No room in the Inn.

Our little family needs emergency help right now. Our first line of defense has come from our parents, who are overwhelmed with emotions, stress, and tears. Thank goodness God understands these things. His phone has been overloaded with our prayers for immediate help. We are a religious family that has already been through a lot and have trusted in heaven for help. Our prayers have always been answered, one being that we were led to our current home. However, we are now facing a severe crisis. There is not only "no room at the inn" because of others' thinking of only themselves; we still have not found an inn that will take us. We have been looking and contacting everyone that we can, but we have still not found anything.

We have limited funds. We have moved ourselves out of a previously bad situation to avoid continued drug use and have not had enough time to establish ourselves in our new community. We are 24 days+ clean and sober and facing the possibility of having to go back out homeless and the reality of a continued drug-use environment. We don't want to do that because we want to become better for ourselves and our family. Our son Michael's medical needs are now in a serious medical emergency. We are running out of time!

As Friday looms, our options are disappearing, especially for two of our family members who are with us because they chose us. We have a special needs cat, Charlie, who doesn't know how to survive outside and was abandoned at our last home and chose us to take care of him. Our other family member, Michael, will have major issues with dealing with the excessive heat upcoming in August. This will cause our son's diabetic insulin to stop functioning, which will mean we have to find something indoors for him for those days, which aren't that many options. We are doing all this with the idea to go forward, stay clean, and avoid all the negativity that we have experienced in our past living environments.

We found help with some of Michael's medical needs in the form of an in-home support services caregiver, Stephanie, but being forced to become homeless again limits her ability to help. She has always tried to help everybody she has come upon, sometimes to the point of not taking proper care of herself or her fiancé, DJ. DJ has been trying his best to help and has been looking hard for a local job, but the sudden loss of home prevents him from spending the time he

needs to find that job, limiting our funds even further.

We need help. Whatever help we can get will be appreciated. We are looking to use the help to establish a stable base and move up in life. Our immediate need is housing; from there, we could get the medical needs met and the stability and time needed to find work and continue schooling. We will also be able to give Charlie a stable place, so he doesn't become one of the animal statistics of being homeless.

From our research, the best options we have found, barring buying a home which is out of our current ability, is averaging $2000 a month. This is well above what we can currently hope to bring to the table, which we have tried combining recycling and odd jobs, SSI, and whatever other resources we currently have. We are looking at the $20,000 figure to cover several months of time, so we can establish work and bank accounting abilities.

UPDATE: We were about to post this, but as I was finishing typing the last few words and getting everything ready, Stephanie found a possible location that we can afford easier, but we still need help as the price of admission is still more than we can afford on our own. We also do not know for certain all the expenses that will need to be covered in the first month, so our largest goals are still applicable. However, for the moment, we are going to set a small initial goal to get enough money to afford the first month's rent requirements. The apartment Stephanie found costs $950. Our current goal is to get $2000 by Friday to cover rent, deposits, and other expenses, so we have it on Saturday when we have to be gone. After that, our goal will be higher to reflect our long-term aim to cover enough until we can get settled.