Safe Home for Black, Disabled Family

Moving Backward To Move Forward: 

We've been temporarily displaced again while the camper is repaired. The ceiling and walls have been gutted. The entire roof is being replaced. 

Mum is renting a tiny home nearby for the time being. This, plus the repair costs and a shortage of reliable labor have become prohibitive. If anyone is available to come help us work on this, please contact yzenaidacohen@gmail.com

Next Steps: 

Mum has set her eye on the cheapest home building kit we could find. Buying a home building kit that we can get a permit to assemble on the land will be much faster than renovating these used mobile homes on our limited income. $20,000 should be enough for us to buy, work on, and move into a modest 900 sq. ft. home.  

In the interim, we need help with a lot of accessibility related things. Please e-mail us if you're in Florida and want to donate time. 

Help Needed:

Those of us who are able to work through our disabilities are contributing as much as possible to achieving stability. We're each working as hard as is physically possible. Unfortunately we've each experienced injuries from overdoing it, with no end in sight. 

We need help finding donors and doing repairs. 

Our Family's Situation:

Most of our family members are disabled, and due to abysmal healthcare in Florida, are unable to seek proper care. We have to rebuild our off-the-grid home for what is now the third time due to repeated displacement. Please share what you can so we can live in better relation to the land, and live healthier lives while we do so. 

Miss Wanda Cohen is an elderly woman who enjoys providing excellent child care for up to ten of her beloved grandchildren at a time, even though she lives on a slim SSI check. Her compassionate heart and patience are well known among her community.  

She is a physically disabled woman who has been living off the grid for a year, farming and purifying rainwater. Through help from fellow poor folks she was able to follow through with the county’s demands for her to live in a more traditional structure (a solar RV). She was then able to move into a new place and begin building a new home, but unfortunately she has had to leave that environment and begin anew. Her Solar RV is being creatively held together (yes, with gorilla glue duck tape and on-sale plywood). The family is deeply concerned about Mama Wanda's safety in the long-term. 

Reparative aid now can make the difference between her having a septic tank, safe water, safe cooking equipment, and enough solar power for our shifting cast of family living off the grid.

Wanda and Yocheved

Yocheved is Wanda’s youngest daughter. She is also living on a modest disability check, but due to Florida’s less-than-stellar healthcare system she is currently receiving medical care in California. 

Wanda’s oldest daughter, G, is a single mother of twins. Her hereditary and occupationally acquired illnesses are currently threatening her ability to work. She has preserved in her studies and in manual labor despite these lifelong and progressive conditions. 

Wanda’s oldest son, JC, is a gentle giant who works constantly to provide for his six children,himself, his siblings, and Mama. Years of hard physical labor have taken their toll on his body. As such he can longer work all day and churn out repairs when he gets home. 

Due to the enforced poverty our current system inflicts on disabled people, it is nearly impossible for a family to pull itself up from dirt bottom. But we are doing our best. With your help, we can give the next generation and the older generation a better quality of life. 

If you have help that isn’t financial, we welcome that too! Please e-mail us at yzenaidacohen@gmail.com. We need so much advice reaching where we need to be.