Please find it in your hearts to donate to my hurricane fund.
Any donation, even $1 or $5 can go a long way in helping us pay the rent or utilities, or even purchase kitchen appliances, clothes, and linens to replace the damaged property that the insurance company refused to reimburse.
Please click the Guardian Angels Penny Jar below to make a small donation to the "Repair My Home Fund":
On August 13th, 2004, I took the photo from my driveway as Hurricane Charley loomed over my neighborhood. The five homes pictured in this photograph were so severely wind and water damaged, their ceilings caved in and the homes were condemned. After Hurricane Charley, all homes in my subdivision needed new roofs. After long negotiations with insurance companies and the frustrating hunt for licensed contractors, my immediate neighbors were not able to move back into the neighborhood until after a year had passed since Hurricane Charley.
Hurricane Frances hit our neighborhood, town, and state just three weeks after Hurricane Charley, over the Labor Day weekend of 2004. It rained in every room in my house, through every air conditioning vent, ceiling, and light fixture. Part of my garage and kitchen ceilings came down, and there was mold and water damage on the ceilings and walls throughout my house. My master bedroom was so badly damaged, I slept on the living room couch for two years. My oven stopped working, as did many of my electrical appliances in the kitchen.
For photos of some of the hurricane damage to my home, please see hurricane damage to my home .
Get Your Own! | View Slideshow
For video coverage of Hurricanes Charley and Frances, and more, please see WeatherPaparazzi.com
Despite the damage to my home, my sons and I could not get assistance from our home owner's insurance company -- Traveler's First Floridian -- to move out so that mold remediation, tear down, and rebuild could begin...until after two years of negotiations. We lived in these unhealthy conditions for two whole years (See pics.) despite my pleas and negotiations that the mold would exacerbate my youngest son, Joey's Asthma.
With intervention from the Florida State Insurance Commissioner's Office, we were given an advance on Additional Living Expenses (ALE) to move out in June 2006. But the insurance stopped paying rent in August 2006, and my home won't be completed until mid-to-late October 2006.
As a single mom, I cannot afford the mortgage and utility payments in addition to the monthly rent and utilities on my salary, and my insurance company refuses to pay, even though the coverage for Total Loss of Use for my home exceeds the funds they have granted me for ALE, so far.
After living in unhealthy conditions for two years, and so very close to moving back home, we now either risk foreclosure (if I don't pay the mortgage) or eviction (if I don't pay the rent).
In 2004, Central Florida was hit with four hurricanes (Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne) within a six-week time frame. Yet, many of the homes and businesses have still not been restored.
Please consider contacting me if you need website authoring, technical writing, English/Spanish translation, copywriting, a new or re-vamped resume, cartooning, or illustration and design.
I offer these services at reasonable rates through my freelance business, Write Way Designs .
Please consider purchasing prints and products for your home and office, with my own original whimsical Art and designs:
The Write Way Designs Online Art Gallery and Store
Click me to visit the CRAZY world
of Technical Writing .
Click me to visit the Corporate World
of cubicle-dwelling technical writers.
Cartoon images from "Oh Susana,"
featuring the daily life of a
single mother/technical writer,
loosely based on the life of its creator,
Susana Maria Rosende.
My RESUME . Hire me! Full-time or Freelance . You won't be sorry.
But most of all, please keep my family, and all hurricane survivors throughout the USA, in your prayers as we fight the homeowners' insurance companies to rebuild our homes, our businesses, and our lives.
Thank you for any advice or assistance you can offer.
Sincerely,
Susana Rosende and sons, Orlando, Florida