It came out in my Kitchen Table Kibitzing diary last Wednesday that Ice Blue was facing some dire circumstances:
Zoning says I need a new septic system. The banker says I can’t get it out of my home equity. My brother won’t lend it to me. He talked to a nice lady from a private business who is anxious to get me signed up for some community block grant moolah, purely out of the goodness of her heart, he insists. I know elderly and disabled people who have lost every dime they owned through those block grants but he won’t listen to me.
I’m digging around for the quote. I can’t find it but I think, now that the soil test is done, it’s around $4,500 more. That’s a damn good deal, even for a basic system, but I can’t even afford that.
Normally they are around $8,000-$12,000 and up.
Those HUD block grants that are supposed to be the answer to poor people’s dreams? They demand the poor also bring their entire old homes up to modern specs before they will allow anything else can be done, including any lead abatement. WTF does that have to do with your septic tank? Not that I know of any lead paint but it is an old house.
And the line that broke my heart:
Why do I even go on living?
I contacted Ice Blue through Kosmail and asked that she let the Community Fundraisers team help. She also, at my suggestion, set up a GoFundMe. Before we go any further, let me give you the link here: www.gofundme.com/… (Note: embedded widget isn’t working on DK unfortunately). If you don’t want to use GoFundMe, you can send PayPal funds to lisagrinwald AT gmail DOT com. Now, follow me below the fold to learn more:
The following was written by Aji, and is posted here with her permission:
Those of you from the GOS know her as Ice Blue. She is, if memory serves, a fellow horse person. She's also faced more than her fair share of obstacles in recent years. One of those has been debilitating: She survived a massive stroke a few years ago, and has spent the time since doing all she can to recover her health, but she is permanently disabled. If you've had stroke survivors in your family, as we have, you know that that is an extraordinarily difficult task even under the best of circumstances.
Now, she's faced with an enormous and entirely unexpected expense: Her county zoning board has informed her that her septic system is no longer up to code and must be replaced entirely before May of 2017. If she fails to do so . . . I gather that the ultimate result was left hanging, but the threat of homelessness is very real. We know a little bit about what that feels like, too.
Despite an excellent credit rating, her bank refuses to allow her a home equity line of credit to pay for it. She has no family resources upon which she can call for financial assistance. She's already made inquiries and has been given an estimate of $4,525 for what's described as "a basic system," which she says is a good deal, and I believe her. It's about $3K less than the cost we'll be facing when we have to replace ours in a few weeks, once our home is nearly complete (the old one was installed incorrectly seventeen years ago, and cannot be salvaged, so for us, it's both replacement and relocation, hence the higher cost).
But no matter how good a deal it is, it's useless if you can't raise the scratch. What a decade or two ago would have been obvious options for a lot of people simply don't exist anymore for much of the population. You can thank your Republican officials for that. In the meantime, winter is coming, as ASoIaF fans would say, and since she lives in a part of the country where winter is much like ours, that whacks about six months out of the year that are open for the actual replacement work. You take the entire winter season out of the equation, and next May gets here very, very fast.
I don't want her to spend the winter wondering whether she'll be homeless in the spring. I also don't want, Spirit forbid, to have her septic system decide to give up the ghost between now and then.
She's trying to raise $4,750 to cover any eventualities that crop up over and above the quoted price. Personally, I'd rather see her pull in about $6K, just to make sure everything's covered all the way to the end. We can do this. We've raised this much and more in the past; this shouldn't take long at all, provided people, yes, keep sharing the link to her fundraiser.
Ice Blue mentioned to me that she is surviving on a stipend of $800/month. While that allows her to get by, it doesn’t mean much when problems like this crop up. How you can help:
- Go to her GoFundMe and donate, or use the widgets there to share to FB/Twitter
- Send Funds via PayPal to lisagrinwald AT gmail DOT com (use the “Send Money to Friends and Family link so that she doesn’t incur a fee)
- Spread the word — Tip/Rec/Republish/Tweet this diary to get the word out; Share the GoFundMe page with your networks.
****We have an offer of matching funds for the first $100 in contributions. This is a great way to make even small amounts go further!