Divorce, foreclosure, and lawsuits. "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition"
may have given well-deserving families a chance to start fresh in their dream home,
but life still found a way to wreak havoc on some of the recipients.
The Oatman family seemed like the perfect candidates for a home makeover
and fresh start. Debbie Oatman was a single mother raising four sons,
three of whom were adopted. Two of her adopted sons were diagnosed with HIV, and a mold issue
in the family's home was a major selling point for the Oatmans to have their home renovated.
In 2007, the family's deteriorating home was replaced with a brand new
one that featured luxury amenities, such as new appliances, furniture,
and granite countertops. Unfortunately for the Oatman family, the home
makeover could not repair the deteriorating relationships between Debbie and her sons.
In a 2011 interview with Times Union, Debbie's son Kevin said:
"I honestly thought things would change after we moved into the house and it would
make everything better. She was happy and excited for maybe the first week,
and then it was back to the same old garbage."
According to Kevin, his mother was prone to "outbursts."
"You okay?"
"I'm just overwhelmed."
The paper reported that 22 incident reports had been filed by local law enforcement at the
Oatman home between 1997 and 2010. By 2011, Kevin and his brother Brian had left home
after becoming estranged from Debbie. Debbie's ex-husband, Joe Gaitan, told the publication:
"The house didn't change her. She's still her plain old nasty self."
In 2004, the Higgins children lost their mother and father within 10 weeks of each other,
leaving all five siblings orphaned. The siblings were taken in by the Leomiti family,
who had previously been the children's neighbors and who belonged to the same church.
The Leomiti family had three children themselves,
so the addition of the Higgins family doubled the occupants in their home.
Within a matter of weeks after the "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" crew
replaced the three-bed, two-bath home with a nine-bedroom mansion, the Higgins children left,
according to the Seattle Times. The siblings alleged that the Leomitis created a, quote,
"orchestrated campaign" to drive out the Higginses by using "race-based remarks" to "degrade and
insult" the children. After leaving the brand new home, the Higgins children hired a lawyer
to file a lawsuit against the Leomiti family and ABC for damages on allegations of, quote,
"fraud, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and breach of contract." The Leomitis
family reportedly disputed the claims, and ABC had the breach of contract claims dismissed entirely.
After the siblings left the home that had been built to accommodate their new living
situation, they reportedly ended up living apart from one another at friends' homes,
according to the eldest Higgins sibling, Charles. He wrote in court documents:
"We were promised a home. They broke that promise."
Nine-year-old Kassandra Okvath nominated the cancer ward she
had spent time at for a makeover from "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" in 2005.
"Let's get this hospital painted, and make it a better place."
Her story inspired the show's producers to renovate the Okvath family home
in addition to the hospital ward as an added surprise.
At the time of filming, the Okvath family was renting the home they lived in.
Nichol Okvath, Kassandra's mother, told Deseret News:
"We wanted her to know what having a home is."
The show's producers managed to buy the home from the Okvath's landlord
and transferred ownership to the family. The final makeover
transformed the 1,800-square-foot rental into a six-bedroom mansion.
Although the family didn't need to make home payments, the utility bills and property taxes
soon became too great for the Okvaths to handle. According to the Deseret News, the monthly utility
bills for the house jumped from $500 to $1,200 and the property taxes quintupled. In 2008, the house
went into foreclosure and the Okvaths had to sell two of their vehicles to cancel the auction sale.
By 2009, the Okvaths had put the house up for sale — after failing to sell it two years
earlier — lowering the original asking price from $1.8 million to $800,000, and then finally selling
at $540,000. The Arizona Republic reported in 2010 that the Okvath parents had split.
After the death of her husband, Arlene Nickless won a home makeover for her and her three sons.
Her late husband, Tim, had just passed away after a seven-year fight against hepatitis C,
which he was thought to have contracted from a contaminated needle while working as a nurse.
The "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" crew rebuilt the family home, hoping to give the Nicklesses
a fresh start free of charge. The Lansing State Journal reported that state and banking officials
reduced the home's original mortgage from $140,000 to $30,000 and significantly lowered the interest
rate as well. After the makeover, however, the home's annual taxes increased from $2,000 to
$7,500 in just a year. A car accident in 2010 set Arlene back, making it more difficult for
her to make her mortgage payments, and from then on, it became impossible for Arlene to catch up.
By 2017, the house had been foreclosed on, and the family had to leave.
In an interview with the Lansing State Journal, Arlene told reporters that she
had planned to build a memorial garden for Tim and open up a camp for grieving
children. After her community came together to build her dream house,
Arlene had wanted to find a way to show her appreciation. She said:
"I feel bad because so many people came together to help us.
I know I shouldn't feel like I let them down, but I do."
Larry and Melissa Beach raised and fostered over 85 children, according to the Houston Chronicle.
After Hurricane Ike destroyed their family home,
the couple found themselves living with 15 children in a single family FEMA trailer.
In 2010, "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" chose the Beach family as recipients of a brand new
home. The crew built an eight-bedroom home with enough space for the couple
and the children to live comfortably. Soon after the home was built, however,
the couple lost their 2-year-old daughter, Mercy, after she suffered a seizure.
Larry and Melissa decided that they would no longer participate as foster parents.
As the older children grew up and left the house, the couple found the increasing
property taxes too much for them to keep up with. Larry told the Houston Chronicle:
"It's costing us more to live here than it would to sell it."
The Beach family struggled to sell their massive home and eventually
lowered the asking price from $700,000 to $535,000. Larry told a reporter in 2013:
"We are torn. The community put a lot into this house and that's
really the conflict we have struggled with."
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