desk. Outside the office, it can become a crisis.

Then, one day, the tax debt disappeared.

The account returned to normal. No one sent a note, offered confirmation or acknowledged the months of fear that had settled into my bones while I tried to understand where to turn next.

The problem simply stopped happening.

Typical Philadelphia closure.

I expected the corrected account to bring relief. Instead, I kept waiting for the next notice, the next repair or the next reminder that the security I thought I had purchased could disappear without warning.

I told myself I could finally exhale once we settled everything.

But nothing ever settles completely.

The furnace will fail. The mice may return. The dog will keep scratching the floors. Another letter may arrive.

That does not excuse incompetence. Gratitude should not excuse neglect, and patience should not require silence. The city should answer for its mistakes. But I cannot make my peace depend on a flawless house, a responsive government or a life without uncertainty.

I had asked the deed to promise something no deed could promise.

The house could shelter us. It could not protect us from fear, loss, change or the ordinary trouble of being alive. It could not make the future hold still.

My wife understood this better than I did. While I imagined liens, lost exemptions and every possible disaster, she remained measured. She helped me separate what had happened from what I feared might happen. Her patience did not make the problem disappear. It kept the problem from consuming our life together.

That was the security I had overlooked.

The account balance did not give it to me. Neither did the mortgage, the deed or the Chestnut Hill address. I found it in knowing that I did not have to carry the uncertainty alone.

I worked hard to reach this place. So did many people who never bought a home. My wife and I made responsible choices, but those choices do not make us more deserving. Homeownership is not proof of character, and homelessness is not proof of its absence.

The people I once served often wanted the things I had begun taking for granted. A door that locked. An address of their own. Somewhere safe to return at night.

Now we have those things. We have air conditioning, even if the furnace has grown old. We have red oak floors, even if our dog keeps leaving her mark on them. We have a yard, a mortgage and a home that asks more of us than we expected.

Most of all, we have each other.

I thought buying a house would end my search for security. Instead, the house showed me where I had found it long before we signed the deed.

Not in a promise that nothing would go wrong.

In the life my wife and I have built together, and in the knowledge that something will come through the door next, we will meet it together.