Don't let the Pennington Family lose their housing voucher!

We are the Pennington Family. Lisa (mom), Anthony (dad), and Leela (daughter). A family built on love, hope, and resilience. After years of struggling financially, we have finally been offered some hope. Years of waitlists later, we have been given the opportunity to accept a housing voucher.

The housing insecurity we have faced was due to circumstances beyond our control. We now have an opportunity to get ahead. This voucher will essentially cover our entire rent going forward. Every month. We literally won the lottery. The housing lottery.

Lisa and I have to travel out of state by ourselves to pick up the voucher. We then have to have a lease signed by July to be able to participate in this program. The housing agency does not cover the cost of travel to get the voucher or the cost of moving.

Unfortunately, by the time we pick up this voucher and lease an apartment we will be homeless. We are raising money to

Travel/lodging to pick up the housing voucher. Lisa and I do not drive, so we will need to pay for trains/Greyhounds. We have to stay overnight at a motel because of the time that the bus gets there and when the housing agency opens.

Storage. We cannot move directly from our apartment to the new one, because we will be in a homeless shelter. We will need to store our stuff for about a month or two.

Moving Trucks/Movers. We are going to have a company take the items from storage and bring them to our new location.

Transportation. We will need money to get to our new home when the time comes to move in.

This is a very costly move, which is made more expensive because we have to store things instead of moving from one place to another. However, once we have moved here we will be able to live rent-free.

This is an all or nothing deal. If we do not have the money to do this, we cannot move and will have to forfeit our spot -- our housing lottery ticket -- to the next person.

The longer it takes to raise money, the more expensive this gets because of last-minute bookings for motels, movers, and storage. The sooner we can raise this money, then we can begin to start this new life together.