Charlotte Kreutz and her husband, Tom, own an 1877 Victorian home in downtown Jersey City, New Jersey.

The couple first purchased the property in 1995 for $166,000. With a child on the way, the couple decided to rent out the top floor of the four-story home to help pay the mortgage and for some additional income.

After years of relatively “easy, simple living,” Kreutz lost her job in 2018. Around the same time, the home’s property taxes skyrocketed. “When we bought the house, they were $8,000,” said Kreutz of the taxes. After a city assessment, “they went up almost immediately to about $24,000.”

To make ends meet, Kreutz decided to list a room in the house on Airbnb. “I had been thinking about doing an Airbnb, but all of a sudden it was critical to do an Airbnb because we needed a lot of money to keep paying the property taxes,” she said. “So that’s what I did.”

To hear the rest of Kreutz’s story, click the audio player above.

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