Chandler's Challenge to Overcome My COVID Disaster

 

So, I emerged from the hospital to a closed down Country.  Not even Walmart was open.  I soon learned my aparment Lease came and went while I was hospitalized for I disappeared on a Sunday and no one - including my landlord - knew what happened to me.  So I also lost all of my worldly belongings.  I then lost my job due to COVID because I did elder care and - at that time - we did not know what we did not know about the virus and many thought because I had COVID and recovered that I could kill them if I came near them.  Also, literally everyone I know is medically vulnerable in some way so staying with family/friends was not possible.  So, there I was: unemployed, suffering from post-COVID symptoms (now known as Longhaul COVID), unhoused for the first time in my life and truly terrified.  

 

My journey from then until now included time spent in a "homeless hotel", a government-funded nursing home to rehab and recover from COVID, a 14 hour  accidental visit to a mental health ward where I learned/observed the unimaginable happening to our beloved Gen Z kids there, and a crazy, fake "rich woman" scamming the government and anyone she could, as a certified sociopathic narcissist, to be able to continue to steal from others and live off OPM - because as a narcissist she feels ENTITLED to do so.  NONE of this should have ever happened to me.  But I learned a lot in this past 22 months and I would not trade any of it for much of anything; for these experiences fundamentally changed me because they challenged me on every level to rise above, to learn radical resilience and to survive in spite of a broken "homeless system" determined to let me die because that "system" never effectively rehouses anyone ever. 

 

If you read my Twitter feed you might see my references to "jail" and "my jailgirz".  That is how I contracted COVID.  Wrongfully arrested for the first time at the age of 50 for doing the RIGHT thing (think cross between protester and whistleblower), I was charged by our corrupt government with a nonviolent first offense.  I was given the chance to pay a bond and go home but I noticed something while detained in that jail: almost everyone detained with me was black or brown and the few "pretty white girls" who were there - they were sending ALL OF US home when it was well-known that POC have a higher mortality rate if exposed to COVID.  So I refused to leave until they sent 5 POC detainees home before me.  Those in charge at the jail HATED ME for this stand but that famous quote is true: if you are silent in the face of injustice - you have chosen the side of the oppressor.  So, I got COVID in a janky jail, lost my housing, my job and my health as a result - hitting the COVID trifecta of "adverse impact" from COVID.  

 

I quickly realized the "homeless outreach system in America" is a scam, a shell game and a system that fundamentally fails most people it claims to serve.  I have Huntington's Disease so ideally require "medically supportive living" but I'm too young to be eligible for that type of housing.  So many "housing caseworkers" told me that people like me - functional (no addictions/no serious mental illness) but medically vulnerable fall thru the cracks ALL THE TIME in America because there is just no help for someone like me."  If I had a dollar for every time I was told that in the past 18 months - I could have already bought a modest home.  I kid you not.  

 

My health declined rapidly post-COVID and together with a Huntington's flare I went into horrifying medical decline with a 70 lb weight loss and losing most of my hair due to malnutritiona and my doctor thought it best for me to recover in a physical rehab facility.  Sadly, it was a Medicaid government-funded nursing home whose greedy corporate owners line their pockets with government cash while essentially providing little more than a "flophouse" with no medical oversight.  I entered this Facility in the Fall of 2020.  What I recorded, documented and testified to that happened there when I became a witness against that Facility for the State would traumatize the most sturdy among us: rampant physical abuse, constant starvation, pregnancies caused by staff raping those in "memory care" and no PPE or COVID precautions taken by this Facility's employees/management such that 109 people in a 110 bed Facility contracted COVID.  Most died.  The running narrative is that our elders in these congregant nursing homes were old and frail and EXPECTED to die from COVID.  I am here to testify that nothing could be further from the truth.  These Facilities were LOCKED DOWN and no investigations into CRITICAL LAPSES therein happened in the State of IL for 5 full months.  It was a reckless disregard by the staff at these Facilities for our elders' safety and welfare that caused their deaths - not COVID.  And guess what? You're just expected to die if you're in a nursing home so no autopsies are ever performed when a death occurs there and certainly none were during the first year of COVID.  So many entirely preventable deaths....it haunts me to this day.  But when I finally fled that Facility or my own medical safety in December 2020, I spent the next YEAR holding them accountable and advocating for better care for the Residents I left behind.  It took nearly a year but I got all the bad actors fired including the Administrator and the Director of Nursing and now the Residents I remain friends with tell me things are measurably improved and they are now SAFE.  That matters to me more than you might ever know.   

 

Some of our unhoused neighbors turn to drugs to alleviate the trauma that homelessness causes.  I turned inward and found healing in my writing - hence, my forthcoming Memoir about my Pandemic experience. I would like most folks to know that for the large marjority of our unhoused neighbors who struggle with substance abuse - the trauma of homelessness caused the addiction and not the reverse.  I'm lucky, I guess, that I never chose that option.  But with Huntington's, alcohol and drugs only make my neurological problems much worse.  

 

I therafter moved to another "rented room" situation but this one turned bad quickly.  I realized 9 days in to my new 6 month Lease that my landlady was a sociopathic narcissist.  She ruled that house by force and by torture - emotional and physical.  She has been stealing, scamming and living off OPM for decades and I was just her next mark.  When she heard I had a book publishing and that I applied for and would receive THOUSANDS in Pandemic Rental Assitance, I just became her next "mark" or victim - unbeknownst to me.  The day my Rental Assistance check came in the mail she had her live-in boyfriend physically attack me and threaten to murder me if I ever came back to the home - all so she could make off with the $7k in MY Rental Assistance from IHDA.  Local police will not prosecute her because of her advanced age so she's apparently just going to get away with absconding with money intended to provide me long-term housing in the aftermath of COVID.  I am trying any way I can think of - including calling the FBI and State Police to try and hold her accountable.  I have filed suit against her to try and recover the funds but the reality is - she has gotten away with stealing OPM, including her entire family's money - her whole life.  So she likely will get away with this theft too absent some intervening force.  And all the while I remain unhoused and not helped by the very system supposed to help me: the homeless outreach system.  I have been put on multiple years-long waiting lists for housing and am told it could be another 5 years before they ever get to my name on those lists.  Sadly, I don't have that kind of time with my diagnosis....

 A friend on Twitter suggested I create this GoFundMe in case anyone wants to help me restablize my life.  What I most need immediately is:

1. To secure my 4 walls and pay rent + deposit which is $2k.

 

2. My 2005 car needs lots of maintenance due to being neglected while I have not had a DIME to my name during this entire pandemic. I also have lived in my car, off & on, so it is in need of oil change, new tires, front brakes, ac recharge & an air filter. It’s got 180k miles and I’ve had it for 15 years.   Estimate for all of this is $1k

 

3. I need a proper desk to finish writing my book on. I’ve found one at a local thrift store for $85. 

 

4. I was rendered a victim of domestic violence as the result of having to flee following the assault at my former landlady's home.  So I AGAIN lost all of my belongings/possessions. Why? Because when I went back with Law Enforcement, the cops ALWAYS take the abuser's side and what she had not outright STOLEN from me in my absence (between when I fled & was allowed to return with L.E.) she told the cops were HER belongings and I was only able to secure but a few personal items SHE DEEMED to have no value/she couldn't resell for a profit.  As such, I am now in the prairie in Central IL with NONE of the following:

 

1. Summer clothes & shoes. 

2. Things to set up my new hoped-for housing. 

I have a lead on housing for the next 6 months from a friend on Twitter. I have applied and if approved will need help with house stuff. I have created an Amazon Wish List. You can find that here: 

 

They say it takes a village to help 1 unhoused person make the leap from the violence of the street to safely housed again.  I am asking social media and my TwitterFam to be MY Village.  I promise you I will "pay it forward" when I get to where I'm going after my Pandemic Memoir publishes. My book is really important to call out all the failing agencies actively harming those they proclaim to help in America. 

 

I thank anyone who decides to help me and will send anyone who does a free copy of my book when it publishes in July 2022.  But you also have the knowledge that I am one of the your "unhoused neighbors" who is fighting the good fight, holding failing Agencies and government programs accountable while always going to bat for those more vulnerable than I am.  I will never change. It is who my beloved veteran (deceased 2019) father raised me to be.  As a result,  I firmly believe that when I escape the fire and trials of life, I have a moral obligation to carry water back to those still consumed by the flames.  

 

Thank you for reading my GoFundMe.