Please join us today in congratulating Elina and her son for ending their homeless situation, which they have endured for the last few years. After we were able to help them move in by paying the security deposit, they are very happy to now be in their very own rental, a place they can finally call home. Read how Elina’s story below:

Dear OTS,
My 5 year old son and I have been chronically homeless for 4 years. For years I have tried to rent a room for my son and I but not only the rents were high – no one wanted to rent to a woman with child. We have moved more than a dozen times from place to place, shelter to shelter since 2014. There were times when we slept in our car, long time lived at the campground site, slept on people’s living room floors. On May 16, while residing in Path of Life family Shelter in Riverside I received a voucher from Riverside Housing Authority. I was looking for a rental in Riverside county but nothing was available. Most of the apartments didn’t accept voucher, and affordable housing had a waiting list. I have ported my voucher to Orange County that took a month to transfer. End of May I had to exit the Shelter as my time of stay ran out. I had nowhere to go, but we had to leave. I didn’t have money for a motel, neither did I qualify for 2-week motel voucher. Through church association a temporary home was found for us with a family (2-bedroom apartment). His wife and daughter were leaving for a two month trip to visit relatives, so the daughter’s room would be empty. We are a homeless family that haven’t and doesn’t have a permanent residence to call home, or school for my son to go to; not to mention how impossible it is to find a job when you are homeless -no address, no place to bath, change in whatever wrinkled clothes you have in the suitcase. We have nothing but two suitcases of clothes to our name. We are currently homeless as we do not have a residence – staying with this family was a very temporary solution to provide me some time to transfer voucher and locate a rental for our Sec. 8 voucher. Thanks be to God, we have been directed us to your wonderful organization. We were able to find the rental. However, this rental will not materialize unless we pay the deposit – the money we don’t have. Please help us to obtain much needed stability and give us a hand up.
Thank you so very much, Elina

This family brings our placements this year up to 103 and our grand total since we started OTS in 2014 up to 613. Read more about our charity at OTSHB.COM.