I agreed to pay for the renovation with no interest credit cards.

It is also possible that either the folks in charge of the station, or the prosecutor have set a policy of not wanting to pursue non violent crimes, or even not paying attention to crimes against folks who are not local residents. 

If you tell the IRS it is an expense, it is no longer income.W2 income does not use a 2 year average for your base pay! 

If any need for boots on the ground ever exists for you, I would be happy to assist or brainstorm.

Perhaps we "buy" the house from them for the $328K balance to satisfy the lender and don't need a large down payment and then have a separate contract with them to pay $x per month until we've paid the full $172K amount.

Subtract $2300 for one unit and they're paying $1400+expenses to live in a $2300 month apartment and area.

Now, you need to figure out how to find deals and pay for them.

The husband had a good paying job that had a slow season where he would collect unemployment a few months per year.

Is it better to keep adding equity by doing work on the houses while I'm renting them then refinance to recover the initial down-payment to reinvest into another property or to pay down the heloc?

.-- Or, what we do is offer the free rent AFTER & ONLY if they pay their first 3 months of rent on time to earn it.4) Lower the rent 5% every 2-4 weeks until activity picks up.5) Understand this is the worst time of year to find tenants.-- Starts picking back up end of February when this tenant pool starts getting their income tax refunds and aren't broke anymore.6) Section 8: where is the property being advertised?