LONDON, Ont. - Michael Maloney has launched a website asking someone to buy his family a home.
The Maloneys and their daughters, ages two and four, have lived in a three-bedroom townhouse in London for nearly five years. It doesn't have a fully fenced backyard, their yard backs onto a busy roadway, and rent is $900 a month -- a payment that gets harder to reach every week, Maloney said.
A laid-off manufacturing plant worker, Maloney went back to school to become a registered nurse. But the bills started to pile up, so the 29-year-old took a job as a personal support worker.
The family tried getting a mortgage, but were rejected because of what he called "stupid mistakes with credit cards" when he was younger.
And so, in desperation, he turned to the Internet, setting up a blog asking for someone to buy his family a modest house.
"I'm willing to risk extreme embarrassment for even the smallest chance that someone would see it," he said.
He even sent an e-mail to Donald Trump with the offer to paint the business tycoon's face on his house if he would buy them one.
His wife's initial reaction to the website was not a good one.
"I was in complete shock. I told him he was crazy. I told him to get it off there. I mean, who's going to do that? And he said, 'You never know,'" Carrie Maloney said.
"I laughed at him and said, 'You honestly think Donald Trump is going to get back to you and give you a house?,'" Carrie Maloney said. "And he said, 'Why not?'"
Trump's people did get back to him -- to say they were forwarding the e-mail to the correct department.
As unusual as it sounds, it's not the first time someone has made such a bold online gesture.
It's "cyber-panhandling or e-panhandling," said Tom Vassos, an instructor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
Vassos said websites exist all over the Internet -- such as thebeggarsclub.com or cyberbeg.com.
One of the first, and perhaps most well-known, is Kyle MacDonald's tale of trading one red paperclip for a series of incrementally larger trades until he got a house.
Michael Maloney said he opted to use the Internet to tell his story because he was too embarrassed to post it on Facebook and couldn't ask friends or family in person.
He knows his wife is mortified. And despite her request to take the site down, he's determined to get a house with a backyard for their young daughters.
His family isn't looking for much, he said, just a place they can call home.
"Not a box, but nothing fancy. Literally anything -- but it has to have a back yard."
