Help Angela Keep Her Home

I’m reaching out for community support to help me stay in my home, the home where I’ve lived for the past 20 years, the home where I grew up as a teen with my late dad. After a difficult year of several health challenges for both myself and my elder mom for whom I’m the sole caregiver, I’m asking for help bringing my housing account current, or I risk losing my home.

The Backstory

For the past 3+ years, I’ve been caregiving my elder mom after I was laid off from work at the beginning of the pandemic. That was also when we lost the home health aide we’d had for many years. We have no family or support system nearby, so it’s been just the two of us weathering these challenges together.

During the pandemic, I was able to get some new freelance clients while also expanding into new areas of work. It was a challenge but manageable and I was grateful to be able to be her caregiver and share this time together. I’ve also been happy to support folks in my community including help with clothing drives for families in need, bringing food to the community fridge, or supporting elder neighbors with errands, a friendly chat, or making sure they got vaccinated.

In 2023, I was about to sign contracts on several projects when they unexpectedly fell through. This coincided with both my mom and I facing several health challenges. Meeting our basic needs for daily survival while managing doctors’ visits and supporting her and my own healing - all this left me barely functional outside of caregiving.

Gratefully, we’re both doing much better, and I’m now excited to continue expanding my business as I’d started before our health challenges.

But I’m also playing catch-up after my limited capacity for most of 2023 left me unable to replace the income that fell through. As a result, I accumulated an outstanding balance for my housing costs.

The amount of this crowdfunding campaign will enable me to keep my home. Without it, I will lose my home within about a month. I need $7900 by January 12th, 2024, or risk further legal action towards losing my home. The remainder will need to be paid by approximately the end of January.

What I’m Doing

For the first time in months, I’m excited to be making plans and building offerings that I know will create transformative value for folks, both personally and professionally.

I’m re-building my client base with freelance projects, applying for steady work and am especially excited to be launching my conflict resolution business that I soft-launched a few years ago. This work had a powerful impact on my clients and I received glowing testimonials so I feel confident I can grow this work to serve a wider audience.

I’m enjoying pursuing “small gigs” through Upwork, Fivrr – as many avenues as I can find, including selling some things – to generate income in as many ways as possible because I’m eager to build momentum and make up for lost time.

I’m also working with a local agency to get some home care again to help with caregiving support.

To be able to stay in my home as I get back on my feet would enable me to continue caring for my parent and give me the foundation to work with the clients I’m looking forward to serving, while also staying part of the community to which I’ve belonged for so many years and the home where I have deep roots and that means so much to me.

How You Can Help

It feels vulnerable to ask for this help, but I have taken heart in all the ways we have been showing up for each other in our communities, both locally and globally.

I am deeply grateful and honored by any material contribution you can make. I’m happy to receive it either through this GoFundMe or via Venmo, Zelle, PayPal, etc.

If, for whatever reason, you’re not able to contribute to this crowdfunding campaign in material ways, I’d still like to make a couple of requests…

The first is to ask for your warm wishes – whether that’s prayers or a virtual high-five or whatever good vibes you can send our way.

The second is to ask you to consider talking about something you may feel hesitant or even ashamed to share with people. And if you can ask for help with that thing, maybe just through some kind words, even better. Sure, some folks won’t respond in the way you’d like. But it doesn’t mean you’re wrong for sharing that thing. And some folks may surprise you. This experience has reminded me how much we need to talk about the things we’re afraid to talk about and how much goodness can be created in the process. In fact, that’s a big reason why I’ve decided to go bigger in sharing my conflict resolution work – to do my part to support folks in talking about what’s most important.

Thank you so much for reading and being part of my community just by considering supporting me in this moment.

I wish you peace and well-being in all the ways.

How the Money Will Be Used

$7900: Past-due monthly co-op building fees, due January 12, 2024

$7100: Past-due mortgage payments, due January 31, 2024. This will bring me up to date as of December 31, 2023.

$2000: January 2024 housing fees

$670: GoFundMe transaction fees

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$17,670 total