I refer to her book, "The Two Income Trap".

Some people throw a tarp over it and bags of water around the edge to hold the tarp in place, which is a death trap if a kid were to fall in, they would be surrounded by the tarp.

Our bank will let us use trapped equity for down payments by cross-collateralizing a property where they hold the first-- (which carries its own risk) but for us that has been worthwhile.

I had no interest in speaking with anyone simply because I felt trapped in the room within 10 minutes. 

I stand by that and just because you wan t to ignore or limit the returns earned by money not trapped in dead equity does not change the validity of my statement.

What about the trapped equity of about $32K?

I feel trapped at my age.

Let’s assume your ARV of $30k is correct and your refinance is at 75% LTV (you may be able to get 80% LTV) then you will trap $7.5k for an entire additional detached unit.  

That makes sense in general for investment REITs but not when the risk is so far from an adequate return for such a liquidity trap.

I’ve had that before (complete with sewer worms/drain flies those buggers are nasty) and solved it by pouring a bunch of salt, baking soda and white vinegar down there, letting that sit overnight then boiled water in some huge pots and poured it down the drain several times as well as cleaned out the p trap, disposer etc.