This Jersey family is living through a homeowner nightmare

Recent studies show more young people aren't as interested in home ownership as their parents were. For them, the American dream is evolving. Many saw what their parents went through during the economic collapse nearly 10 years ago and how many lost their homes to foreclosure and short sale. They want no part of it.

That's the first thing I thought of when I heard about Mabel Johnson in Irvington. She and her family are living through a home nightmare that began on Saturday. The basement of Mabel's home is being flooded by backed up sewage and she blames the city.

"Feces, everything backed up from the sewer is in my basement," Johnson explained to ABC 7. Everything that you can possibly imagine being in their basement is indeed there. The city says it's not its fault. City officials say the problem is between the main and the house and therefore the homeowner's responsibility. Johnson is disputing this.

Total nightmare.

When I was a kid, the house we lived in in Clark had a problem with the oil heater. As I recall it was that a service tech had improperly installed some sort of nozzle the last time he'd been there. The result was waking up one morning with pain in my lungs and covered in an oily soot. There was a mist through the air of my bedroom and at first I thought the house was on fire.

I ran and woke my family and we found everything, and I mean literally every exposed surface of the home from the carpet to the walls to all the furniture to the ceiling, was coated in this oily soot. It was up our noses, in our lungs as we coughed and gagged it out and called authorities. The entire home needed to be professionally cleaned and restored.

Home ownership can certainly be a nightmare. If you want to let other homeowners know they're not alone when something goes wrong with their houses feel, free to share your worst home nightmare in our comment section below.

— Jeff Deminski