Help Me Keep My Three Kids From Being Homeless

I am Andrew DeForrest (36) and I am a married father of 3 children. They are Ryleigh (15), Ava (12), and Landon (10). My wife’s name is Joelene (36). We started our life together at a young age and have been together since we were both 18 years old. We had our first apartment together a few months after her 18th birthday. We have worked our butts off to advance our lives together. We now have a beautiful family together and I am truly blessed to have such an amazing wife and children. After our third child together, I became a salesman working in the HVAC field. I have worked at the same company now for 10 years. My wife was a hairdresser for a while, but she is now a nurse. She actually went to nursing school during COVID-19 because she wanted to help people during the pandemic and THANK GOD she did because this knowledge she has gained in the medical field has saved my life now a few times. More on that later.

I very rarely ask anyone for help and to be honest, this is a last resort for me and quite embarrassing for me. Unfortunately, we are on the brink of becoming homeless right now and I’ve tried everything to figure out a solution to our problem. I am so frustrated because for the first time, I can’t find a solution on my own. If I don’t figure this out, my kids will be homeless and I can’t let that happen! Here is the situation…

As you can see in the photos, two years ago I was in a freak accident and I ended up completely breaking both my tibia and my fibula (both bones in between my knee and my foot). I needed emergency surgery because I had “compartment syndrome,” which is the condition where a broken bone causes severe muscle swelling, leading to the need for surgical incision (or "slitting") of the muscles, and I also had to have metal rods and screws put in my leg. Since then, it has been one infection and setback after another. It has been two years and I am still on crutches. This has also led to one medical expense after another. I have had to have two surgeries and MULTIPLE long hospitalizations because I have had about a half dozen severe infections. The most recent infection almost took my leg and my life!

This has led to so much time in appointments and a lot of medical expenses that we are now in pretty serious debt. I am a salesman in the HVAC field, so my presence on job sites was required for me to work. Luckily, my company was so understanding and willing to help that they found a way for me to work remotely on my laptop and cell phone rather than going directly to the customers. They found a workaround so that I could remain employed. Unfortunately, I make less than half of what I made before this, but beggars can’t be choosers. My wife is now the main provider for our family. Luckily, with her nursing knowledge, she has discovered all of my infections before my doctor could. If it was not for her, I would be dead by now, no question.

While all of this was going on, we were forced to move from our home that we were renting for 8 YEARS! We had hopes to one day buy this house, but that changed 3 months after my injury. Our landlord had sold the property and wanted us to move out. I fought this in court and lost. I found out I lost in a letter from the court and in that same letter, it said that we had to be out in 10 days! We had to sell a lot of our stuff and get rid of our family vehicle. We scraped together every dollar we had to put our stuff in storage and move into an extended stay hotel while we looked for a place to move. When we finally found a place, we found some very gracious landlords that let us move in, but we didn’t have enough money upfront to move in, so they allowed us to pay $1000 per week, which by the end of the month ends up being about an extra $1000 per month on top of our regular rent. We did this until we paid off the first, last, and security. We were broke every week after paying this and our bills, but we had a home for our kids finally and that was what was most important.

After many months of doing this, we were finally paid in full on the first, last, and security. We didn’t have expensive belongings and we didn’t have a family vehicle, but we found a way to pay the landlords what we owed and we were finally up to date. It was a huge relief to just start paying the regular monthly rent.

After almost a year of no new infections, one more horrible infection came out of nowhere. In the beginning of December, I was driving to get my wife to go to a Holiday Concert at my 10-year-old’s school and I went completely blind! I somehow found a way to safely pull over. I ended up being rushed to the hospital because my pulse was 33 bpm and my blood pressure was extremely low. I was septic. I had gotten a blood infection that was so bad that my blood pressure bottomed out and I went blind until they got it back up in the ICU. At the same time, I also had one of the worst cases of cellulitis on my leg that my infectious disease doctor told me he had seen in his career. My skin turned black and started to literally fall off of my leg. (I almost attached these photos, but I figured they were too gruesome). I HAD TO BEG FOR A SECOND OPINION BECAUSE THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT AMPUTATING MY LEG! Luckily, the second opinion was to not remove my leg and to just keep me in the hospital on antibiotics and pressers (for the blood pressure) and keep an eye on my leg for progress. I was finally released on a PIC-line (basically an IV at home) with at-home nursing (more medical expenses) on Christmas Eve. My kids were happy to have me alive and at home, but it was not a very luxurious Christmas for them and that killed me. I felt so bad, but they assured me they were just happy that I was alive. I have the most loving and caring children. It was a hard road to just get back up on my crutches. I was bedridden and in a wheelchair for about a month after I was released.

Four months later, I get a notice in the mail out of nowhere! AGAIN! I was being asked to move out in 30 days because my landlord was selling the house! It was happening again! This time, however, we are living week by week. I have medical expenses piling up and we have no savings and bad credit this time. I have tried to apply for loans, government assistance, and have asked family and friends for help, but the government assistance denied us. We don’t qualify because my wife and I make enough to support our family on our own, they said. Family can’t help because they are not well off financially either. Banks basically laughed at me. I can’t get together first, last, and security for a new place while still paying our regular monthly expenses and still paying medical expenses so that hopefully one day soon I can walk on my own again. It has been two years and I still can’t walk on my own.

We will have no problem paying our rent monthly, it’s just the upfront costs and finding someone to trust us with their rental property. I hate having to do this, but I have nowhere else to turn. We have court on May 22nd because we couldn’t find somewhere to go in the 30 days we were given in the notice. I am hoping that with mediation we can get some more time, but I’m scared out of my mind that they are going to only give us ten days or less to move out again. This time we may end up on the streets and I can’t do that to my kids. They deserve better. As a father and husband, I am supposed to provide for my family. I am supposed to keep them safe, happy, and healthy. I feel like I’ve failed them and I need help. Like I said before, I have very rarely ever asked anyone for help. I have always been the one to open my home to anyone that needed help. Unfortunately, my timing is not the best and everywhere I turn they cannot help me.

So if anyone out there can help me get enough funds together to prevent my family from being homeless, we would all appreciate it.

Also, if anyone knows of a place for us to go (a 3 bedroom) or even somewhere temporarily, we would appreciate that help as well! Thank you.