I'm a prideful person, so it's not easy for me to ask for help, but the simple fact is that my family is in desperate need of help. We used the last of our "savings" to pay our rent for July, but if something dramatic doesn't happen in the next few weeks, we will be facing eviction in August, and we will be living in our car. Our oldest daughter has set up a gofundme to help us out. You can find it at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-for-the-erwine-family
If you really want to know the grim details, here they are...
The biggest reason that we're in the position we're in is because I haven't been able to find a job. Any freelance work I was doing has dried up, and book sales aren't exactly stellar in our declining economy. For work, I need to find a remote job because the area we live in has been steadily declining, and we have had some break in attempts. My teenage daughter does online school, and we can't leave her at home alone because she simply wouldn't be safe. Also, my wife has some serious health concerns (which I'll discuss later) which really need for me to be home to help her when she's not working. And it might be easy for people to say that we should just move, but we're locked into a lease, and if we can't afford the rent, we obviously can't afford to buy our way out of the lease. Plus, this is one of the cheapest apartments we can find, which is sad since it's far from cheap.
I mentioned my wife's health concerns. She suffers from a severe autoimmune disease, and she also suffers from debilitating migraines. She's on numerous medications, and these, plus mounting medical bills make things that much harder. I worry that we soon won't be able to pay for her prescriptions, even with health coverage, and I don't even want to think about what will result from that. Even with all of these health problems, my wife is, without a doubt, my hero. She is currently working four 12 hour shifts each week, and she is even trying to find a way to pick up a fifth shift. I don't know how she's supposed to work 60 hours a week, with all she has going on, but she is going to try it. Still, what effect is this going to have on her health? She can't do this for too long, and even with 60 hours, we will be struggling to make rent, and pay for food.
Already we have cut down on what we're buying for food. If it's not super cheap and on sale, we simply can't get it, and this is not good for her with the hours she's putting in, and it's really not good for our teenage daughter. I can survive on peanut butter sandwiches and cereal, but it's no way for them to eat.
To make matters even worse, my wife was in a car accident a couple of years ago, which left the car damaged. We currently don't have AC, and she has a long drive every day, while taking meds that cause her to overheat. In addition, even though we haven't had to use it in several months, we also seem to have a problem with the heat. I'm not sure how we're going to survive living in the car without those, and staying at a hotel would be more expensive than what we're already paying. Plus, on Monday, she drove over a large screw while leaving work, and we had to replace the tire, and since the other front tire was bad, we had to replace it as well. While they were working on rotating the tires, they showed us that the back tires are also on the last of their rubber, but we couldn't afford those at the time. I do have to give a big shout out to Discount Tires, however, they worked with us and got at least two of the tires replaced for now...although that was our grocery money for next week. Now she's driving on borrowed time with the tires...
We've reached out for government help, but since I don't have a steady income, we can't qualify for SNAP, and other government benefits...especially since so much of the funding has been cut. Rental assistance programs won't help until you're actually facing eviction, and even then, they have limited resources, and can't guarantee that they can help. We would basically have to hope to win a lottery drawing to get these kinds of benefits. We've contacted food banks, but their priority is first to the people who have been thrown off of SNAP, and they are getting fewer and fewer donations, since so many people are struggling right now.
We know that many people are in similar situations to us, and some of you may be even worse off. We ask that if you can help us out, please do. If you are unable to help us, we certainly understand, but if you can share our link, and maybe even our story, it would be greatly appreciated. We know that there are a lot of kind people out there, and we're hoping that people can help us. We really do not want our teenager living out of the car as we try to find a way to get into some kind of new housing, especially if we end up with an eviction on our record.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. It's appreciated, and I apologize for it being so long.
If you'd like to help, that link once again is https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-for-the-erwine-family
