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Finding Help for Elderly Neighbor
Zomro
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
For the past few years, my mother and I have been helping the old lady who lives across the street from me. She lost her partner and her family lives in another state, so she's all alone. At first, it was just me helping her by walking her dog in the evenings (a very sweey dog who we all love), and then it was doing her grocery shopping. I no longer do her shopping now, as it was way too much (I'd routinely have more stuff for her in the shopping cart than I did for my own groceries). I also sometimes take her to appointments or other things, though this has been eased slightly now that she had access to a special bus service for elderly people in our area.
My mom works for our condo owner association as the office administrator and tries help her as best she can. She's had problems with the condo upstairs leaking water and, though it's something that is supposed to be handled by the owner, she's done everything she could to help even though she wasn't required to.
But now my mom is recovering from a medical emergency and is at a care center for physical therapy and can't help, so my neighbor has been calling me for everything. She calls me 5+ times a day with various problems, including prescription deliveries, more leaks from upstairs and all kinds of things. It's just getting to be too much. She needs help, more help then we are able to provide, and it's stressing me out.
I feel bad knowing that she's there on her own with no one to help her. My family are the only people who've bothered to help her at all these years, and I just do not know what to do. I want her to be safe and secure, but I am reaching the limits of my patience and am just so stressed out.
Her only income is social security and she has multiple health issues and cannot drive. She is not really capable of living on her own, and I feel like our helping her so much has kept her from seeking help or reaching out to her family. Compounded onto this, I don't feel comfortable giving her advice or telling her to do things, lest people accuse me of trying to con her or something. I feel like her best option would be to sell her condo and find an assisted living facility or nursing home to go to, but I'm not going tell her to do that, as I don't want to be held liable if something happens.
We live in Florida, and I'd like to know if there's anything I can do to get her some real help.
My mom works for our condo owner association as the office administrator and tries help her as best she can. She's had problems with the condo upstairs leaking water and, though it's something that is supposed to be handled by the owner, she's done everything she could to help even though she wasn't required to.
But now my mom is recovering from a medical emergency and is at a care center for physical therapy and can't help, so my neighbor has been calling me for everything. She calls me 5+ times a day with various problems, including prescription deliveries, more leaks from upstairs and all kinds of things. It's just getting to be too much. She needs help, more help then we are able to provide, and it's stressing me out.
I feel bad knowing that she's there on her own with no one to help her. My family are the only people who've bothered to help her at all these years, and I just do not know what to do. I want her to be safe and secure, but I am reaching the limits of my patience and am just so stressed out.
Her only income is social security and she has multiple health issues and cannot drive. She is not really capable of living on her own, and I feel like our helping her so much has kept her from seeking help or reaching out to her family. Compounded onto this, I don't feel comfortable giving her advice or telling her to do things, lest people accuse me of trying to con her or something. I feel like her best option would be to sell her condo and find an assisted living facility or nursing home to go to, but I'm not going tell her to do that, as I don't want to be held liable if something happens.
We live in Florida, and I'd like to know if there's anything I can do to get her some real help.
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A lot of what's getting to me is all the "regular" stuff that she needs help with, or that she thinks she needs help with. For example, she has difficulty remembering how to change the settings on her thermostat and one of the last times she tried to do it herself wound up burning out the fan in the handler and so had to pay to have it fixed. So I either need to carefully walk her through it or go over and set it. So even if she had, say, a home care provider, I'd still hear from her multiple times a day.
Some of it is her, she's all alone and I imagine that she is lonely. I don't think she specifically calls me for help because she wants company, but she gets overwhelmed and anxious when she comes across something she doesn't understand.
The other part comes down to factors out of her control and she, like myself, is lost about what to do. The condo upstairs is always leaking water from the ceiling because the owner refuses pay to fix the problems. He's a scumbag slumlord who only rents to Section 8 families. I have no problem with people on section 8, affordable housing is a real problem in the US, but this guy takes advantage of his tenants in a real slimy way. I had to talk to the lady upstairs when it was leaking again, and I found out that her landlord tries to charge her for any repair that he does actually do, even if its not their fault. Right now he's trying to charge them almost $200 for clearing out the condensation drain from their AC (which overflowed and leaked in my neighbor's unit), which is a standard maintenance that he should be doing. He threatens to evict them if they don't pay him and uses their lack of knowledge of the law to extort them for extra cash. I want to report him to Section 8, but I'm afraid that 1) he'll retaliate against the tenants and 2) he won't be punished anyway. This guy has been seemingly getting away with this shit for years.
Rightfully, my neighbor wants to sue the owner upstairs for damages, multiple sections of her ceiling have caved in due to the water damage. Her grandson looked up some local lawyers for her to call, the only help he's provided her with all of these 4-5 years. But she's asking me to come with her to a consultation and I don't feel comfortable with that, I'm not equipped to help her with legal stuff.
Back before all of this started, good advice would have been to set clear boundaries as far as what I can help her with and when she should call me, but that ship has sailed. At this point, she depends on us for help and I'd feel responsible if something happened to her if I cut her off. Logically, I know I wouldn't be responsible, as I don't have an obligation to help and she made the decision to live alone, but it doesn't feel that way. I feel bad for her living all alone without any family or friends around.
But I'm just so stressed out. She's a nice enough lady, but she's a handful. It's like a second job helping her out. She's in a weird situation where she is legally able to live on her own, she's not senile or anything, but in practice it doesn't really seem like she can.
I've calmed down a bit and am now researching local services to see where we can get her some help. Any advice is still greatly appreciated, this community is dope for that. I'm going to put some work in to find get her some help, and hopefully that will eventually lead to lightening my load a bit and, more importantly, keeping her safe and comfortable for as long as she decides to live there.
With that said, what you're describing - in my opinion - is going way beyond what would be expected of any neighbor and actually in the area of 'caregiving'. From what you describe, while this woman may not need 24 hour in house care, she certainly needs a daily visit from someone. Calling you multiple times an hour is unacceptable. For what its worth, I'm going through something similar with my parents who are aging and losing a lot of their cognitive function - I empathize with getting called for every little thing around the house.
Here's what I think you ought to do.
1. For the neighbor, you need to try and establish some kind of boundary (as you already mentioned). It's one thing to help out with weekly groceries or whatever, it's something entirely different to be on call all day. Perhaps try and reach out to her Grandson about this? I don't know of any services that would provide her the level of care she may be looking for (based on how often she contacts you) without paying for a caregiver. Hillsborough County, Florida has two numbers you can reach out to to get an evaluation for care services (Elder Helpline at 1-800-963-5337, or Aging Services at (813) 272-5250)
3. The condo stuff sounds shady as hell and actually presenting an united front with a lawyer to get your landlord to actually take care of the building might be helpful? Of course, that's a whole other thing you'd be embarking on.
I'm going to call those numbers and get some info for her. I saw some neat stuff that she might be able to qualify for, hoping she can get assistance with a caregiver.
I appreciate being called a good person, it's nice to get affirmation. With how stressful this has become, I was starting to feel selfish for wanting to be free of it.
Just so I understand, the owner of the unit above your neighbor's is renting to tenants and refusing to fix anything for them? Things that are breaking, like the water pipes, are leaking into your neighbor's unit? Isn't this kind of shit exactly why HOAs exist? Report the delinquent owner to the HOA board.
Prescriptions can often be delivered now too - she should check if her pharmacy offers it (I know locally pharmacies here in my city in Canada will do the delivery for free, but not sure about Tampa)
A brief Google also got me these couple of links I assume you've already seen:
https://www.hillsboroughcounty.org/en/government/departments/aging
https://www.hillsboroughcounty.org/en/locations/town-n-country-senior-center
You might be able to call the Elder hotline listed there, or chat with folks at the senior center to get some advice in-person about how you can handle an itemized set of issues you're having
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Her phone is super outdated, so a grocery delivery app is out of the question. She actually used to be quite comfortable using Lyft on her phone, but the app no longer works due to the age of the phone. Doesn't help that it's an iPhone and I have no experience with them. I tried doing an OS update, but it wouldn't complete it and we didn't have much luck with the Apple support phone line. My mom was trying out Walmart's grocery delivery (we have a Walmart grocery store pretty much right behind our complex), and had intended to just help her place orders for delivery. But they screwed up the first couple deliveries, delivering to the wrong address one time and the other time taking way too long (at least a full day passed when they said they would) and didn't send most of the items. If she can get approved for in home care, though, she could get someone to help her do grocery trips every now and then which would be nice.
I will try Meals on Wheels, as that would help stretch her budget as far as food is concerned. Even if it's just one meal a day, or whatever, it would mean she wouldn't have to spend as much on groceries. She also tends to eat out of the microwave, so some better food, nutrition wise, would be nice.
To be honest, you're a social worker right now. Certain states have programs that pay people for doing what you're doing without the need for certification. Dunno about Florida. Get her a case manager to explore benefits and ease some of this administrative burden from you.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
It frankly sounds like this person needs to be in some sort of assisted living situation; she's ambulatory and lucid but seemingly unable to deal with a lot of day to day situations, which makes it a good idea to address these things now while she can still be a participant in the decisions. Her family needs to get engaged as well (they may not understand how far she's decayed, or be willfully ignorant.)
re: the condo stuff, I'd engage lawyers and with the HOA. It sounds like this has passed from being a simple maintenance dispute to something that threatens the structure of the building and that should be something the HOA cares about
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
1) Even if I could be considered a care worker with what I do for her, I'd rather get her someone who is more qualified to help rather than get paid for it. I don't want a second job, my main one sucks enough. So my focus will be on getting her the help she needs.
2) I hate talking about people like this, but her family is basically useless. They were more than happy to leave her all alone and hope that total strangers would care for her. Maybe they have their reasons, I don't know their relationship, but I have no faith in them helping.
3) I can try with the HoA, but they've been pretty useless in general. Most problems get glossed over because most of the owners here (probably about 75%+ of the units) rent their condos rather than live in them, so any attempts to fix stuff get voted down because the landlords don't want to pay higher association dues and have no investment in the community other than the rent checks they get. Getting her in touch with a lawyer to sue the owner upstairs is probably the best way to go, it's pretty clear that he'll only pay attention if his wallet takes a significant hit.