Randy Wolf Housing Help
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I grew up and lived for the first 40 years of my life in the small town of ,Crete, IL. My cousin Randy grew up in Crete as well and was born on the same day as me only was 7 years older. My Aunt and Uncle could not have children and they adopted him through Catholic Charities in Canada when he was 3 days old. Growing up, we were taught to treat Randy special because he had special needs. He was born in 1957, it was a time when a formal diagnosis of his condition was either not known or not necessary to be known. His grandmother said he had scarlet fever as a baby, which explained his special needs. He went to a special school in an era that did not afford people with disabilities inclusion in the regular public school system. As a teenager he rode his bike all over town, as he got older he was taught to drive. He held several jobs through his school program into his adult life. He worked at rest area and gas stations, doing cleaning and janitorial work. He has an excellent memory, which helped him memorize the street signs and navigate with his car but he never learned to read or write.
In 1983 his mother died, who I should say adored Randy and was responsible for making him the easy going, upbeat and happy go lucky person he is today. He was devastated. His parents never had any other children or adopted any more children, Randy was an only child. After his mother died, he met the love of his life, Betty, while working as a custodian. Betty also had special needs. She had many things in common with him. They both had gone to the same school, they were both adopted, and both were the only children of their adoptive parents. Both sets of parents were hard working and knew that they would have to set aside a financial plan for their children, who even though they were high functioning, had limitations when it came to budgeting money and making a living. Both were left trust funds. Betty and Randy lived together for several years on their own means, between their jobs and their trust funds. When their trust funds ran out Betty was in poor health. She had had open heart surgery for a heart condition and was a severe diabetic. Randy had survived Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, and is diabetic as well. In 2010, Betty and Randy went to live in a nursing home. My mother became his POA and had to go through the process of getting him disability. Before this time he had never asked for help from any government agency to help take care of him. During the years of their time in the nursing home, my mother would go to the nursing home several times a year and pick up Randy to take him shopping, to take him out to eat, and to take him to get a haircut. When my parents retired and moved to Florida, I took over for my mother. When I would plan a day to pick Randy up from the nursing home I would call ahead to tell him I was coming . One day in 2017, I called the nursing home to say I was coming to pick Randy up and they told me he was no longer there. They had transferred him to another nursing home owned by the same company. Needless to say, they never notified our family. When I got to the new nursing home to pick him up I was horrified. He was thin, in dirty clothes, and worst of all Betty was not there with him. Betty was in the hospital, where she stayed for several months. I would go to the nursing home to pick Randy up to visit her about once a week. She was not in very good health, she had breathing issues, a feeding tube, and most times seemed like she was in a far away land. When Randy came to see her, she lit up like the sun and so did he, they truly loved each other! In the meantime, I had attempted to get Randy out of the nursing home he was in. The company that owned the nursing home where he was at also owned a facility in Indiana about 10 miles from where I lived. I contacted them and asked if they would be willing to transfer Randy to their Indiana location and within a month or so they made it happen. Randy came to the nursing home near me, they transferred his paperwork and he was in a much nicer place. Betty was next, the hospital released her to a nursing home because she ran out of time for her stay there. The nursing home they sent her to was horrible. Within 2 days she was back in the hospital. Since she had no next of kin other than Randy, I became her POA per the request of the first hospital she was in. When we went to see her at the second hospital, they explained she had been sent in because there was blood in her colostomy bag. My reply was she did not have a colostomy bag, she had a feeding tube! The nursing home had put a colostomy bag on her feeding tube port because they were too lazy to read her discharge papers! Need I say more? Eventually, after she recovered in the hospital I was able to have her transferred to the same nursing home Randy was in. Unfortunately this only lasted for a few days and she was back in the hospital. She remained in the hospital for several weeks and they wanted to discharge her but because she had not had time to do the paperwork to transfer her Medicaid from Illinois to Indiana, she could only stay in the hospital a certain number of days per Medicare. The hospital attempted to transfer her several times, but to no avail because her paperwork was not in order. Finally they did transfer her back to the same nursing home Randy was at but within days hospice was called. She was able to have Randy by her side until she passed away. And he grieved. Several months later I was contacted by the nursing home to say that they were being closed by the state and Randy was being transferred to another facility in the same town. He made friends fast there, like he does in any place! After several months at the new facility I got a call from the social worker to say that Randy no longer qualified for nursing care and that we would need to try to get him services from the state for an assisted living situation. Apparently, the nursing home that first moved him to Indiana, as did the previous facilities, fudged about his capabilities and he no longer qualified to be in a nursing home. Fast forward to the fall of 2019, when we had the state evaluate him and determine that he qualified for assistance in a living situation, due to his mild intellectual disabilities. Long process, lots of paperwork, approvals, bla, bla, bla. He gets assigned a case manager who helps to find him a living situation. In February of 2020, there is a meeting set up at a group home for Randy to go look at. We go look, and the room in the house that would have been his bedroom, had a stained brown ceiling that looked as if it had leaked for several years. When I expressed a concern about it to the host of the house he told me the ceiling just needed to be painted. Please, the roof obviously leaked. After we left, I asked Randy what he thought and he said, " I was really expecting something cleaner" so we waited. Then Covid hit, his case manager set us up for another home visit of an apartment, very close to where he was living in the nursing home. The nursing home let him come out for a meet and greet. The roommate, whose mother is his guardian, had surveillance cameras installed in the apartment because her son had had some unexplained injuries and the mother wanted to keep an eye on her son. When Randy first heard that there were cameras in the apartment he was on a video conference call and he cried. The nursing home social worker said that when she questioned him about it later, he said he cried because the roommate had been hurt. Fast forward to July of 2020, we finally get all the approvals and waivers in order for Randy to move into his new apartment. He is told that if he doesn't like where he lives, they will find him another place. He signs a paper that says he is aware that there are cameras in the apartment but he reserves the right to change his mind. He moves in! Within a few months it then becomes apparent that he is very uncomfortable with the cameras. His roommate's mother is called during a group meeting of Randy's team of advocates in late September of 2020 expressing that Randy is uncomfortable with the cameras. The guardian's response is that Randy is welcomed to break his lease but she is not taking out the cameras. We start on a quest to find different living arrangements for Randy. We contact the apartment complex and explain the situation and they say that they didn't know there were cameras in the apartment and that there is no problem with letting him out of his lease. We find him a new apartment, a new roommate, and new approvals need to be in place but affordable apartments are going fast so the company that Randy has to oversee his care takes him to sign a lease at his new apartment, and they ask me for a deposit and 10 days of rent for December, even though he has paid where he is until December 31. I need to say that I am not his POA, just his rep-payee for Social Security who gets his check and pays his bills. We do not have a separate dedicated bank account for Randy because we have not been able to get him an ID. He had a driver's license when he lived in Illinois, which expired while he was in the nursing home. Once he was out of the last nursing home, Indiana DMV told me that he cannot get an ID until he has a document stating that he is a citizen from The US Immigration Dept. because he has a Canadian birth certificate, but that is a whole different story. He became a naturalized citizen just before his second birthday, but I have no idea what happened to the documents, so he had to fill out a form, ask for a waiver for the $555 fee and wait 5-8 months for the document! So the day after Randy signs the lease at the new apartment, I find out the guardian of his roommate will not release Randy from his current lease. The leasing agent at his apartment complex, who said they would let him out of his lease in no longer employed there. When I called to ask for a supervisor for the complex, the area director for the company tells me that their hands are tied. They will not let him out of the lease (they even happen to own the complex that he has signed the new lease at) and that my only resort is to take his roommate and guardian to small claims court. In the meantime, my cousin Randy is distraught. HE HAS BEEN THROUGH ENOUGH! He barely gets enough Social Security to get by, and we cannot apply for more services or even a new Social Security card for him until we get the document from the Immigration Department. His roommate's mother doesn't want to let Randy out of the lease because her son doesn't get enough from Social Security to pay the rent on his own, but she doesn't want to turn off the dozen or so cameras in common areas of the apartment. Randy relies on a waiver from Medicaid to pay the company who oversees his care. They will not approve for him to move into the new apartment unless he is released from his current lease. His expenses at the apartment are approximately $500 per month and he has 6 months remaining on his lease. If I can raise $3000 to pay off his lease at his current apartment, I can offer to pay off his roommate for his portion of the lease for the next 6 months. Thank you for listening to my long, drawn out, life story of my dear cousin Randy. He is so deserving! Thank You!
In 1983 his mother died, who I should say adored Randy and was responsible for making him the easy going, upbeat and happy go lucky person he is today. He was devastated. His parents never had any other children or adopted any more children, Randy was an only child. After his mother died, he met the love of his life, Betty, while working as a custodian. Betty also had special needs. She had many things in common with him. They both had gone to the same school, they were both adopted, and both were the only children of their adoptive parents. Both sets of parents were hard working and knew that they would have to set aside a financial plan for their children, who even though they were high functioning, had limitations when it came to budgeting money and making a living. Both were left trust funds. Betty and Randy lived together for several years on their own means, between their jobs and their trust funds. When their trust funds ran out Betty was in poor health. She had had open heart surgery for a heart condition and was a severe diabetic. Randy had survived Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, and is diabetic as well. In 2010, Betty and Randy went to live in a nursing home. My mother became his POA and had to go through the process of getting him disability. Before this time he had never asked for help from any government agency to help take care of him. During the years of their time in the nursing home, my mother would go to the nursing home several times a year and pick up Randy to take him shopping, to take him out to eat, and to take him to get a haircut. When my parents retired and moved to Florida, I took over for my mother. When I would plan a day to pick Randy up from the nursing home I would call ahead to tell him I was coming . One day in 2017, I called the nursing home to say I was coming to pick Randy up and they told me he was no longer there. They had transferred him to another nursing home owned by the same company. Needless to say, they never notified our family. When I got to the new nursing home to pick him up I was horrified. He was thin, in dirty clothes, and worst of all Betty was not there with him. Betty was in the hospital, where she stayed for several months. I would go to the nursing home to pick Randy up to visit her about once a week. She was not in very good health, she had breathing issues, a feeding tube, and most times seemed like she was in a far away land. When Randy came to see her, she lit up like the sun and so did he, they truly loved each other! In the meantime, I had attempted to get Randy out of the nursing home he was in. The company that owned the nursing home where he was at also owned a facility in Indiana about 10 miles from where I lived. I contacted them and asked if they would be willing to transfer Randy to their Indiana location and within a month or so they made it happen. Randy came to the nursing home near me, they transferred his paperwork and he was in a much nicer place. Betty was next, the hospital released her to a nursing home because she ran out of time for her stay there. The nursing home they sent her to was horrible. Within 2 days she was back in the hospital. Since she had no next of kin other than Randy, I became her POA per the request of the first hospital she was in. When we went to see her at the second hospital, they explained she had been sent in because there was blood in her colostomy bag. My reply was she did not have a colostomy bag, she had a feeding tube! The nursing home had put a colostomy bag on her feeding tube port because they were too lazy to read her discharge papers! Need I say more? Eventually, after she recovered in the hospital I was able to have her transferred to the same nursing home Randy was in. Unfortunately this only lasted for a few days and she was back in the hospital. She remained in the hospital for several weeks and they wanted to discharge her but because she had not had time to do the paperwork to transfer her Medicaid from Illinois to Indiana, she could only stay in the hospital a certain number of days per Medicare. The hospital attempted to transfer her several times, but to no avail because her paperwork was not in order. Finally they did transfer her back to the same nursing home Randy was at but within days hospice was called. She was able to have Randy by her side until she passed away. And he grieved. Several months later I was contacted by the nursing home to say that they were being closed by the state and Randy was being transferred to another facility in the same town. He made friends fast there, like he does in any place! After several months at the new facility I got a call from the social worker to say that Randy no longer qualified for nursing care and that we would need to try to get him services from the state for an assisted living situation. Apparently, the nursing home that first moved him to Indiana, as did the previous facilities, fudged about his capabilities and he no longer qualified to be in a nursing home. Fast forward to the fall of 2019, when we had the state evaluate him and determine that he qualified for assistance in a living situation, due to his mild intellectual disabilities. Long process, lots of paperwork, approvals, bla, bla, bla. He gets assigned a case manager who helps to find him a living situation. In February of 2020, there is a meeting set up at a group home for Randy to go look at. We go look, and the room in the house that would have been his bedroom, had a stained brown ceiling that looked as if it had leaked for several years. When I expressed a concern about it to the host of the house he told me the ceiling just needed to be painted. Please, the roof obviously leaked. After we left, I asked Randy what he thought and he said, " I was really expecting something cleaner" so we waited. Then Covid hit, his case manager set us up for another home visit of an apartment, very close to where he was living in the nursing home. The nursing home let him come out for a meet and greet. The roommate, whose mother is his guardian, had surveillance cameras installed in the apartment because her son had had some unexplained injuries and the mother wanted to keep an eye on her son. When Randy first heard that there were cameras in the apartment he was on a video conference call and he cried. The nursing home social worker said that when she questioned him about it later, he said he cried because the roommate had been hurt. Fast forward to July of 2020, we finally get all the approvals and waivers in order for Randy to move into his new apartment. He is told that if he doesn't like where he lives, they will find him another place. He signs a paper that says he is aware that there are cameras in the apartment but he reserves the right to change his mind. He moves in! Within a few months it then becomes apparent that he is very uncomfortable with the cameras. His roommate's mother is called during a group meeting of Randy's team of advocates in late September of 2020 expressing that Randy is uncomfortable with the cameras. The guardian's response is that Randy is welcomed to break his lease but she is not taking out the cameras. We start on a quest to find different living arrangements for Randy. We contact the apartment complex and explain the situation and they say that they didn't know there were cameras in the apartment and that there is no problem with letting him out of his lease. We find him a new apartment, a new roommate, and new approvals need to be in place but affordable apartments are going fast so the company that Randy has to oversee his care takes him to sign a lease at his new apartment, and they ask me for a deposit and 10 days of rent for December, even though he has paid where he is until December 31. I need to say that I am not his POA, just his rep-payee for Social Security who gets his check and pays his bills. We do not have a separate dedicated bank account for Randy because we have not been able to get him an ID. He had a driver's license when he lived in Illinois, which expired while he was in the nursing home. Once he was out of the last nursing home, Indiana DMV told me that he cannot get an ID until he has a document stating that he is a citizen from The US Immigration Dept. because he has a Canadian birth certificate, but that is a whole different story. He became a naturalized citizen just before his second birthday, but I have no idea what happened to the documents, so he had to fill out a form, ask for a waiver for the $555 fee and wait 5-8 months for the document! So the day after Randy signs the lease at the new apartment, I find out the guardian of his roommate will not release Randy from his current lease. The leasing agent at his apartment complex, who said they would let him out of his lease in no longer employed there. When I called to ask for a supervisor for the complex, the area director for the company tells me that their hands are tied. They will not let him out of the lease (they even happen to own the complex that he has signed the new lease at) and that my only resort is to take his roommate and guardian to small claims court. In the meantime, my cousin Randy is distraught. HE HAS BEEN THROUGH ENOUGH! He barely gets enough Social Security to get by, and we cannot apply for more services or even a new Social Security card for him until we get the document from the Immigration Department. His roommate's mother doesn't want to let Randy out of the lease because her son doesn't get enough from Social Security to pay the rent on his own, but she doesn't want to turn off the dozen or so cameras in common areas of the apartment. Randy relies on a waiver from Medicaid to pay the company who oversees his care. They will not approve for him to move into the new apartment unless he is released from his current lease. His expenses at the apartment are approximately $500 per month and he has 6 months remaining on his lease. If I can raise $3000 to pay off his lease at his current apartment, I can offer to pay off his roommate for his portion of the lease for the next 6 months. Thank you for listening to my long, drawn out, life story of my dear cousin Randy. He is so deserving! Thank You!
Organizer
Amy Timmerman-Sheehan
Organizer
Hobart, IN