Peace and blessings to whosoever have the power to help us and do so. My name is Lionell Ephraim. I am 65 years of age. My wife, who is the same age and retired, has serious health issues and we both live on fixed incomes. A few months ago we were compelled by a family emergency to move out of our small, affordable apartment in order to secure a more spacious house to provide a safe haven for her daughter (my step-daughter) and her two young grand-daughters. Because of the sensitive and fluid nature of the family emergency I choose to keep the names of my step-daughter, her husband and two children undisclosed. However, in order for you to fully understand our predicament, I think its critical to explain the details of the family emergency.
My step-daughter is in the military. In March of 2024, while she was stationed in New Hampshire, her husband, who was living here in Virginia with their two daughters (ages 2 and 8), threatened to kill himself and their two daughters during a phone call. My step-daughter immediately called the police and her mother. My wife in turn called me, because although my wife and I live about 200 miles from her daughter’s apartment, I happened to be in the area of her apartment at that time. My wife frantically informed me of the death threat against our grand-daughters and asked me to meet the police at the apartment to take custody of them and bring them back to our home with me. I quickly made it to the apartment and communicated with the police until they were finally able to gain entry, arrest the husband, and allowed me to take my grand-daughters in my arms to comfort them and bring them safely with me home to their grandmother.
In short, my step-daughter was granted leave. Understandably, she and our grand-daughters needed to live with my wife and I until she sorted things out. However, our apartment was just too small with just one bathroom to accommodate our private and personal needs. So we searched and found a larger house with two bathrooms. However, the rent ($1,400 a month) in the larger house was double the cost of our smaller apartment. But we were willing to bear the cost and uproot ourselves in order to protect our grand-daughters and give them time to heal from such a traumatic experience. Although my step-daughter was receiving military pay every two weeks she claimed she could not help us with the deposit, the rent, nor any of our bills because she needed the money to relocate. She convinced us that she would not reconcile with her husband and could not live in their previous apartment again because she feared her husband would return there after he was released from police custody.
Shockingly, we discovered that my step-daughter’s husband had been released from the psychiatric ward and she had been seeing him and spending money on hotels to be with him while living with us for almost 3 months, free of charge. We were furious that she had put us through rearranging our lives and moving into a place we could not afford just to go back to a man who had threatened the lives of her children. When I confronted her she refused to talk about it, and I realized that she had used us and was planning all along to get back with her husband and move back into the same apartment.
In the end, we spent all of our savings paying the much higher rent and bills in an effort to help my step-daughter and our grand-daughters. And she lied about her ability to help with the financial burden of moving, when we only moved to help her and our grand-daughters. Now they are back together and my wife and I are stuck in a house we can no longer afford, and are now facing eviction in 10 days if we do not come up with back rent totaling over $2,400. My step-daughter knows we are facing eviction and still offers no help. I will hold my judgment against her for now. Right now, my focus is on not becoming homeless.
Please help if its in your power to do so. We are elderly and have no family to whom we can turn. I am providing my landlord’s info and my PayPal info. Thank you so much for listening, and helping if you can.
Sincerely,
Lionell Ephraim – (757) 272-5776
paypal.me/ephraim7759
Alliance Realty Group / Property Management Team (434) 288-0821