Three Nights Before Monday

We need $503 to cover three nights of motel shelter as soon as possible.

Three nights.

Friday night. Saturday night. Sunday night.

Then Monday comes, and our direct deposit comes with it.

That is what I am asking community to help us reach.

We are a multigenerational disabled family of six, and for weeks our housing has been decided in hours.

Wake up.

Check the balance.

Check the motel rate.

Count what is missing.

Post.

Wait.

Watch 9 AM become 10 AM.

Watch 10 AM become checkout.

Ask the front desk for more time.

Try again.

Yesterday we were still trying to secure our rooms after checkout had already passed. The front desk gave us grace while I kept posting because we had nowhere else to go.

Today I did not want to repeat that today.

Or Saturday.

Or Sunday.

I want three nights.

$503.

My almost 80-year-old mom has heart failure, is partially blind, and has severe spinal disease that makes standing, walking, balance, and repeated moves difficult and painful.

My sister is losing her vision, has severe complications from diabetes, and has mild paralysis on her left side after an ischemic stroke last year.

I have systemic mastocytosis, a rare blood cancer of mast cells. My symptoms can include severe itching, hives, swelling, nausea, exhaustion, and potentially life-threatening reactions.

Three autistic adults are also part of our household.

So when I say we need shelter, I am not talking about convenience.

We need rooms with bathrooms we can use. We need somewhere my mother can safely sit and sleep. We need somewhere my sister can move without being pushed through another abrupt relocation. I need somewhere I can manage a body that has been reacting badly under sustained stress.

We have no car to sleep in.

We have no spare bedroom waiting somewhere.

There is no family member who can simply take six people in.

And all of this is happening while our Transitional Rent benefit has been approved since June 20.

Today is day 62.

Earlier this week, a Health Net representative directly asked my Transitional Rent manager why an approved benefit had gone unpaid for two months while my family continued paying for motel rooms ourselves.

Health Net said the denial had been overturned, the benefit approved, and that additional paperwork should not be required from me.

My provider said Health Net’s authorization department still wanted additional paperwork.

Those institutions can continue arguing about what their own departments require.

My family still has to sleep somewhere tonight.

That is why mutual aid matters here.

Not because community should replace Medi-Cal.

Not because ordinary people should be responsible for paying a benefit that has already been approved.

Not because institutional failure becomes acceptable when community manages to keep someone alive through it.

Mutual aid means we share resources because people have immediate material needs, and because survival should not depend on whether a bureaucracy finishes its work before checkout.

I am still fighting the institutional part.

I am filing disability discrimination complaints with OCR, HHS, and DMHC.

I am filing a Health Net complaint against my provider over the failure to provide the Transitional Rent benefit.

I am working on a Writ of Mandamus and a request for a temporary restraining order.

But today I am also doing the most basic thing again:

Trying to keep my family indoors.

Three nights would matter enormously.

Three nights without waking up unsure whether we can stay.

Three nights without asking the front desk for another extension.

Three nights where I can spend some of my time on legal filings, medical care, and my family instead of spending every morning trying to raise motel money before checkout.

Three nights gets us to Monday.

That is the entire ask.

$503 covers all three nights.

No one person has to carry that.

$5 matters.

$10 matters.

$20 matters.

Sharing matters.

This is collective survival in its most practical form: people moving what they can toward a need that exists right now.

We need $503 ASAP.

Please help us stay sheltered through Monday.

Cash App | StoryleGaie
Venmo | subversiva

PayPal | paypal.com/ncp/payment/5S925DTHQ3B9Q
Square | square.link/u/35h59ZAD
Chuffed | chuffed.org/project/marginaliasubversiva