Help for senior facing cancer & eviction

Photo credit and caption from Bronwyn Beairsto, Editor, Coast Reporter, May 16th, 2023 - "Bonnie Shotropa has a wide and easy smile despite her dire situation. She needs somewhere to live – and fast. She's being evicted as of June 1."

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My name is Lisa McGregor, with Sunshine Coast Senior Care (Coast Care Ltd.). We recently found out about Bonnie Shotropa's desperate situation and wanted to put her up in our staff suite in Gibsons for the short-term until she could find something more permanent. Unfortunately, this isn’t a viable option for Bonnie or availability in the suite, but we still really want to help her in any way we can and are working with her case workers to find an immediate and long-term solution.

Bonnie's June 1st eviction date has now come and gone, and she is officially homeless, so her situation has gone from urgent to dire. Everyone wants to help, but we all have our own burdens to carry, so it can be overwhelming to take on such a big responsibility alone; But, if we band together as a community and contribute individually what we are able to, we can move mountains and all help Bonnie get back on her feet. 100% of the donations will go to Bonnie.

Please help us raise enough funds to help with the cost of renting a hotel room or Airbnb for Bonnie, at least until she can find a permanent home. And hopefully we can raise enough donations to subsidize her monthly rental budget so she can afford a long-term rental that would otherwise be outside of her very small budget.

I wish we could cover the full cost of getting Bonnie relocated and into a secure home, but as a small company, there are limits to how much we can do.

For more details, the Coast Reporter published an article on Bonnie's desperate situation on May 16th, 2023, explaining:

"Pender Harbour's Bonnie Shotropa is searching for a new home amid rising rent prices and her battle with liver cancer – and after a year of searching, she still can't find somewhere to live.

As of June 1 at 1 p.m., Bonnie Shotropa has nowhere to go.

The 67-year-old is getting evicted from the Madeira Park apartment that has been her home for more than a decade and although she’s been looking for more than a year, she can’t find somewhere to live. "

As Shotropa has an income of $1,800 a month, most of the rentals available on the Coast are beyond her budget. For her current home, Shotropa pays $710 plus utilities.

She doesn’t mind paying a few hundred dollars more in rent but she doesn’t have the capacity to meet the quickly escalating prices for a one-bedroom dwelling on the Coast. The average monthly shelter cost for renters was $1,374 in 2021 – a number that’s only risen since then.

Add to that, she was diagnosed with stage three liver cancer in October.

Shotropa has a fierce defender in Ken Carson, who worked with the Resource Centre as a legal advocate until recently. He’s been on the case for just over a year.

Shotropa was first issued an eviction notice in March 2022. The ageing waterfront apartment building had just been sold and Shotropa was issued a two-month notice to be out by June 1, 2022, so that a family member could move in, according to Carson. There were legal wranglings as Carson and Shotropa fought the eviction – in the midst of that in Shotropa received her cancer diagnosis – but in January, an arbitrator gave Shotropa until June 1, 2023 to find somewhere to live.

Her whole church, the people at the grocery store and the other little shops are keeping an eye out, says Shotropa. Carson, the Resource Centre and Vancouver Coastal Health social workers have been exhausting their connections and knowledge looking for a place for Shotropa but the waitlists for subsidized housing are enormous, says Carson. “There aren't a lot of places to find that are in Shotropa's particular ability to pay.

“Everybody has done everything they can and Bonnie's case is well known among the people who are trying to find her a place to live. There is not a place for her to live.”

Shotropa doesn’t drive – she hitchhikes everywhere (though Carson helps out, making the drive sometimes to bring her to appointments).

A situation too frequent

Cases like Shotropa’s are all too familiar to Carson. “If you have money in this town, you can afford to rent. But if you don't have money, then you're hooped. And so people who have gotten older, and they're on fixed incomes and all of a sudden find themselves evicted. It's a terrifying, frightening thing. But it's really terrifying and frightening if you also happen to have cancer, and you've got health problems.” Quoted from https://www.coastreporter.net/local-news/as-a-bc-senior-faces-cancer-and-eviction-advocate-pleads-for-help-7008225

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If you have a potential short or long-term rental for Bonnie, can offer assistance moving and/or storage space during her transition, or would like to help in another way, please contact me via the link provided in this page.

Follow-up article published June 16th, 2023 in the Coast Reporter: https://www.coastreporter.net/local-news/fundraiser-started-for-evicted-sunshine-coast-senior-with-cancer-7151804