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https://www.gofundme.com/if-1000-people-gave-20-each-but-no
This is posted over at GoFundMe – I’m repeating what I wrote on it here for my blog. Read it, don’t – Share or don’t – Give or not. At least I will have asked for help and let people know what is happening. Maybe it will help someone else knowing it whether it helps me get anything that makes things better for us or not.
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If 1000 people gave $20 – our family wouldn’t become homeless in the next few days – but no.
So our little family came from New York to Atlanta to help my Dad in his last year of his life, now the estate is putting us out and if I had $20 each from 1,000 people, we could get a place with the 3 months rent +deposits, utilities, transportation to get back to New York – but no.
It has been the mental stress of being thrown on the street by our other family members, not being given money for the work we did here & then being forced to be homeless again after the fire took everything 2 yrs ago – it would take so little from many to get a place, but no.
My daughter finally got an interview for a job in NYC that is Tuesday from a civil service test she took around the time of the fire that took our apt 2 yrs ago, if we had $30 from 2,000 people – we could go there and she could take that job & get an apt too – but no.
If the people who have enjoyed my artworks, my writings and who I’ve stopped to spend hours of my time helping over the years would give $20 each right now – our little family could be restored, get on our feet with an apartment and a job for my daughter in NYC where we had been living and go forward with our lives, but no.
If someone bought this from me and made a good business from it licensing the designs – we could have an apt and afford it, get back to NYC, get jobs and take care of ourselves, but no. CricketDiane Designs on Zazzle
If someone would buy all of my creative brainstorming notes with marketing ideas I couldn’t do – but would work for something, my design rights, art – anything like all of it, they could use it & that $20,000 would get us on our feet & a way back to NYC & an apt there, but no.
If somebody bought my blogs and carried on with them – but no. Or lent a hand with $20 – but it would take a lot of people doing that, but no. Or, if our family had actually paid us a bit for helping the estate and caretaking of Dad for his last year – but no. Just going homeless.
cricketdiane, 07-07-2018 (blog posted)
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As if it wasn’t enough to have a fire set by children next door and watch our apt and our cat and everything we owned burned down – never being able to go in an retrieve any of it – (in Staten Island, NYC Aug. 2016)
As if it wasn’t enough to have HPD refuse to make any reasonable accommodation to me unless I found a GP to give me a referral to a neurologist or psychologist in NYC that would say I needed to have it and didn’t house us at all nor help us through HPD and NYCHA.
As if it wasn’t enough that I spent months paying to sleep on a neighbor’s living room floor while trying to find an apartment when every single one I did find with my Section 8 voucher ended up with NYCHA delaying it a week insisting that the fire report wasn’t enough to prove one of my daughters was no longer watching my other daughter’s children at our house which burned down – over and over again, costing every one of those rental opportunities using my voucher which now is gone.
And as if it wasn’t enough that one of my daughters and granddaughter who had been living with me, came to Georgia rather than sleep on a neighbor’s floor to help my Dad / her Grandfather live in his own house for the last year of his life, performing every single thing that needed to be done from cooking to doctor’s appointments, 24 hour care to clean up whatever illness happened, doing all the errands and computer work among about 50 other jobs without pay – for over a year.
As if it wasn’t enough that Daddy insisted I come here for what turned out to be his last month of life and help him and help with his estate and help my daughter go through all this with his final months – which turned out to be only a month, which I paid for the plane ticket, came and started cleaning, repairing, working on the estate for him to get it ready for whenever the time came and then continued to do so every day for the first four months I was here until family members insisted that I not do any of those things because the estate had not asked me to do them – and certainly had no intention of paying me anything for doing any of it, in case I was expecting that, etc., etc,. etc., ad nauseum – so then here I am.
And, here are my daughter and granddaughter and me – with the estate insisting that we get ourselves and our belongings that Dad had restored to us which were stored here – out. That’s how people do it on the white side of town and then everybody resents us for being in dire straights and our family not helping. Our family members think they did help by “letting” us live here without money, without a car, without jobs that paid anything because they certainly never intended to pay anything for any care Dad would have at home in his last years of his life – it wasn’t their problem. We are not their problem to help us in any way. We have sat in this house trying everything we can to get the money to help ourselves and move to our own place. It can’t be done.
People don’t want the things I’ve crafted, painted and created. They don’t even see the products and designs I’ve made from my art at my online store – so they don’t buy them even if they would like them if that had been something they had seen. There is no marketing it money or any applied understanding of marketing that I can bring to it. The $60 a month I was paying for GoogleAdWords did a little but not enough and it cost us to have to end that recently – so now there are virtually no sales. And, maybe if someone had thought enough of my efforts to help with it – and people had seen it, or seen my artworks, or writings, or creative ideas which there are a ton of but I can’t do them – or ever paid to have any of it, but no. And, that isn’t going to happen.
As if it wasn’t enough to have come through domestic violence, divorce without getting anything, losing my children, years of becoming a recovered person rather than a totally unfunctioning damaged one – but no. There is no value in knowing how to do all that – nobody wants to hear about all that. Nobody anywhere is interested in our family or me or us or the ordeal we are now facing. We are not considered an asset to America nor to anyone because we aren’t rich well-known people with name recognition. And, maybe the art I’ve done is not good enough, but it looks like it is – It looks like my inability to market it well is the problem and I can’t fix that.
But would anyone else buy it from us and let us have the money we need to simply go live in an apartment or house somewhere and get on our feet and go forward – NO, of course not.
And, as negative as that seems, it is based on the continued responses from my own family and others when we’ve posted any requests for help or asked for the opportunities to help ourselves.
Can we help with the estate? No – get out.
Can we get the help you said you’d give so we can go live somewhere else?? – NO – get out.
Can we have your help to move our things to a storage unit? NO – get out.
Can we have a few dollars from something I made that the estate is about to sell as part of its goods? NO – get out!
Can we put some of our own things in one side of the estate sell so we can sell them to get the money we need to move somewhere else? NO! Get out! Get out now!
Can you just give us the money you intended to give the lawyer and court costs to evict us and then charge those costs against us from whatever the final estate amount would be giving us? NO – get out!
Can we borrow against the money the estate is likely going to give us – or at least some part of it, so we can have the money now to move to somewhere else? NO! We aren’t going to do that! GET OUT!
Can we list some of the items that the estate needs to sell and get a small commission for it? NO – Get Out!
Can we be paid something for the work we have done? HELL NO! Get out! That deal was with Daddy not us – GET OUT!
That is the family we have. This is where we are. I have lots of art and creative notes, a studio’s worth of over thirty years of work – do you think at all there would be a grant for artists that would apply to me? HELL NO – because my work isn’t in a gallery – it has to be framed to do that among other things. The couple or three times over the years that is has been accepted by art galleries, it couldn’t be framed properly and placed with them. I gave up and took my art online – in the art community, that means less than nothing. And, maybe it is all worth something with the right buyer or art collector and maybe not. Who knows. But it isn’t anything worthy of a grant from art groups, nor is it of value to get anything from it right now that could yield us money and a place to live and a way to get there.
Yes, pretty well impossible. And, now every time I think about the hours of helping others and that not being worth even those people helping me now – it feels pretty dismal. To be used by my family to secure the place and keep it from being vandalized or robbed, to keep it from falling down any further while they get their shit together on handling the estate, and getting rid of all the squirrels in the attic, the mice in the basement, deep cleaning and sorting of Mom’s hoard of goods which none of them ever did after she died in 2013 and now are sitting here to be dealt with – and to be the most vulnerable, economically disadvantaged members of our family – I mean REALLY? As well as my daughter taking full time care of Daddy and his household management for the last year of his life? REALLY> and this is all we have to show for doing the right things? Is to be further impoverished and homeless with no help whatsoever – because somehow, our lives aren’t worth anything? REALLY>
If 1,000 people gave $20 each right now, we could have the resources to get a car, to get a place to live, to go back to NYC where we should be and maybe get my Section 8 voucher sorted out so that I can have a place to live despite being unemployable because of my disabilities. But, no – nobody wants to do that and give up $20 to us. Why should they? And, right now – I can’t think straight enough to answer that either but I know we’ve been helpers in every community where we’ve lived, for what that’s worth.
- cricketdiane
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