Dream House

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 that kind of money. To make matters worse, it was costing $50 rent for every day the house remained on the parking lot, where it had been raffled away (at a loss) by the American Women's Voluntary Services.

Last week, having run up $800 in back rent, Alfred Birnbaum decided he was better off when he was in his small walk-up fiat, sold all his rights to the $15,000 dream house to a New York lawyer for $1,000, to get the blamed thing off his hands.

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