It's starting to seem impossible without saving up for 20+ years, so I turn to you BP friends...what should my next step be?

It seems impossible but of course, impossible is nothing. 

Definitely go multi-family as finding a cash flowing single family would be near impossible in the area unless you look into student housing in Durham, etc.

These changes are not impossible but will take careful planning and consideration.

However, it is impossible to renovate the entire ugly neighborhood in a few streets, I give up. 

Its almost impossible to know approx how much a seller owes without getting a payoff from the bank, getting authorization to speak with the bank on the sellers behalf or at the very least looking at the most recent statement from the bank/loan servicer. 

Not impossible - some do very well, but it is extremely difficult. 

@Anita MuhammadI do not allow any tenant to smoke / vape etc. not only is the smell impossible to get out but also it’s a fire hazardThe rest is up to you and how you define the lease.

So if the county code states that fuse boxes have to adhere to X" then that's what we need to be done.Now, combing through county codes or even calling the county to find out if there is some code for this might be next to impossible. 

For most of my projects, the full closure isn't that long and it's impossible to predict, so I gave up on getting a full closure permit.