Help an overwhelmed family recover from a series of bad luck

My family has been hit with months of back to back financial and medical problems. We moved to South Carolina a year ago and rented a home, expecting to stay for 3 years and eventually move abroad. Our landlords quickly proved they could not be counted on and failed to fix serious issues such as mold which caused Alicia to have severe asthmatic spells. We reported to them for months that the stove was burning food in seconds and something was wrong with it. They ignored all requests. Months later, the stove caught a pan on fire which almost led to a horrific kitchen fire. The landlords refused to accept accountability. When told that they were putting our lives in danger, they bullied Alicia who has autism and acted like she was the problem for their gross negligence because she was the one who addressed the issues with them. Many other serious issues led to us needing to move again before we recovered from the first move sufficiently. We needed to plan a move quickly for our safety and mental health. This made us not trust landlords so we decided to buy a home. We used years of savings set aside for our move abroad and bought a house in Georgia. We just needed a few months to recover financially but everything kept piling up after this.

After closing, the seller was contractually obligated to paint and repair all walls to like new condition but left the walls in horrendous condition and refused to honor the contract. The seller also took the agreed $3,000 of patio furniture that was included in the home purchase. And he also lied about the condition of the HVAC system. We planed to sue him but then he moved abroad where we cannot serve him for court. So this has cost our family an unexpected $25,000 to deal with the HVAC and painting.

Alicia has broken her tailbone and it began flaring up again and also had to have surgery on her toe. Rowena found out a week after closing on the new house that she needs $4,000 in urgent dental care to fill 4 very large cavities and to remove an impacted wisdom tooth that is causing her significant pain. We already took on debt to take care of the painting and HVAC. We cannot take on anymore debt right now.

Then our dogs, Rigby and Ellie had to go to the emergency vet because they somehow got into some toxic mushrooms in the yard while playing. This was $400 per dog and we have to take them both to two follow up appointments to have their livers checked to make sure they aren’t having liver failure.

And then today, March 28th we were finally going to move to Atlanta into our new home. But the 26 foot truck we rented wasn’t returned by the previous renter so they put us in a 20 foot truck instead. After a whole day of loading that truck and paying for helpers, everything didn’t fit. So we are sitting here on a mattress as I type this stuck in SC tonight. They have no other options for us and the 20 foot truck is fully packed. So, we had to hire a moving company to come pick up the rest of our stuff tomorrow and that is an additional $1,200.

We used our savings meant to move abroad because our landlords put our lives in jeopardy and bullied us. We had planned to install an accessible shower in the new house for Alicia who is disabled and a fainting risk due to her having Lupus and POTS syndrome. But we have had to dip into the money saved for that to the point that we simply cannot afford to have it installed anymore.

Latanya is the sole income earner for the home. Rowena stays home to care for Alicia who is disabled.

We are the ones who are always helping others. We just donated thousands of dollars to the LA fire victims and Hurricane Helene flood victims. We did not predict we’d have to rush to move out or that all of these expenses would rain on us one after another. We will pay it forward as soon as we recover financially which will probably take us a year or two. We just need some help right now dealing with these unexpected financial difficulties.