The Birnbaum's doorbell rang early one morning and an excited man broke the news. Alfred and Edna Birnbaum, lucky people, had won a $15,000 prefab house raffle ticket. But, they soon found, it takes a heap of money to make a free house a home.
It would cost nearly $1,000 to dismantle it, about $500 to cart it away from its perch on a midtown Manhattan street corner, another $4,500 to put it up somewhere else. Alfred Birnbaum, scraping along on his $105-a-month G.I. benefits while he studies optometry, just didn't have...
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