Karen's Struggle: Save Her Home

Can you help my friend Karen? She’s been going through a very tough time the past few years, and now she is facing imminent homelessness. It would take a long time to lay out everything she has been through, but here are the headlines.

In 2017, her mom (her last living family member) was dying of stage 4 lung cancer, and Karen broke her right leg in 2 places and was unable to drive for 3 months. She could not see her dying mother unless a friend could take her to the hospital. Her mom died alone because Karen couldn’t get to the hospital in time. Then in 2020, her position of 14 years was terminated due to Covid. Just since 2021 (when she started keeping track), she has applied for well over 1,100 positions. She is on 5 job search engines and getting daily notifications for each one. She has a college degree and 25 years of experience as a graphic designer. She has applied for all kinds of positions, everything from remote customer service, banks, hospital registrar, etc. She has also been working with a job coaching program since 2023. In the meantime, during these awful years, she lost any and all savings just trying to survive. She also had to go on federal assistance, which was rough because she has worked all her life and never expected to be that person. She’s very responsible and prior to losing her job, she was never late nor missed a payment on anything.

In 2024, she had a cancer scare and had to have major surgery, but she is well now. Finally, in November of 2024, she was hired full-time at enough pay that she could support herself again. She was SO relieved that after all this time, she could start living her life again and not worry about losing her home. But she was laid off again on Feb. 3rd due to some of the changes coming out of Washington, DC. She cannot collect unemployment for this job loss because she was not there 18 weeks (per unemployment law in her state). Now, after all of this and the loss of all her savings, she is in real danger of losing her home. If that happens, she’ll have nowhere to go and she won’t be able to get any housing without a job.

She has exhausted all state and federal help websites to try to find help with her mortgage arrears. So, we are trying to raise money for Karen so she won’t be homeless and can hopefully pay her mortgage and hopefully the arrears.