Safe Housing For My Mother

Hi friends,

My mom just received an order of eviction from the City Marshall in the Bronx.  She has to be out of her apartment seven days from today.  My prayer is to raise money for her to move, put down a new security deposit and, if miracles are possible, pay a year of rent upfront on a stable, safe living space for her.

As some of you know, she has been intermittently homeless since the year 2000.  When I was in college, she and my brother lived with me in my dorm room.   She has stayed with him, and me, (and my housemates and romantic others) many many times over the years.  She's also the inspiration/expiration/dispiriting behind all of my books and theatre work, if you happen to be into those things.

She's paranoid-schizophrenic, a former MD, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, and she likes Nabokov, Schumann, black holes, baking bread, and conspiracy theories.  The most difficult thing about trying to help her all these years is she will never ever admit there is anything wrong with her mentally.  

When the worst period of her homelessness began, social workers counseled me to let her hit "rock bottom" so that she would be forced to admit she was crazy, thus giving the state the legal right to hospitalize her and provide her with services.  

This rock-bottom theory turned out to be meaningless.  There were blizzards.  There were rapists.  There were hellish shelters, soup kitchens, and a soul exhaustion like I have never seen.  There was even a month on Riker's Island.  None of it would make her cop to insanity.  

Here's an in-depth article on the homelessness crisis in New York-- from the current NYMag

I am not going to play the rock-bottom game with my mother's life ever again.

Now, some good news:

1. She has a fixed -- very low-- income.  Her social security check means a new landlord can count on her rent.
2. There are open units in my rent-stabilized building.  The apartments are too big, and probably too expensive, for her to manage on her own, but it's an avenue I'm at least going to explore.  
Whatever money I can raise to get her housed someplace simple and safe will be a miracle and a godsend.  (And if you're curious about the whys & wherefores of the eviction proceeding she's in right now, I explain them below)

Want to help but don't have money?  I'd still love to hear from you:
1. Do  you know of cheap and decent studios or SROs a charming and mild-mannered crazy lady might occupy?  Hit me up!
2. Do you have a crazy parent?  I'd love to hear your stories!
3.  Are you interested in building new kinds of community, more rewarding relationships with elders, more livable modes of care, new narratives of sacrifice and overcoming?  Please share your fantasies with me.

Ok, here's background and details on her current situation: my mom had been living with my brother up in the Bronx for several years, without having ever had her name on the lease.  When the program that administers my brother's housing decided to move him (he's a great guy with a mental health diagnosis and he receives housing assistance and services through an organization called Fountain House), she stayed on in the apartment.  And although it is in terrible condition and basically unfit for human occupancy, the fact that my mom has had privacy and a minimal income for a few years has stabilized and soothed her condition immeasurably.  These last few years have truly been the only time in my adult life that when people ask about her, I've honestly been able to say "She's ok."  An eviction proceeding was initiated by the landlord back in 2014-- it bought us some time, because it's not easy to evict elderly people who are mentally or physically unwell.  But now, at last, here we are.  Naturally, I am in touch with my mom's social worker and Legal Aid, doing whatever I can do to help.