What would you do if a single repair bill threatened to take down everything you’d spent a decade building — and you were too anxious to even open your banking app to see how bad it really was?
That’s where Clint Yarbrough was in October 2025. He’d read a story I published earlier that year about a Houston mother who navigated HUD’s housing repair assistance program after her plumbing failed. He sent a brief email to our publication — just two sentences: “This is basically my life right now. Can I talk to someone?”
I called him back the same week. When I sat down with Clint Yarbrough in person at a diner near his home in San Antonio’s Westside neighborhood in January 2026, he ordered black coffee and spent the first ten minutes apologizing for his story not being “dramatic enough.” It was plenty dramatic.
A Business Owner Who Was Running Out of Options
Clint, 39, has operated Yarbrough Groundworks — a one-man landscaping operation — since 2018. In a good month, he clears around $3,100 after expenses. In a slow month, closer to $2,200. He bought his 1,100-square-foot home in 2019 for $141,000, a modest bungalow built in 1987 in a neighborhood his neighbors affectionately call “the real San Antonio.”
He’s been raising his 13-year-old son, Marcus, alone since 2022, when he and his ex-partner separated. A child support order exists — $480 a month — but his ex, who does seasonal construction work, has paid it exactly twice in three years. Clint told me he stopped expecting it.
Marcus attends an after-school program that costs $340 a month — necessary because Clint’s jobs often run until 5:30 or 6 p.m. After mortgage, utilities, groceries, truck insurance, and the after-school program, Clint estimated he had roughly $280–$400 left each month, if nothing went wrong.
In September 2025, something went wrong.
The Repair Bill That Broke the Budget
A section of Clint’s roof — the back-left corner over Marcus’s bedroom — had been showing soft spots since spring. Clint had patched it twice himself with roofing tar from Home Depot, spending about $60 each time. By September, the patch failed during a heavy rain, and water came through the ceiling fast enough to soak Marcus’s mattress.
Two roofing contractors came out. The first quoted $9,200. The second quoted $8,400. Both said the decking underneath had rotted and the entire back slope needed replacement, not patching.
“I remember standing in Marcus’s room with a towel on the floor,” Clint told me, “and I thought, okay, I need to look at my account. And then I didn’t look at it for three weeks.” He laughed when he said it, but not like something was funny. More like someone releasing pressure from a valve that had been closed too long.
That avoidance is something I’ve heard from nearly every financially stressed person I’ve interviewed over the years. The anxiety of not knowing feels safer, momentarily, than the certainty of bad news. But Clint knew what the number was anyway — approximately $312.
What He Found When He Finally Asked for Help
After reading my earlier piece, Clint started Googling housing assistance programs in Bexar County. What he found surprised him. The City of San Antonio’s Neighborhood Services Department administers a Housing Rehabilitation Program that provides low-interest and forgivable loans to income-eligible homeowners for critical repairs — roofs, plumbing, electrical, HVAC.
The program is funded in part through HUD’s HOME Investment Partnerships Program. According to USA.gov’s benefits portal, HOME-funded programs are among the most widely available homeowner assistance resources in the country, yet they remain chronically underutilized because eligible households simply don’t know they exist.
Clint’s gross household income for 2025 — approximately $34,800 — placed him at roughly 47% of San Antonio’s Area Median Income for a two-person household. The program’s income ceiling was 80% AMI. He qualified.
The application process wasn’t fast, and it wasn’t simple. Clint had to produce two years of tax returns, proof of homeownership, a current mortgage statement, and documentation of the repair need — including the contractor quotes. As a self-employed person, pulling together income documentation meant gathering Schedule C forms and 1099s, which took him about two weeks.
The Gap Between Help Available and Help Received
Not everything worked out perfectly — and Clint was clear about that when I pressed him. The $6,000 award didn’t cover the full $8,400 repair. He had to come up with $2,400 out of pocket, which he scraped together by taking on four extra weekend jobs in January, earning roughly $1,800, and borrowing $600 from his sister in Austin.
He also learned, after approval, that his aging HVAC unit — which a contractor had flagged as a secondary concern — wasn’t covered under the current award cycle. He’s been told he can reapply in the next fiscal year for that repair, which is estimated at $3,800.
There’s a broader pattern here that I’ve seen repeatedly in my reporting. Self-employed people — especially those running small trade businesses — frequently disqualify themselves mentally from government assistance before they ever apply. They conflate business assets with personal wealth. They assume that having commercial equipment or a work vehicle means they’re “doing fine” by the government’s standard. Often, that assumption is wrong.
According to IRS.gov’s credits and deductions guidance, self-employed individuals are also frequently eligible for tax credits — including the Child Tax Credit and the Child and Dependent Care Credit — that can meaningfully offset costs like Marcus’s after-school program. Clint hadn’t claimed the Dependent Care Credit in 2024 because he didn’t know it applied to after-school programs for children under 13. His tax preparer caught it for the 2025 return, which resulted in an additional $480 credit.
What Clint Wants Other People in His Position to Know
When I asked Clint what he wished he’d known sooner, he didn’t hesitate. He said the system isn’t designed to find you — you have to find it. And that finding it means accepting that you need help, which is harder than filling out any form.
He also pointed out something I found worth reporting directly: the City of San Antonio’s housing program had a waitlist when he applied. He was told processing could take 90 days or longer. His actual approval came in 47 days, which a program coordinator attributed to the completeness of his application. Having every document ready on submission day — two years of tax returns, the contractor quotes, mortgage statement, proof of residency — made a measurable difference.
For families who aren’t sure where to start, the federal government’s Benefits.gov portal allows users to search by state and household type to identify programs they may qualify for, including HUD-funded repair assistance, SNAP, Medicaid, and more. It’s not a perfect tool, but it’s a legitimate starting point that costs nothing to use.
As of early April 2026, Marcus’s bedroom has a new roof over it. Clint still has the HVAC issue pending, still receives no child support, and still sometimes avoids his bank app. But he also told me something that stayed with me after I left the diner.
Clint’s story isn’t a fairy tale. He’s still financially stretched, still navigating a system that requires persistence most exhausted single parents don’t have in reserve. But he found something real — and the difference between finding it and not finding it was one email to a publication, and the willingness to ask.
That’s worth something, even when the numbers are still tight.
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