Our water heater is trying to kill us

My name is Raile, and I'm a disabled Korean/Jewish transman on SSI. I live with my husband (another disabled transman who works full time at a Kroger deli), my retired former service dog, and four cats.

Over the past few months, our water heater (a natural gas fuelled one) has been going out with increasing frequency--at least once a week, three times in the past week alone. We know immediately because every time it does, the house absolutely REEKS of gas. It's.... uh. Not great! My bedroom shares a wall with this thing!

We were hoping to wait until tax season to address this, but it's becoming obvious that this can't wait.

The goal of the GoFundMe is enough to replace the water heater, potentially with an electric one, and also cover the cost of installation/removal of the old one. The replacement water heater itself will cost 519 dollars, we don't know how much taxes and installation will be, so we'll try to edit the GFM as soon as we know, or any leftover money (somehow) will be put towards trying to fix our oven, the natural gas element of which broke during a storm that flooded us, cut our power for about 20 hours, and hit us with hail--but we're really not asking for people to help us with both. As long as we don't try to light the oven, it's safe to have in the house until tax season.

The water heater, not so much.

So, that's the situation. Thank you so, so much for the time you took to read this, thank you for ANY donation (a dollar, even! That's practically 1/50th of the heater!), and... if you live in the US, contact your representatives about raising the maximum for SSI to the federal poverty level (also known as the Social Security Income Restoration Act) so that people like us can replace our life-threatening appliances on our own in the future.... and pay it forward.