After the television crews left town and the attention died down, Victor Marrero and his five sons were left with more than a dream home.
Their five-bedroom house, built by an army of volunteers from the hit TV show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, also came with some hefty bills.
Living on a small pension and staggering under the weight of old debts and new taxes, Marrero said he panicked this week and briefly listed the house for sale.
"I gave up. I gave up out of desperation. I didn't want to lose the house to the taxes," Marrero said. "I felt like there was a lion coming after me."
He reversed course yesterday, in part because Urban Promise Ministries, which donated the land for the house, has right of first refusal on any sale.
"I didn't know it would turn into a circus," Marrero said. "I think I put it up too quick. It's off the market right now. I'm going to see what we can do to keep it."
The TV show handed over the keys to the house, built in less than a week, on Aug. 5, and the episode featuring the Marreros ran in November.
J.S. Hovnanian & Sons, builder of the house, gave the family $59,000 to cover expenses. But Marrero said he quickly burned through the money, paying off debts that stretched back to a 1994 heart operation.
After he became a local celebrity, Marrero said, the collection agencies came calling, threatening to put liens on the house.
Then there were the taxes.
Marrero, who lives on a pension of $939 a month, paid $2,016 in property taxes in November. In February, he wrote out a check for $1,512. On May 1, another $1,512 was due.
And the utilities, he said, cost about $10,000 a year.
"It's too much," said Marrero's son Billy Joe. "We tried taking out lightbulbs and doing other things to save energy, but the house still eats a lot of power."
The Marreros were not the first to win a new house on television only to find they couldn't afford the place.
A Texas family who won a house in a Home and Garden Television sweepstakes were hit with a massive tax bill in 2005. In Kansas City, a family featured on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition had to raise money to keep their house.
A producer from Extreme Makeover said he would not comment on the Marreros' plight.
Victor Marrero and son Billy Joe became unlikely celebrities in early 2007 when the ABC-TV news magazine 20/20 featured them in a program about grinding poverty in Camden.
At the time, the family was living in a roach-infested rowhouse in Camden.
