» Squalid Living Conditions

Helping Hearts Foundation Rescue – What We See

Jan 032012

Wash your hands.

Western medicine is an amazing achievement in human history. To have banished from daily life the unsanitary conditions that breed viruses, bacteria and parasites is a major reason why humans are flourishing on the earth. Yet even in the most affluent of countries and the richest of cities, the causes of a great percentage of sickness and disease survive. A simple illness becomes a major illness when given the right conditions: A dirty kitchen breeds Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7, a cut on the foot becomes a wound that won’t heal, a cold becomes pneumonia.

Every case is different but after a while, working within the system that was created to help the people so affected by poverty and disease, you can’t help but start to see patterns at work. Just as a thing is impossible to ignore once its existence is known, how can you turn your back on those in need? The elderly, the sick and the disabled living in society are often living in squalor, for no reason other than they can’t get around to clean like they once may have, and it’s unlikely they can afford to pay a cleaning service on a fixed income.

It’s the call no one ever wants to get. The one that comes in the middle of dinner, the middle of movie night, in the middle of the night: your loved one is in the hospital? How? Where? Why? What happened? A flood of questions inundates the mind, but the answers trickle out like the mirage of an oasis in the desert. These are the calls we get on a weekly and even a daily basis: can you please find a clean place to live for my father, my aunt, this patient? At the same time we can help a family member, a friend, a neighbor, we can also help stop the spread of unnecessary sickness and relieve the overcrowding in the hospitals, in the emergency rooms and in the shelters.

Wash your hands.

Tara a Helping Hearts Resident Rescue

Blog, Rescues No Responses »

Dec 012011

Helping Hearts Resident Rescue - Tara

It’s easy to take a safe, secure and healthy living environment for granted. Most people grow up without having to worry about these seemingly simple requirements. They are just there, provided by an invisible network of parents and family, friends and co-workers. It is a part of the social contract. Yet for a small, but growing percentage of people, cracks in the network are showing. The contract is showing its age.

The global economy is unpredictable. Jobs are shipped overseas. Unemployment keeps on going up. Prices on basic needs like food and water, shelter and utilities are rising. Many people who are lucky enough to have a job live paycheck to paycheck, unable to save anything for a rainy day. Those that don’t live hand to mouth and often depend on the government for any of the following Social Security programs:

Federal Old-Age (Retirement), Survivors, and Disability Insurance
Unemployment benefits
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
Health Insurance for Aged and Disabled (Medicare)
Grants to States for Medical Assistance Programs (Medicaid)
State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)
Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

What happens when you wake up in the hospital after having been struck down by a sudden illness, hit by a car, or worse debilitated by a disease you had no idea ran in your family? Do you have a healthy savings account? Family to care for you? Medical insurance? Or are you a part of the growing number of Americans who walk around without a safety net? Assisted living, skilled nursing, and board and care facilities can be outrageously expensive. What is the alternative in today’s downturn economy? Overcrowded living conditions in vermin-infested residential housing? Is that the American dream or the American nightmare?

Tara is an example of a humble and selfless mother of four who has seen more than her share of doctors offices. Recently having undergone a hip replacement surgery and scheduled to undergo a replacement on the other hip as well as both knees in the coming year, she found herself living in a house teeming with both tenants and vermin. Overcrowded with individuals on fixed-low incomes as well as infested with rodents, cockroaches and toxic black mold, Tara realized that it was time for a change.

Within a few hours of informing her UC Davis Medical center orthopedist of her living situation Helping Hearts Foundation had gotten in contact with her and was on their way out to her place of residence. The photos below represent how they found her and–after explaining the Helping Hearts Foundation system to her (she agreed to relocate the following day)–providing her with a tour of the house she moved into.

Perhaps the phrase what a difference a day makes has never rung so true.

Helping Hearts Rescue Brothers Brad and Tim

Blog, Rescues No Responses »

Oct 272011

Helping Hearts Foundation Resident Brad survived a lot more than Detox

Piled up mattresses and broken down, disused furnishings litter the walkway up to Brad and Tim’s room and board. The smell hits you before you open the door. You can’t quite say what it is, other than rot, but it’s pungent. So much so, Jimmy and Pak both need clean suits, masks and gloves before entering. Cockroaches lazily feasting upon trash, piled up for months, in the open. Toxic black mold covers the ceiling like a layer of paint. Cracked walls full of jagged breaks and holes, impassable hallways and the flooring rotting away beneath your feet have created squalid living conditions.

When Helping Hearts walked in they were two. When they walked out Helping Hearts had grown richer by two residents–Brad (pictured) & his brother Tim–who have been with the organization for more than a year now. Their previous living situation proved to be so infested with fleas, ticks, roaches, rats and other pests that none of their furniture could be moved to their new house and their clothing had to be sanitized by professionals.

Seeing good people in bad housing is a terrible thing, but all too common in situations where people in need of physical and / or psychological help have only their monthly pensions on which to depend. Veterans like Brad, who looks after Tim, do receive a bit more, but often it is still not enough to provide safe and secure shelter that is convenient to hospitals and public transportation.

Their new house is a far cry from what they had convinced themselves was normal. Now they live in relative comfort and security and are in close proximity to healthcare facilities, bus and light rail, supermarkets and shopping centers as well as parks. They have a house, but what’s more, they have a community of people that understand what they have gone through living all around them. That’s more than a house. That’s a home.

Brad & Tim's Helping Hearts Foundation Residence