Crowd-Funding Home Repairs
I set up new crowd-funding pages to raise money for home repairs and replacing my dad’s car. We’ll be getting some money from selling my grandmother’s house, so we’ll be able to cover some of the costs with that. I actually set up fundraising pages on three different sites (GiveForward, GoFundMe, YouCaring) because I know some people either don’t have accounts on those sites or they are boycotting them; and if you would rather just go through PayPal or Square, those options are also available. I just thought giving people more options might help raise the money faster, which will speed up the ability to get the repairs done, replace dad’s car, and get insurance on our house again.
So far I’ve raised $20 which will definitely help. And I’m incredibly grateful for that donation.
This is the description/explanation that I put up on the pages:
My parents and I are on disability, which puts us on a very fixed income. Unfortunately, that fixed income makes it difficult for us to afford to do needed repairs on our house and to afford to replace the vehicle we’d used to go to doctor appointments.
The house needs a lot of repairs.
It needs to be more accessible for my mom who has a severe Vitamin D deficiency (my whole family has this deficiency) that has progressed to a point where she’s developed osteopenia, a condition has caused her to break bones almost every time that she falls. The fracture risk is even higher for her because she, like me, also has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which increases a person’s likelihood of developing fractures and other injuries involving connective tissues. She’s on special supplements for kidney failure patients who are Vitamin D deficient, but the deficiency continues.
The entrances to the house need to have permanent steps added in or a permanent ramp to make it easier for my mom to enter the house. This is especially important considering that her last fracture, hospitalization, and surgery (a surgery that the orthopedist thought would end in an amputation of the lower leg), as well as her ongoing treatments for blood clots and infections, were due to a fall because height difference between the porch and door.
Our home is also in need of plumbing and electrical repairs. (We have aluminum wiring; that wiring caused a pretty bad fire for us about 20 years ago.) We also need our roof and siding replaced, doors replaced, flooring replaced–in most rooms, the “floor” solely consists of the concrete slab laid as the foundation, some broken windows fixed, and cracks in the walls repaired. We need the wiring fixed so that we can get the dryer working again. We need most of our plumbing replaced or repaired to prevent/end leaks. (Every sink leaks, the toilets leak, the bathtub has a crack.)
Our dishwasher hasn’t worked since at least 2012–it floods the kitchen if you attempt to use it–and needs to be replaced as well. Our stove needs to be replaced. We had to disable the back two eyes after they both “shocked” me while I was cooking. The oven itself doesn’t work properly either.
We lost our home insurance policy in 2012 because the roof needed to be replaced and we couldn’t afford to get that done. We will not be able to get a new policy until we have fixed the roof and most of the other issues.
If all of that wasn’t enough, my parents were in a car crash on August 23, 2016. A teenager ran a red light and hit the driver’s side of my dad’s car, then the driver’s side of the car in the next lane. Dad’s car was 17–18 years old, so it would have cost the insurance company more to repair the car than to declare it totaled. We have my grandmother’s car, which is even older and has had a few weird issues of its own over the years. We need to raise money to replace the old car to make sure that we have a car to drive to doctor appointments & other places.
There’s plenty to be done and not enough to do it with, so if you could help in anyway, it would be awesome. If you can’t afford to donate, please consider passing the link along or, if you happen to know of an agency or group that does these repairs or provides other services for people on fixed incomes, please pass that on to me.
If you’re able to help, I would appreciate it. If you can’t donate, but can share the link, I would appreciate that as well. If you know of any organizations that could help, then I would love that. And if you have any questions, then I’ll answer them.
Originally published on Wordpress
