An 81-Year-Old Faces Eviction as Affordable Senior Housing Waitlists Stretch for Years
The first in a series of articles chronicling the hidden housing crisis facing Mendocino County's oldest residents
At 81, Jeannie Storm has her life in boxes. The knickknacks she loves are packed away. The pots and pans are next — as soon as she finds a place.
She’s been searching for months. Then her timeline shrank.
At the end of April her landlord told her she needed to be out of the trailer she lives in by July 1.
Storm’s been in this leaking trailer on Franklin Road for two years. It holds everything she has after fifty years on the Mendocino Coast. She’d gladly fold everything up and carry it away, but her $300 a month housing budget has left her with few options.
At first she was optimistic she’d find something as good — or better. But those hopes have faded away. It’s hard to live so long and have no place to call home.
Storm was born in Madera, in the flat heat of the San Joaquin Valley, in 1945. She went to high school in Morro Bay where she met her first husband, Victor, during sophomore year. She got pregnant, they got married, and she had a little boy, Kurt. The marriage didn’t last.
Storm went back to the valley and married again — a man twenty years older. That marriage lasted five years. She moved to Santa Cruz and made friends who became family. One of them moved north. Storm followed. That was 1976.
There were good times in Fort Bragg followed by a gulf of grief that threatened to swallow her. Kurt died in a car wreck, ten days before his twentieth birthday. He would have turned 65 this year. “We were really close,” she says. She keeps letters he wrote her as a boy, telling her he loved her “a million, million, million times or more.”
The wall of the trailer bears his pictures — it’s the main reason it feels like home.
When Kurt was small he’d curl up beside Storm and suck his thumb. They’d trade the old refrain — I love you more than the moon, I love you more than the stars — and she’d ask him, who loves who the most?
Sadness made time stand still. “When he died, I drank and cried for five years,” she said. “And then after five years of drinking and crying, I quit drinking and cried another five years. After ten years, I could make it through the day without breaking down.”
Even now, she says, it doesn’t feel like forty-five years have passed. “It just seems like it was a couple of months ago that he died, no matter how many years it was.”
Just before the new millennium, Wayne came into her life. They were together twenty-seven years. Wayne worked at Jack Smith Dodge and, on weekends, for Johnny Gray at her ranch out on Ten Mile. When Johnny Gray died and her daughter took over, Wayne went to work for her, and he and Jeannie moved to the foreman’s house on the ranch. They lived there around twenty years, with Jeannie driving down the hill to her work as a caregiver.
Then Wayne got cancer. He had been sick for about a year when an infection turned into sepsis. He died Christmas Day 2023. Three days later, the grief still raw, the ranch told her she had three months to move.
Ann Gittings says she did not want to rent the trailer to Storm and that she regrets it. The two women do not get along.
Gittings confirmed that she asked Storm to leave. She said she needs to make repairs to the trailer and that she wants to rent it to the daughter of her caregiver. She said Storm has offered to share the trailer with the caregiver’s daughter until Storm finds a new place — the trailer has three bedrooms, so there is room to spare. Neither Gittings nor the caregiver think that is a good idea. The rancor between the women is palpable.
Gittings said she recently paid $900 to fill the propane tank Storm uses, because an empty propane tank is dangerous. She says Storm didn’t reimburse her and that she didn’t ask for the money. Gittings also says that Storm agreed to pay $500 a month plus utilities and that Storm then decided she could only afford $300.
The agreement, whatever it was, was not recorded in a lease.
Storm contends she is paying plenty for a trailer that is falling apart around her. The roof leaks in almost every room, rats have chewed through a cupboard, and black mold blooms on a bedroom ceiling, conditions that may violate California habitability standards.
But as bad as it is, Storm appreciated the trailer’s proximity to the doctors at Adventist, who have so far enabled her to continue to live independently despite having Stage 4 breast cancer, which has spread to her back and ribs. In addition to cancer, her hearing is shot in one ear, and she has macular degeneration that can make it dangerous to drive.
She covers up her health challenges by taking care of her appearance. Her carefully styled blond wig is an older, subdued version of her natural hair, which she lost to chemotherapy. She bustles around, going from store to store to grocery shop, making her limited income stretch further.
She’d like to move to town and stop driving. Her plan has been to land a spot in senior housing.
But there are none. She has put in applications everywhere — Duncan Place, Cypress Ridge, Plateau, Moura — the waiting lists run for years. A friend, Melanie, just got into Cypress after waiting for six years. Cypress is where Storm hopes to go — she worked there for years.
Then, on April 29, she got a message on her answering machine: “Hi Jeannie, it’s Anne. I just want to let you know for sure the house is spoken for as of June 1,” Gittings said. “Just giving you a heads-up.”
“I already paid June,” Storm says, when she plays back the message for a reporter in mid June.
Gittings then corrects herself on the answering machine. “July,” she says. And then she laughs. That stings.
An answering machine message is not an eviction notice. A social worker pointed this out to Jeannie, after MendoLocal.News asked DeDe Parker, the Director of Social Services, what help was available for seniors like Storm.
Parker directed MendoLocal.News to contact Deputy Director Jesse Van Voorhis. “I would also like to take a moment to recognize the incredible work of our Adult & Aging Services team,” she wrote. “Every day, they serve some of the most vulnerable members of our community through programs that support older adults, dependent adults, veterans, caregivers, and individuals with disabilities.”
Van Voorhis said in an email on June 12 that the standard response to a situation such as Storm is to interview the senior, conduct a risk assessment, and develop a service plan. “The standard time frame for completion of the investigation and referral to appropriate resources is 90 days, but we always prioritize those situations when timely action is necessary.”
The social worker visited Storm around this time, shortly after MendoLocal.News reached out to the department heads. Separately, Supervisor Bernie Norvell also reached out after hearing about Storm’s case from her social worker at the Cancer Resource Center and MendoLocal.News.
A month later, Storm says she’s received no further assistance. “One lady came by but nothing happened,” Storm said. Then, when Storm tried to pay July rent, Gittings refused.
Reached by phone, Gittings confirmed she had not yet given Storm a written eviction notice, but she said she was planning to. And she said she was not going to accept any additional rent payments from Storm.
“It’s my two houses, my two acres,” Gittings said. “She can find another place to live.”
Storm’s belongings remain packed in boxes. They’re stacked high by the door of the trailer, waiting for an address.
Storm is ready, too. “I just want to get out of here,” she says.
Addition: Jeannie Storm said Ann Gittings has never paid for propane since she moved in to the trailer on Franklin Road. (July 14, 2026 2:22 p.m.)
An absolutely wonderful story Elise. Jeannie and Wayne and her dog are beloved by Linda, me, Brutus and now Caesar too. You picked a terrific person to help you tell this critically important story. I plan to share it up high.
Such an important issue I am vulnerable as well. Thank you for covering.