PAUL'S FAMILY CHRISTMAS STORY
Note: this is a true story and every word is exactly what they said.
Request sent through our website
Paul: We are a family of 3 living in hotel in Orlando. We have no money or transportation. Willing to walk to feed our child. We are fortunate to have a hotel room how ever we have very little food. And we have a microwave and crockpot and little refrigerator.We are desparatey reaching out for food assistance as soon as we may get it. We can't afford to even provide Christmas for our 7 year old daughter. Please if you can help us obtaining food today to make it through this holiday, text or email the appropriate steps. This would be a great blessing.
LSF Team: Yes, I can get you some food. Do you need food to cook or food to eat right away? Do you have any transportation at all to pick up food?
Paul: We have nothing for our baby girl for Christmas. II wondered if you have anything left from your Christmas drive that she may have. We have nothing for our baby girl for Christmas. II wondered if you have anything left from your Christmas drive that she may have.
Paul: Some day in the future We will give back to Lady Storm's Foundation and Recommend others do the same. What a relief to have help, we were so afraid. Thank you once more❤️
LSF Team: Ok thank you. We appreciate it. I understand. Will bring her a gift and food.
LSF Team: I am on my way, please meet me at the door.
Paul: Be safe and We will be here waiting. Thanks again and again..
Paul: You really are a special force in this world. You deserve all life's blessings, in my book!
Lady Storm Foundation delivered groceries and Christmas present for their little girl during the holidays.
Full Story of Homelessness Struggles - Paul and Carla
Ok I'm going to walk through this the best I can.
03/2020 Paul lost his job.
Soon after, we lost our house, And it was months we lived in a van. We had to send our baby to live with a relative.
It was horrible: Searching for a place to bathe, food that was hot, somewhere to park and sleep, it was not easy. However I always like to keep in mind, that someone somewhere has it worse...and tomorrow maybe it'll get easier...
07/2020
We get lucky and find a place that needs cleaned up for the deposit and 1st month rent, and the property management never gave us a lease agreement, which later would only hurt us, we trusted him. We cleaned a huge mess for 8 weeks and was happy to do so because we have our family together. Our van falls apart and we have no ride now and our place was in a rural area. Making hard to get food, jobs or whatever you needed from town.But happy to have a roof with water and electricity.
We're barely making it through to December when on December 4th the sheriff's department shows up with a writ procession... throwing us out without warning, after all no evictions we're happening at that time! We were forced to get what we could carry and our neighbors at that time allowed us to leave a few things on thier porch until we figured out what we could do.
So for the next 10 days we slept in the neighbors porch while I called my family trying to get help, finally I got a response, we were allowed to go live in a barn in my sister's property , this barn wasn't fit for an animal...but that's all we had, it hurt to watch my sister from that crappy barn living her perfect life with all her vehicles and 4 extra bedrooms hot water and kitchen. But who was I to say anything I was lucky to be in a barn at that point. Once more being far away from town no phone no vehicle a freezing cold barn water hose and electric. We were all together.
Surrounding this property was new home construction sites,so Paul would go there and get things that made walls in the barn so we made a couple of rooms we could keep warm.My sister allowed our child to bathe inside and I could to but I won't because Paul wasn't allowed. So we stayed there until next December miserable not making enough money to progress or change anything.
My Dad died from covid following were my niece,and brother in law. I was horrified already about getting covid...so I never put our child in school. I was all but suicidal when it hit me to send a letter to Tallahassee, which after all were the people that claim they were there to help people like us.
1/2021 I wrote a letter to Martha Are the housing department.
And within 20 minutes she wrote me back with instruction of who to call and make arrangements per Martha...well I did as directed...and 3 weeks go by and I think its just another bs story about going to help us as all the ones before, believe me when i say I turned over every stone and looked in all doors through out our time living like animals. After 3 weeks I once again send message to Martha Are, and she again rapidly responds. Immediately Angela from HSN gets ahold of me and before I know it I have another call from Luna and she was questioning me about our unsafe living conditions and so I invited her out to see for herself so that she can see I was not exaggerating or lying.
Within a few days we had an appointment to meet a caseworker whom got us a hotel room and we have since been working with to find permanent housing with rapid rehousing... it's not easy as it seems. Although we now have some one in our corner, we have still been discriminated against and tossed out lost everything thing we owned including ID and yet I feel like it could be worse, so I try to keep my head up and move forward. Dignity left long ago ...I can go on and on about things that happened to us during the above mentioned times, how ever it would take more time than you have to listen to the drama if one homeless family.
Please share this story with others and be a part of changing lives by donating to LSF so we can help them during their struggles. We appreciate you reading this story.