(If you don’t see a Paypal donate button, please click here.)
I have a request.
We recently received an email from an acquaintance of ours. Essentially, it was a goodbye letter. The acquaintance is a widow who lives with a small dog (named Squeaky) in a small apartment here in the Dallas area. Nothing extravagant or fancy. Her job was a support role to Realtors and individually selling homes. Until a couple of months ago, there was still enough business to pay the bills, but that has gone away.
She has taken the only job available thus far working at a gas station. The job pays just over minimum wage, offers maybe 30 hours per week, and does not provide benefits. It isn’t nearly enough to cover the bare essentials of food, shelter and transportation, much less what she owes and was unable to pay when there was no income at all. In addition, she is pursuing any assistance she can get from the state and private charities, but as you may know these organizations are facing steep challenges as donation have dried up even as the number of people needing assistance has swelled.
When we visited her this past Sunday to drop off some groceries, she was trying to box up anything she valued most, preparing for the possibility of living out of her car because she knew that the current job would not even be able to cover rent. We looked at the situation with her from a number of different angles, and there are no easy answers, no quick fixes.
In order to help her avoid becoming homeless (quite literally), we made a commitment to assist with food, rent, and other bare essentials for the next two months, and to do what we can to help find a job that will sustain her. Still, I expect the shortfall to be $500/month. If by that time she has not been able to make sustainable job arrangements, we’ll need to really get creative on the housing situation, though I don’t currently know what form that might take. I hope to not find out.
So, I’m coming to each of you for assistance to help keep one person from becoming homeless and losing the ability to pull themselves back up onto their feet. It would be painful, but not impossible, for me to do it alone – and I’m prepared to do so if necessary. Working together, though, we can distribute the load. I’ve included a button to the right where you can make Paypal donations. If 100 of us can put in only $10 over the next two months, we can see this through.
Questions I would have:
- Why should I help this person and not someone else? I can’t answer that for you. This is the situation presented to me, and I’m presenting it to you. We have a choice to make here and now. I know what my choice is, and I hope you join me.
- How will I know what effect my donation has? I’ll try to provide updates on this page, Facebook, etc. I’m throwing this together pretty quickly and haven’t done it before, so it may not be smooth. And there is no guarantee of success.
- How do I know my donation is going to things that really matter? We are not just handing over cash. Whenever possible, we will pay the payee directly.
- How do I know this is a real person? At this point, I guess you don’t. Call it an act of faith. If you know me even a little bit, you probably know that I don’t make things up and pass them off as the truth. You may learn who she is as we help try to find a job for her, but for the most part we want to respect her privacy as much as possible. For a self-sufficient person to be in this situation is already a pretty severe shock to self-esteem.
- What if you end up with more than you need? If this happens (wouldn’t that be a great problem!), the remaining proceeds will be donated to a local food pantry, or other charity trying to assist people in need with basic necessities. I’m playing this by ear, so I don’t have one singled out.
- What’s to keep you from running off with the cash? Well, nothing, I suppose. Except that my parents, sisters, friends, extended family, etc. are all getting a link to this request, too. And while I do have my share of vices and foibles, coveting money just isn’t one of them. If it isn’t mine, I’m fine with that.
- Is this tax deductible? No, unless you plan to cheat on your taxes and claim it as such. Which I don’t recommend. Unless you plan to drop a large chunk of change, it would be negligible anyway.