85-year-old Woman in Need of Help

My mom, Benice Lindo, aka Bunny, suffers from a variety of illnesses that require a caregiver to help her out 24/7. I've been her caregiver with my boyfriend for almost a year and half without a break. I'm the nightshift. And because I'm the daughter, I'm a bunch of all the other shifts too. And for a bunch of reasons, we need a break. At the $35/hour rate that Visiting Angel's charges, 24-hour care comes to $25,200 a month. Mom's insurance covers a third of that, but the rest is all on Mom and us. We've tried everything. We've closed annuity accounts, sold cars, took out loans, but the costs are the costs. So a year ago, in an effort to raise money for the 24-hour care Mom needs, Benice opened her Hermosa Beach home as a rental, the home she's lived in for 50 years, just to bring in caregiving money. We figured we could bring in some Airbnb money for a bit, save up, and that way Mom could go back home anytime she wanted. Someone in our life stepped up and said they wanted to be a full-time renter, so we gave it a try and a lease was signed, but sadly the renter has not paid a single penny in rent in the 11 months since. So that's been a wash.

But it's not just lost rent that has set us back. Incredibly, all of my 85-year-old Mom's mail was also diverted by this tenant, including the utility bills, with the tenant promising they were paying those bills every month. It turns out really Mom has also been paying the utility bills for these renters on autopay all along, so those deductions have taken regular chunks out of Mom's fixed income. Utilities for the rental have been costing $1500 a month with the renter sometimes racking up electric bills alone of $700 plus in one billing cycle, and since the nonpaying tenant has a lease, legally, until they move out, Mom is forced to keep paying the utility bills.

We asked them, nicely, if they weren't really going to be paying rent, if they would move out, and let Mom move back into her home, but that didn't work. So we hired lawyers and served eviction notices, but they still won't get out. As these renters are refusing to leave, legal costs are mounting. On top of all that, Tenant and her boyfriend are now demanding $15,000 to leave the home and writing that things will get "ugly" if Benice doesn't pay up. It's going to cost thousands of dollars just to repair the unnecessary damage they've done to mom's home as it is. I don't have much else to sell now except Mom's mobility van or my home, and so it's come to this.

Please consider helping support my Mom in paying the cost of the utilities she has to keep paying until the eviction goes through, the repair costs for the damages we know have occurred to Mom's home since the lease started, the lawyer fees we're incurring to get the renter out, and most importantly, the cost of the twenty-four hour care we desperately need for Mom. It's been super stressful, so if we at least knew we could afford to ride this out, you have no idea how much it would mean to us. Benice sure could use your help.