SCAMED BY SENIOR HOME OWNER WHO RENTS ROOMS TO DISABLED? EVICTED BY YOUR OWN CRAZY MOM? CAN GENESIS HELP?

(Thanks B for editing our original post!)

HOW DID YOU BECOME HOMELESS?

We're posting this because we don't think our friend, who we'll call Shannon, is the ONLY person who has been scammed by a senior citizen home owner in the Toluca Lake area.

Our friend was living in an Assisted Living building but yearned to be away from so many people, to cook her own meals, and have more of a life, because she was one of the younger people in that place and it was lonely and boring.

Shannon found a listing for a room for rent for about $500 a month in the Toluca Lake area. After only a couple weeks there, she found herself locked out with her possessions inside. She had to go to a motel.

She had to have another person retrieve her possessions. She is thinking of buying and living in a van. She is out half a months rent $250 which is huge money for her. She believes that this senior citizen home owner may have pulled the same routine on others before - male and female - as a kind of scam to make money. Or the lady may be crazy.

We also just met up with another friend who has been living with her mom in Sherman Oaks for fifteen years. Mom, in her seventies, is starving herself to keep a much younger boyfriend who is moving in. Guess who is being evicted by mom?

Mom is even willing to lie that her daughter is an abuser and put her on the street  as she sees this new man as her last chance at love.

What do you do when confronted by stories like these almost every day?

Social Workers are burned out from hearing them and not all the professionals in the homeless business care.  We try our best.

We've given Shannon a couple phone numbers to call and hopefully someone will investigate this home owner.

First of all, just because you rent a room rather than an apartment doesn't mean you have no rights. You  should get a lease signed by the both of you just like when you rent a whole apartment.  You probably shouldn't rent the place without it because that document gives you protection.  Even without a lease, you can get the police to help you get your possessions out of a lock up and that includes at shelters where they lock your possessions up to punish you like we hear they do at LA Family Housing Valley Shelter.

The home owner also has the right to go after you for unpaid rent if you run out on your bills, or evict you legally. It can take months to do this and there are legal services and advisories that may help you if you just need some time to make up the rent.

Most seniors do go into their last years with their wits about them and most parents who have a child living with them for years, maybe because that child is disabled, don't put them on the street. But yea, we've met disabled people living in vans and RV's whose parents put them out, or didn't leave them an inheritance.

If you've been living with a parent for years as a care-giver and you see changes in your parents behavior or attitude,  you may also reach out for help for the both of you.  If your parent is like letting other people take FINANCIAL ADVANTAGE of them, getting very forgetful, flying into rages, playing games with their medications or forgetting to take important meds, or anything that makes you suspect that they are no longer able to totally take care of themselves or that they have gone crazy, you can talk to social workers yourself. 

We are suggesting to both people to go to a local SOVA and ask for an appointment with a lawyer.

You need to talk to a lawyer in person, not talk to a volunteer at LEGAL AID or any do it yourself type legal clinic.

We also had a friend call a place called GENESIS.  Geriatric Evaluation Networks Encompassing Services Intervention Support Programs is part of the County of Los Angeles Mental Health.  If you are DISABLED and Collecting SSI at any age, or you are simply over 60, and someone is abusing you or taking financial advantage of you, they may be able to help.  There is one problem though - you have to give them a Social Security Number.  If you are trying to get someone else help or an evaluation rather than yourself then you have to have that other person's Social Security Number.  If the person who needs help is your mom, you just might have that.

GENESIS-FCCS is at 213 351-7284.