Cassandra Bajak

“I have friends who are very successful and friends who are barely getting by. I’d say our family is in the middle of that, living paycheck to paycheck. My husband is an Army veteran and we have two kids.

“We love our neighborhood. We love our house. We built it 13 years ago and our children were born here. But our property taxes have doubled since then. We’re being taxed out of our home.

“Our mortgage is $1,100 a month and our property taxes plus insurance is $1,500 a month. I was thinking about that a couple weeks ago and it’s basically like we’re renting our home from the government. [The rate] is well over 4 percent of what the house is worth.

“The middle class is just getting squeezed out in Illinois.

“The only reason we would ever leave our home or this state is property taxes, and that’s what’s going to happen. I think our kids will spend one more Christmas here [before we move] to Florida. Taxes are less [there] and schools are the same.

“They’ll miss their friends here. So will we.”

Cassandra Bajak
Crystal Lake, Illinois