How Bad Is It?

For Families Struggling to Pay Bills, A Cemetery Plot Becomes an Asset to Sell

"After Debbie Jenkins got sick, couldn't work and lost two houses to foreclosure, after she burned through her savings, moved into an unheated garage in Crofton and still found herself six months behind on rent, she looked around for something to sell to help pay for the bologna and 60-cent cans of dollar-store vegetables that she, her daughter and three grandchildren live on.

She thought of her jewelry. But when she looked on Internet sales sites, she found more than 16,000 listings. She and her daughter held yard sales and netted $56. Then, somewhere in the boxes of judgments and collection notices piled around her garage home, she hit upon her truly final asset: the deed to a grassy plot of earth in Fort Lincoln Cemetery in Prince George's County, the spot where she once planned to spend eternity.

Jenkins decided to list her two burial plots. "MUST SELL!!!" she wrote in her free Craigslist ad. "Be prepared! Fort Lincoln The Garden of Apostles, rare opportunity to get into this sold-out section!" She included the block site and lawn crypt number, noted that such plots are worth nearly $8,000 and offered them for less than half that. "Great buy!"

Jenkins's offer to sell her final resting place is one of a quickly mounting number of ads that have cropped up in newspapers and on the Internet in recent months as unemployment and heavy debt loads drive more people to scour their homes for assets to sell in hopes of paying the bills of the here-and-now."

Paupers' cemetery