Hello everyone. My name is Crystal Flores and I've been struggling with homelessness for the past 5 years. Im 33 yrs old and live on the streets in Los Angeles California. I was born with heart disease and had 6 open heart surgeries to be able to live. My heart condition is called "Hypoplastic right heart syndrome" which means i live with a single ventricle heart. Unfortunately, my heart condition has no cure and requires life long care. Im not able to work due to my heart not being able to keep up like a healthy person. Ive had many jobs in the past but have not been able to keep up with any and i had to eventually quit all of them. In 2015 my heart dr officially told me i cant work and ive been struggling ever since. I receive disability every month but its not enough to survive. I cant even afford to rent a room in someone's place without being broke.  I barely get thru the month with the $945 i get from SSI. Ive tried everything in my power to get housing and help from social services and they refuse to help me. They wont help me based on my disability. After dealing with social services all these years ive come to realize that there are no resources for disabled people like me. Social services only helps people who have drug abuse or drug induced mental illness because those type of people stay in the system and that's how they make money. Sadly, social services are not here to help people with physical disabilities. My mom also became homeless with me in 2015 and we both slept on the streets together. My mom's name was Gloria Flores. if you notice the picture on this fundraiser, that's my mom on that picture. My mom developed cancer a few months after we became homeless and was diagnosed in March 2016. Thats when they finally decided to put her in a shelter. This transitional shelter was supposed to give my mom a section 8 voucher while she lived there. Not one social worker lifted a finger to help her. My mom lived in this shelter for 3 years and when her cancer got worse, they just kicked her out back to streets like she was nothing. The picture you see of her was taken by that shelter and was used against her will to raise funds. Pretty much they just used my mom to make money off her while she lived in the shelter. Fortunately, my mom was hospitalized when she got kicked out. I had to fight for her rights at the hospital so they can find her a nursing home to live because we had no place to go. I had no place to take her. I was out on the streets all those 3 years to be close and to care for my mom while she was fighting  cancer because she didn't have anyone else but me. I tried getting in that same shelter she was in all those years and they always gave me excuses to not give me a bed. Most of the social workers didn't even believe i have heart disease because in their eyes, i look so healthy on the outside, physically. After my mom was finally sent to a nursing home, she only lived there for 7 months before she died .S didnt die because of her cancer. She died because the nursing home neglects the patients and serves them nasty old rotten food. My mom caught E Coli from eating the eggs from the nursing home. She became septic and caused her pneumonia and went into respiratory failure. I had to disconnect her from life support. My moms death was unnecessary and gruesome. Her death was the consequences of the neglect this society causes to people who are less fortunate. To society, disabled people like us are looked as "less than" Most homeless people out here on the streets are disabled. Many of them have died over the course of the 5 years ive been on the streets. I know for a fact that my mom would still be alive today if society had done what they were supposed to do to help care for disabled people. So I want to ask you today if you can find in your heart, if you can help me fight homelessness so that i won't end up dying out here. Your donations will help sustain me out here on the streets and possibly maybe even get off the streets. My personal resources are very limited and with all your help i believe it would help me ease the financial burden of being on the streets. Its impossible for me to save any money because i need it to survive out here. I cant cook on the streets , i spend most of my money on food and its so expensice to eat out. Maybe with your donations id be able to buy some sort of portable stove top to cook and not spend so much money on take out. Whatever help i can get will help me out so much. I would be forever grateful to you all. Again thank you for being here and taking the time to read our story.
LOVE, Crystal