Rising rents, pandemic leave Modesto grandma and her 9-year-old grandson homeless
Pamela Sue Weightman was born at Modesto City Hospital in downtown nearly 69 years ago.
She has spent her life here and said she retired from G3 Enterprises in 2014 after working for it and its predecessors for 38 years. She’s owned a home and rented other housing in Modesto over the decades.
But she has been living at the Modesto Gospel Mission since March.
She’s desperate to find something to rent. Not so much for herself, she said, but for her 9-year-old grandson. Weightman was awarded legal custody of the boy in March 2015, according to Stanislaus County Superior Court records, but said she’s raised him since birth.
“I have never in my whole entire life, not here or anywhere on earth, seen it so hard to find a house,” Weightman said Monday afternoon at the mission. “There is just no houses available. There is no garages available. No studios.
“There is nothing available for people that just need a place to live. Like I’m not at the mission because I’m on drugs or alcohol or anything like that. I’m there because I can’t find a house. That’s it. Plain and simple. ... I’d take a garage, a shed, anything.”
Huge lack of affordable housing
Weightman said property managers have told told her this is a hard time to look for rentals because of the state’s eviction ban put in place during the pandemic. The ban is set to expire Sept. 30. But the Modesto-area rental market already was overheated before the pandemic, and there is huge lack of affordable housing for people of average means.
And Weightman has strikes against her. She lost her home in foreclosure in 2013. She said she had owned the home for about 11 years.
She said she ran into financial difficulties and lost the home after she let family members live with her, and they did not pay their way.
And Weightman was evicted in 2018 from the duplex she and other family members had rented for five years, according to court records. (She, her grandson and another family member lived in a fifth-wheel trailer before Weightman and her grandson went to the Gospel Mission.)
Weightman, 68, said she receives about $2,500 a month from Social Security and her pension and has saved about $7,000. She said she is willing to spend as much as half of her monthly income for rent.
She hopes someone will take a chance on her and her grandson. (The Bee is not naming him to protect his privacy.)
“I have raised him since the day he poked his head out,” she said. “I just want a roof over my grandson’s head. I just want him to have a home. Even just a studio. We could cram into that.”
Weightman is not alone in her struggle to find affordable rental housing in Stanislaus County. In May, the Central Valley’s rental market was ranked among the most competitive in the nation.
According to a June report from the California Housing Partnership, over 15,000 low-income households in Stanislaus County can’t find an affordable rental home.
Additionally, 76% of extremely low-income households are spending more than half their income on housing costs, compared to 1% of moderate-income households. To afford the average monthly asking prices, renters in Stanislaus County need to earn $24.13 an hour — or 1.7 times the state minimum wage, which is $14 at larger employers and $13 for small businesses.
According to data from the real estate company CoStar, renters in Stanislaus would have to make $4,813 per month to afford the average monthly rent of $1,255.
‘Love this boy ...’
Weightman wrote in documents when she petitioned the court in October 2014 to be her grandson’s guardian that his mother struggled with addiction, and the boy had no father in his life.
“I have cared for this child as if he was my own son,” Weightman wrote. “I’m a retired single woman with no drama and I can provide the safe environment the child needs. I’ve recently retired and will begin to draw my Social Security and pension next month (Nov. 1st). I have the time and income to raise this child.”
Weightman also wrote that she wanted legal custody so she could sign him up for health insurance as well as enroll him in day care and preschool so he could develop his social skills. “I love this boy more than anything,” she wrote, “and I want him to have a fighting chance.”
The boy’s mother died in March 2020, according to her online obituary, at the age of 28. Weightman said she really is her grandson’s great aunt but he calls her grandma. She said the boy’s grandfather, her brother, also recently died.
Weightman said she has two other brothers but neither is able to help her and her grandson.
During the interview, the grandson talked about wanting to be a chef when he grows up and work at an old time diner like Denny’s. Weightman said her grandson already is a good cook and makes a great spaghetti.
Financially strapped seniors
Gospel Mission Executive Director Jason Conway said seniors who cannot afford housing make up a tiny but growing number of the homeless people who stay at the mission, which has 85 beds in its men’s shelter and 40 beds in its women and children’s shelter.
Conway said when he started at the mission 15 years ago there might be one or two shelter guests at any given time who were seniors. He said that number now is four or five, and he said that is a conservative estimate.
“We are seeing more seniors enter into our facilities because they simply cannot afford the cost of living,” he said. “I only see this increasing as time goes by and as housing becomes more scarce and unaffordable.”
Conway said that is one reason the Gospel Mission has partnered with the Stanislaus Regional Housing Authority to provide permanent supportive housing for senior women.
He said for about a year the mission has rented a single-family home from the housing authority in Westley to provide housing for as many as 11 senior women, who pay rent. Conway said this would be an option for Weightman if she did not have her grandson.
But Conway said Weightman is working to find other housing, and he said she and her grandson are welcome to stay at the mission for as long as that takes.
“I would like to thank the mission for being there and doing what they have,” Weightman said. “If it wasn’t for them, we’d be out on the streets.”
Left school at 16
Weightman said she is grateful for “chaplain Rita” — case manager Rita Hamilton — who drives her grandson to and from school. Weightman, who uses a walker, said without that help, she’d have to take her grandson to school on a city bus. Hamilton has provided Weightman with referrals to housing and other resources.
Weightman said this is not the Modesto she remembers, where even people who had been evicted or had other financial hardships eventually could find housing.
She grew up in Modesto and said she attended more than a half-dozen local schools because her family moved often. She left school at 16 to get married. She had a son at 17, but he died when she was 48. Weightman said she has not seen her former husband in several decades.
She said she went to work for the company that eventually became G3 Enterprises in her early 20s. She said she worked in the closure division where the corks and caps used to seal wine bottles are made.
“All I’m asking for is a chance,” Weightman said.
Bee staff writer Kristina Karisch contributed to this report.
‘This story was produced with financial support from the Stanislaus Community Foundation, along with the GroundTruth Project’s Report for America initiative. The Modesto Bee maintains full editorial control of this work.
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This story was originally published August 26, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
