Susan Mulloy was thrilled and relieved in late 2019 when, after being on a wait list for more than three years, she finally got into an affordable housing development for seniors in Oakland.

I thought I could be out on the street,” Mulloy said. “One more rent increase and I’d be in a tent.

After two sizable rent increases, she was paying over 80% of her fixed income to rent a two-room apartment in Richmond and was desperate to move.

“I thought I could be out on the street,” Mulloy said. “One more rent increase and I’d be in a tent.”

Mulloy, 72, had no savings. Once she got an apartment at St. Andrew’s Manor, she had 30 days to come up with the money to pay for a security deposit and first month of rent at the new apartment. Because of the short timeline, she also had to cover rent on her current apartment for the month.

With the help of the Season of Sharing fund — which she knew about as a longtime Chronicle reader — Mulloy was able to move into St. Andrew’s Manor in Oakland. Her rent went down from $1,150 per month to $425. The fund works throughout the year to prevent homelessness and hunger in the Bay Area’s nine counties. All donations directly help people in need, with administrative costs covered by The Chronicle and the Walter and Evelyn Haas Jr. Fund.

It’s an incredible opportunity for a relatively small amount of money, a few thousand dollars, to make a transformative and sustainable difference in somebody’s life.

Zev Lowe, Season of Sharing’s executive director, said Mulloy’s story illustrates the lasting impact of the fund.

It’s “an incredible opportunity for a relatively small amount of money, a few thousand dollars, to make a transformative and sustainable difference in somebody’s life,” he said.

Mulloy, a Chicago native who moved to the Bay Area in 1976, made a career working in the world that she would later benefit from. Soon after arriving in San Francisco, she worked on a housing costs study as an intern at the Sierra Club. At a job at Catholic Charities (then called Catholic Social Services), she helped organize a rent control initiative and worked on nonprofit affordable housing. (She now lives in Bennet House in Fairfax, a former Catholic Charities affordable housing development.) She was part of the team that brought to life the Indochinese Housing Development Corp. in the Tenderloin, helping refugees resettle in San Francisco.

Mulloy was passionate about social justice and education, often returning to school to obtain new degrees in business, horticulture, theology. But intellectual pursuits were also a distraction from internal strife: Mulloy has long suffered from serious depression and migraines.

“It just got harder and harder to function as well as I thought I should be functioning,” she said.

In 2007, Mulloy went on disability benefits for depression and migraines and stopped working. An animal lover, she found solace in feeding and housing feral cats in the East Bay. When she turned 65, she transitioned into Social Security Insurance. She received $1,500 a month, her only source of income. She survived on that — until those rent increases came.

You get tired of being somebody who always has to ask for help. You want to be independent. You want to be able to turn around and help other people, too.

Mulloy credits Season of Sharing with helping her stay in the Bay Area. She feels angry when she hears comments suggesting that the region’s homeless population should just move elsewhere if they can’t afford to live here — “as if we aren’t an important part of the population, (as if) we don’t have a right to stay in our homes … as if we don’t have as much dignity as somebody who makes a lot of money and can afford a house,” she said. “Why should you uproot yourself from your community, your schools, your churches, your neighbors?”

Mulloy is now settled in her new home (with her two cats) in Fairfax. With only a third of her fixed income going to rent, she’s been able to give back in ways that feel meaningful to her. She gives $200 every month to the Milo Foundation in Richmond, a no-kill adoption center that took in most of the feral cats she cared for when she first moved to Oakland.

She talked openly about feeling some shame about how she has this educational background and she never thought she’d be in the position of needing assistance. Ultimately, she decided that she was willing to be vulnerable in public because she believed in the greater good.

And in January, Lowe, the executive director, received a personal message from Mulloy. She had made a $50 donation to the Season of Sharing Fund.

“You get tired of being somebody who always has to ask for help. You want to be independent. You want to be able to turn around and help other people, too,” she said.

Lowe was struck by Mulloy’s story and asked if she’d be willing to share it publicly in The Chronicle. She wrestled with this decision, he said.

“She talked openly about feeling some shame about how she has this educational background and she never thought she’d be in the position of needing assistance. Ultimately, she decided that she was willing to be vulnerable in public because she believed in the greater good,” Lowe said.

More than her donation, the act of telling her story, he added, was an “incredible act of generosity.”

Elena Kadvany is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: elena.kadvany@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ekadvany

Read the full story here: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Tenant-facing-rent-increases-gets-help-to-move-16721068.php