Woman can’t afford to hook up donated trailer
EDWARDS – The smell of manure hangs, heavy, in the air around Clara Daniel’s home.
The dozen or so cows that surround the property are not hers. They eat every day; she does not.
The 66-year-old woman can’t remember the last time her house had running water. The toilets and sinks were taken out long ago.
Her house is one of fewer than
35,000 dwellings across the USA —
0.03% — without a flush toilet, according to the Census Bureau. She goes to the bathroom in the woods.
“It’s been a long time living this way,” she said, exhausted, with tears in her eyes.
But one path to better living conditions lies just behind her crumbling house about 30 miles west of Jackson, Miss. In January
2017, a woman donated a two-bedroom mobile home for Daniel and her 34-year-old son, William, who is disabled with sickle cell anemia.
They can’t move in because she doesn’t have the money to hook up a septic tank. Clara and William Daniel live off his $700-a-month disability check.
That’s $8,400 a year for two people; $16,240 was considered the federal poverty level for two people in 2017.
Moving the mobile home cost
$1,800 and took the last bit of Daniel’s savings. Then the man who moved it didn’t tie it down like he was supposed to; she had to pay another man $518 to do the job.
The mobile home came with dirty orange carpet, so she ripped it up herself. It’s in a pile on the floor. She paid another man $250 to put down laminate flooring. He did half of the work and never came back.
“I’ve learned not to fool with folks,” she said. “If I can’t do it myself, I’m not going to get it done.”
Through the years, people from different Hinds County agencies have come to her home, taken pictures and offered to help — including promises of building her a new house. Daniel says she has yet to see any results.
Looming large is the $5,000 needed not only hook up her mobile home to a septic tank but also to install one on the 1.3 acres that are her property, said Steve Pickett with the non-profit Mississippi Center for Police and Sheriffs, who has tried to help the mother and son but run into roadblocks.
Pickett created a GoFundMe account Monday to raise the money. It still needs more than $1,000 to get a net of $5,000; GoFundMe takes
2.9% of all donations plus a 30-cent processing fee per donation.