December 29, 2025

Meet Patricia

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Retired ‘nail lady’ got stuck with huge rent bill. Season of Sharing Fund helped her out of the hole

Moving boxes fill Patricia Ferraro’s narrow living room, leaving just enough of a path for her to navigate between her apartment’s front door and her chair, which is specially cushioned to aid her ailing back.

Ferraro would love nothing more than to stay put, but she is on the move again.

After decades of work as a cosmetologist, hunched over clients’ feet and inhaling acetone and other nail care solvents, Ferraro has suffered from illnesses that required multiple surgeries and sent her into early retirement. Yet, instead of enjoying her golden years, she has been on a constant search for a place to settle on a limited income.

Not even 12 months after moving into the Koi Creek apartment complex in San Jose, the 76-year-old is shifting to another apartment down the road. A snag in the paperwork giving her access to federal Section 8 housing subsidies — and the ensuing bureaucratic circus — has spurred Ferraro to put Koi Creek behind her.

“It was such a nightmare, I think I went crazy,” Ferraro said. “I don’t think I was in my body.”

“It was such a nightmare, I think I went crazy.”

The bad dream began in October 2024. Ferraro had been more than a decade retired from her job as the “nail lady” in San Jose. It wasn’t her wish to stop working, but the chemicals used daily in her nail salon seeped into her system, which doctors say was the catalyst for a gallbladder issue so severe that it required surgery to have the organ removed. Doctors recommended she halt exposure to the chemicals, which meant she couldn’t run her business anymore.

“I finally removed the gallbladder, but mine is not the kind of business where you can parlay it into something more,” Ferraro said. “Being a cosmetologist, you’re good as long as you’re working.”

It was then, in her early 60s, that she opted for early retirement and moved to Hawaii to live in senior housing. Her back had ached for decades from bending over, but the only way she could make a few extra bucks was to clean her friends’ condo on the Big Island. That only exacerbated her pain.

With few immediate family alive — and her daughter, Natalie, living in New York City — Ferraro yearned for a life that felt more familiar and was easier on her body. She had lived in Hawaii for 11 years, and though it was beautiful, she soon began looking for apartments in her hometown of San Jose.

“Little by little, I started getting nostalgic about being home,” Ferraro said. “I thought, if I’m going to die — which is some of the thoughts I was having — maybe I’m not going to get healthy again. Maybe this is it for me. Do I want to do it in a strange place? I want to be home.”

Ferraro found an apartment in the Willow Glen neighborhood south of downtown that already felt like home. The place was near where she grew up and started her nail salon, whose clients were close enough to be friends for 35 years.

“I was so good at that,” Ferraro said. “I had waiting lists to get in to see me. People flew in from Oregon to get their nails done by me.”

Ferraro landed the new apartment, and for a moment she hoped to feel like her old self again. But logistics soon got in the way: The property managers for the apartment complex failed to process the paperwork for her Section 8 housing subsidy, she said. They urged her to come to California anyway, telling her all would be settled once she arrived.

On Dec. 15, Ferraro arrived in San Jose on the only nonstop from Hawaii. The lease was ready for her to sign, but the rent voucher still hadn’t cleared. With boxes of her belongings sitting outside her new door, Ferraro was thrust into a decision that would cost her dearly.

She would have to pay full rent of $2,095 until the subsidy came through, even though Social Security was her only steady source of income. If she didn’t sign the lease, she recalled property managers insisting, she’d be evicted with nowhere to go. Ferraro felt she had no choice but to sign.

“As I was signing it I knew it wasn’t right,” Ferraro said. “But I felt very much pressure because I was being threatened by being evicted, they told me they could bring the police out.

“I was so scared. I felt like I was a child getting sent to the principal’s office. It was so frightening.”

From that day onward, Ferraro spent most of her time in contact with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, getting passed from representative to representative with zero hint of when she’d get relief. Meantime, she watched her unpaid rent bill skyrocket on the agency’s online portal. The voucher was never processed, and soon she was on the hook for nearly $8,000.

“My mistake, I never should have said OK,” she said. “But I did. Maybe I was naive.”

“I would have been much more broken than I feel.”

The overdue rent stopped climbing only when a new property management group took over. By February, the Section 8 voucher had been cleared, but Ferraro still owed the bill between her move-in day and Feb. 1.

“I don’t live like that,” Ferraro said. “There is no way living on $1,000 a month I am ever going to be able to pay you back.”

Through Bay Area Legal Aid, Ferraro found out about the Season of Sharing Fund, which works year-round to prevent homelessness and hunger in the Bay Area’s nine counties. Ferraro applied and, to her gratitude, was granted money to cover some of the rent she couldn’t afford.

Without the fund’s help, she said, “I would have been much more broken than I feel.”

Now, a year since she moved in, Ferraro has another home lined up down the road — an escape from the nightmare she endured. Even though she got her rent voucher, the living conditions at Koi Creek became untenable for a senior, single woman.

Among her concerns, the postal service no longer delivers mail there. She has no car to get to the nearest post office and has to rely on neighbors to fetch her letters. She’s also bothered by a neighbor’s barking dog — as she’s describing it, the animal has been howling for an hour — and she’s concerned about the cleanliness of the communal swimming pool.

But her next move isn’t without a bit more drama. Ferraro hopes to leave exactly a year after she signed her old lease — but the property managers said she owes until Dec. 30.

“Now my eye is twitching just thinking about it,” she said.

Reach Shayna Rubin: Shayna.Rubin@sfchronicle.com

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