Broke Old Ladies an Emerging Demographic

From under her glasses she told me she was moving to Mexico because you can live there on, on. . . the words were hard to get out of her mouth, “Four five hundred a month.”  She believes, in her late sixties, that she will be better off in Mexico, even sat up straighter and said, "You can live in Rosarita Beach on five hundred dollars a month." That is the kind of decision some older women are having to make in the USA in 2015. 

Did you know, the homeless guy drinking on the sidewalk gets a larger Social Security check than many elderly women? He got Disability in his thirties. We took care of families and arrived in old age with nothing to live on. We are the emerging demographic that needs attention, maybe a project called Golden Girls, or Rusty Iron Girls. Need help with the name, Golden implies something that is not happening here.

I am 

Currently germinating The Golden Girls Project group homes for seniors who are housing challenged, converting one Vacation Home Rental at a time into year round housing for seniors.

It started with a letter I sent to the City Council and Mayor below. 

It started bk I have no family or friends to turn to, I am too tired at 67 to keep working the hours I'm working, if I don't do something soon, I am going under. 

I meet women on the bus in similar circumstances. We feel shamed that we are so poor, we all have the same look of shock on our faces, "I can't afford a Coke and I don't want anyone to know it." Met a woman other day who was taking a bus to Sacramento and then onto Mexico as that is what she can afford. Another looked at the ground and said she was returning to Carson City, with little enthusiasm. 

Grannies with Junkie Kids could be a name for the nonprofit, still working on it. 

EMAIL sent out

*****
Dear Councilwoman Conner: I have moved 5 times in 4 years, as a 67 year old woman trying to find affordable housing. Why Can't we work with a few homeowners to convert some VHR's into year round housing, group homes, for seniors. Currently I am waiting 2-3 years to maybe get in Tahoe Senior Plaza, yet there are empty houses, whose owners want to use them as income property, all over this city. There are dozens of women in my circumstances right here in Tahoe who we could accommodate, I meet them at senior centers, on the bus. We are the new demographic that no one is addressing yet, low income elderly, mostly women. We live in SROs and shelters or other horrible places, this is not right. I am sure there are Federal programs that would help us create housing for seniors, there are likely South Lake Tahoe homeowners who would rather rent year round to five women in their sixties and seventies than three months a year to a group of rowdies in their twenties. I WILL VOLUNTEER TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN and am already doing research, any help you can give me, Councilwoman Conner, I think we could do this, it would solve many problems.
hope you are an ally with me on this
sincerely
Kay Ebeling
journalist from L.A. currently living in an SRO in Tahoe and Do Not Want To Have to Move Again, please.
Let's Do This, we can call it The Golden Girls Project, perhaps, but men would want to live there too...
Kay Ebeling Phone 530 -----
you will hear more from me about this soon
******
Also forwarded to a new subcommittee to find "alternatives" for owners of VHR's, who are investors who own homes by the dozen, Council members Austin Sass and Wendy David, the latter responded that it's a good idea I should do it. 

BUT

I don't have six hundred dollars to file the first forms and start a nonprofit in CA. People never realize that. I can't do this, I need someone to do it. I can't even buy a Coke. 

AARGH Now I have to try to get a one percenter who owns homes as an investment to talk to me.  The other day one tried to run me over as I crossed the street with the light. 

People in cars have no idea what it's like to be a broke old lady. 

.
Correction, the one percenter did not try to run me over. He just continued on with his nose pointed so high that he could say he did not see me right there in the crosswalk if he did hit me. He was going to pretend he did not see me, as lifting his flabby leg to put it on the brake was too much work. I stopped and watched him float by me in his height of comfort, his stomach really did overlap the steering wheel and he knew I was there, he just was not going to stop. He was going to hit me or make me wait. He was pulling out of the Tahoe Keys development of mansions on the water. 

I have lived in Tahoe since March 5 and now I can count three THREE times someone has seemed to be trying to hit me as I crossed the street. 


Cut paragraph: 

She was in the Y waiting for the Amtrak bus down the mountain.  Her posture made her look circular on the bench,  

-ke