Hello everyone!
I'm excited to finally have found this forum. I've been looking for you all for a while!
I'm a disabled woman in my mid-50s, facing eviction from a 300 square foot inner city studio apartment that I've lived in for over three decades. Over the last year a new building owner has been terrorizing residents with sudden, unannounced demolition around our living spaces and the gas lines. My health is being severely affected, and now he wants to force his way into my home to do remodeling that would make me deathly ill, because I suffer from Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS). I'm on a fixed SSI disability income, living from check to check, so I have been trying to negotiate a buyout, to get some money to move, but he's refusing, so I'm simultaneously trapped here, and threatened with the streets.
Apartments that are both affordable and accessible to someone with MCS are about as common as unicorns, and I know many people who have lived in their cars as a result. If I had a car, I would have moved into it a quarter of a century ago, when I first got sick, because I've struggled to keep this place safe from chemical intrusions ever since, and have had to evacuate and find shelter elsewhere a number of times when I didn't succeed. Trouble is....I don't drive! And I shouldn't try to, because of neurological impairments.
So I'm obviously not likely to go full nomad, but after years of housing insecurity, I would feel a lot safer if I could have an accessible sanctuary that I can take with me whenever the toxic world catches up with me and I have to move again, so I do want some wheels that some kind person could tow somewhere else for me as needed. And I may at times need to park somewhere in an urban setting, so I need to be able to be a bit more stealth than I could be in one of those fancy tiny houses I can't afford.
I've been thinking about getting a cargo trailer and building it out to my specific disability needs. Since in addition to chemical sensitivity I'm also electrosensitive, an aluminum structure makes a lot of sense to me, because it would essentially serve as a Faraday cage. I think that I could live out my life comfortably in 16 x 8 feet, preferably with a little extra in a V-nose, and some extra height.
I have a friend in another state who is willing to let me stay a while and do a build there, but with my disabilities, and my need for someone to drive me, and my limited income, I need more time to organize my move than I'm likely going to have. So I think I need to first find some temporary shelter, preferably something small I can haul along when I finally make the long distance trek, that can fit in a small driveway or parking spot on the street. I anticipate that whatever I might be able to find with my limited resources, I will have to cover completely with foil inside to seal any chemical residues from previous users, and figure out how to hook into someone's internet with a long ethernet cable, because I can't use any sort of wireless technology (I'm on a dial-up connection now, so please bear with me as my response time may be a bit sluggish).
Any creative ideas for how to find what I need to get out of here safely, or how to make the best use of this forum with my slow internet connection, would be very much appreciated.
