Help a wonderful soul. Jenn needs a car!

I created this fundraiser on behalf of my dear friend, Jennifer Krause.

Jenn is a 47 year old single mother, who is disabled and living with Multiple Sclerosis (MS)and other health issues including significant injuries from a fall a few years ago. Her brilliant 9 year old child means the absolute world to her, and vice versa.

She’s in pretty dire straits and needs some help from you kind folks.

To start, she lost her caregiving job of 13 years last year due to her employer’s financial struggles, and has been waiting for disability approval for over 2 years. Jenn is living on extremely low income during this wait. Jenn has been without a vehicle for a year and a half. She had a car that her ex was supposed to fix during their marriage and they never did, and the repairs needed eventually made the car undriveable, unsafe, and more than the car was worth. Although Chicago has public transit, her health issues create significant barriers. As many of you know, Jenn walks with a cane, and has severe heat intolerance from MS. When it’s warm, many bus stops do not have shade, and she is forced to wait in the hot sun for up to an hour at times.

Winter is coming and will present another set of obstacles generally but also aggravating MS issues.

To make matters immensely worse, Jenn’s parenting time, world, have been flipped upside

down.

Her parenting time was cut back significantly, and she has completely lost child support for the forseeable couple of years. This was due to a court decision based on unknown factors, presumed fraud, her co-sleeping with her child, (which is absolutely healthy and normal,) and most disappointingly on her continuing support of her nonbinary child’s gender expression. This is something her ex takes extreme issue with, even though the child’s physicians and therapist have deemed it a nonissue. This was initiated maliciously by

her ex husband, out of spite. He lives an hour away in the suburbs.

The weekday time that Jenn has with her child involves 5.5 hours total of public transit time or

more, walking amounts of time/distance that stretch beyond her capability and 5 hours of time at the library, park, or restaurants/shops to kill time, because she cannot simply take her child to her house and bring her back. There are also the added expenses of sometimes eating out or buying convenience items at the grocery store since travel time and circumstances don’t allow for bringing food easily, as well as rideshare charges to cover distances she simply cannot manage.

How has she been doing this so far? Painstakingly, and with the great help of amazing friends. She has had an amazing person who has driven her back and forth at times, and others that have been so gracious as to lend their minivan for the day. The days she has to take public transit begin around 11:30am and she doesn’t often get home before 10pm.

This has not only left her in physical pain and exhaustion, it’s exhausting what little finances she

has, and severely limits the hours in a week that she can work or participate in the self care she needs to sustain her self and her illness. She is currently waiting on a disability hearing, which has been over a 2 year wait.

She has no personal resources or family of origin to help her. Friends have helped as much as

they can, but it’s unpredictable and unsustainable.

She desperately needs a reliable, safe, solid car with significantly good gas mileage, and money to register and insure it. A

“Beater with a heater” isn’t an option, as she and her child cannot risk being stranded if

something happens, and cannot afford to be nickel and dimed with frequent mechanic visits. In addition the amount of driving required each week just to see her child during weekday time is a minimum of 10 hours of driving over two single days, and with very limited income, gas needs to stretch as far as possible, which is why a hybrid with high gas mileage is the most sensible option.

$30,000 may seem like a lot, but we can make it happen! This will cover a reliable low mileage Toyota Hybrid, taxes, title, state and city registration, and insurance, and ----knowing the used car market, this may barely do it.

She is a brilliant, kind, caring person who deserves to be shown some of the love that she has

put out into the world. Every cent will be going directly to her.

If you can’t help, please share with your church friends, coworkers, family, and peers, game league, and everyone you can think of.

Let’s make this happen!