Well let me start by saying that I am not nor have I ever been in a gang. I am a stay at home mom of a wonderful 3 year old and we are getting ready to try for a second. My husband and I are about as dull as you can get, we call it "happily bored."

Back in 2006 my husband and I bought the cheapest house we could find in a decent area to raise our soon to be born daughter. It is a cute little house on a quiet street, with little to no traffic. Well it was... Up until about 4 months ago. With the housing market crash our neighborhood has been bought up by investors. Our home (if you read my other hub on shortselling it goes into more detail) still has over 168k on the loan. Other homes in the neighborhood are now selling for under 40k. These are being rented out to people (I have NO problem with renting in general!), but these people are over the top.

My husband and I sit outside at night and talk about our days and catch up on a normal basis. This has been a habit of ours for over 8 years, and we love this time together. Well, in doing this we see everything that happens when the sun goes down. Last night we had 2 incidents that took things over the top. I will write about them in order, and any tips or suggestions are more than welcome, they are wanted!

1. We have 2 homes that are being rented one of which is being renovated right now. The tenants have been kicked out so they are working on it. The second house, is rented by another group who I understand is trying to get on their feet, and horribly they were robbed last night. They thought it was by the group in the first house (2 houses down from theirs), so the guy who lives there came out and was yelling beyond anything I have heard. He was threatening to shoot up everyone and everything, talking about his gun, and what was stolen.

Now I feel very bad that he was robbed and that things of sentemental value were taken, but threatening the neighborhood is not the way to address those issues. I believe the cops were called, but never saw one. The guy continued to yell for the next hour or so, he did appologize when he found out the people he thought lived there didn't anymore, but it was out of control.

2. About 2AM we hear 6 shots. Yes, gun shots. They were VERY close and after waiting for a little while we went out to see if our cars were hit, we did not go out right away, well because they definately had guns. We did not see anyone, and did not see any cops for the next hour or so that we were up.

Tonight I was sitting outside and a police car pulled up. Over 20 hours after either incident. The officer went nextdoor where the house had been shot 6 times. He was talking to our neighbors (who are Cambodian, and unknown to us had been in a gang previously). We have done many things with these neighbors and knew that one of their sons had had a rough patch but had no idea how bad it was. Clearly it was worse than we knew or have thought of for the past 3 years.

Now, we are already in the process of a short sale. The house is completely remodeled and we put in over 30k of our own money to get the home livable over the past 3 years. This does not leave us with much left over, and with the short sale we cannot get a loan (nor could we anyway due to the nature of our jobs), AND our neighbors are literally being shot at.

So what should we do? We really can't afford to move, part of the short sale was so we could put away some money to buy something else, but what good is that if someone makes a mistake and shoots our house? Or if we are sitting outside when they decide they want to shoot our neighbor's house and take us out just to make sure they are not seen? Clearly we cannot sit on the front porch anymore, we know that! But what are our other options? We are so inside the box right now I just don't know what to do or think.