Sonne DeVries & Dan Sheldon

Sonne DeVries & Dan Sheldon

“We searched for a house for about a year. We looked at horrible houses, but we were willing to do the work to build the house into something. This house was a disaster. We did a lot of renovations. We did the whole house.

“We invested a lot into the house, and we enjoyed it for a couple years. Then the taxes ratcheted up.

“You pay a fraction of your house’s value every year, eventually you’re paying more in taxes than you are on the house. And we are. The value of the house has gone down so much.

“The amount of taxes since we’ve been here has nearly doubled. [But] the services haven’t given twice as much value.

“The government doesn’t listen. We pay for them. We’re knocking ourselves out for them. We have a small business that we have worked our butts off to get moving forward. And in Illinois, it’s like they pull you down and pull you down and you keep fighting to get ahead and fighting to get ahead and we just want to get out of the state.”

Sonne DeVries & Dan Sheldon
Algonquin, Illinois

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