My name is Ragna Cook. I and my mother have been homeless since January of 2018, when our old apartment complex went under new management and refused to renew our lease. We're living in my mother's car with our two emotional support cats, Shamrock and Sally.
Life has been hard for quite a long time. In January 2015 I injured my back, which has left me unable to work to support us (I am currently attempting to apply for SSI/SSDI) and we've been struggling ever since. I had back surgery in 2016 and the same year got diagnosed with fibromyalgia and later psoriatic arthritis, while shortly after my back surgery my mother was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer and underwent a radial mastectomy and the removal of some of her lymph nodes, plus chemotherapy and radiation. We were just starting to get our health under control when we lost our housing, and as such we're almost at a standstill.
We've had the support of amazing friends to help keep us afloat so far and we recently were able to get $1,200 be given to us when we could get an apartment to put towards the down payment, which was great news...until we found out an $8,000 debt between both of us for an apartment we never should have been added to the lease of will keep us from getting housing (very long story short, the last time we needed housing we went in with a roommate who lied to us and owed back rent and destroyed part of the apartment before we moved in, and this was not fully disclosed to us and we were left having to pay for apartment repairs and owed rent).
We're looking to come up with the $8,000 in fees owed for the complex (Bella Terra APartments in Vista, CA) which has been sent to collections and can be paid through the collection company. According to what an apartment manager told us, if the back payments are paid off and it's not listed as an eviction (which it is not), we can get approved for housing, though likely at a higher deposit.
We're setting our goal for $10,000 to cover any fees associated with paying off the debt, as sometimes doing payments to collection agencies cost money, and the rest will be combined with the $1,200 being held for us to put towards a down payment. We're currently going into our tenth month of homelessness and it's wearing on us physically and mentally, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
