Help Senior Citizen With Arthritis Keep Her Home

CHICAGO - A 68-year-old woman who spent much of her life as a single mother of five children needs help restoring the Little Village neighborhood home where she's lived for the past three decades. A GoFundMe effort has begun to help the woman fix the home as the coldest months of the year approach.

The GoFundMe was started by Gabriella Morales, a graduate student in social work at the University of Illinois-Chicago. As part of her studies, Morales is interning at a Little Village neighborhood non-profit organization that recently took on a project to help the woman.

"We couldn’t imagine the amount of repairs needed to be done until we went to her house and see for ourselves," Morales said. "What we saw was surprising. Sadly, as a single mother the damage to her house has been accumulating over the years and has caused extensive damage to her roof and siding of her home."

Full repairs to the home, where the damage is concentrated near the back porch, are expected to cost about $12,000. As of Thursday night, the GoFundMe has brought in just $165 of that goal.

Donate to 'Help Elderly Woman Stay In Her Home' here

"You can feel the cold as soon as you enter the home," Morales told Patch. "The day we went, it was colder inside the home than it was outside."

"With the harsh Chicago winter coming we want to be able to help her as soon as possible because we want her to be safe and warm in her home."

The woman herself spoke about the situation, with the following statement translated from Spanish.

“God, you know my needs. The walls of my house are falling in, I am old and I can no longer do anything to cover up the holes. I don’t need or ask for luxuries, it’s the cold that comes into my house and I feel like I can no longer live like this. I turn on my heater and all of the heat escapes. I am extremely embarrassed but this cold is too horrible.”

Morales said the woman has arthritis and struggled financially over the years as the lone parent of five. When unforeseen expenses came up like replacing the roof, the woman was forced into a situation where it was either fix the roof or feed the family.

"She would always pay the short term needs, but as that continued the home was getting worse and worse," Morales said. "But she does not want to leave her home. She's been there for years, so hopefully anyone who can help her, will."

Photo via GoFundMe, proud partner of Patch