Welcome To Housing Bi-Weekly Blog, August 22, 2025
Welcome To Housing Bi-Weekly Blog, August 22, 2025
For someone who is a luddite-want-to-be, social media can come in handy. For example, we were contacted by a health care provider working out of Atkinson up in Piscataquis County.
She has a patient in need of a bariatric wheelchair. The reason why insurance denied her patient funds to purchase one is because by their standards, she is slightly underweight for what they define as needing a bariatric piece of adaptive equipment.
God help us if we ever win a large lottery jackpot, we could merely purchase one. But due to our shoestring budget, we can’t spend quite that much per person considering we helped 1,807 people last year.
Taking a clue from my nonprofit mentor, in short, if you can’t get it donated, get someone else to buy it. That’s great for special event sponsorships but it can be hard when trying to get resources for an individual in need.
With seven social media platforms, plus 4 personal social media sites, memes can be made even on a smartphone and spread out far and wide in cyberspace.
Yesterday, August 16th, a Saturday, a lady from Lagrange called me. She lives in an apartment complex and a friend of hers saw one of the posts. In addition to the specialized wheelchair, she also has a walker to donate.
This is proof that even with high-speed internet and many people, including yours truly staring at their handheld computers that also have a phone application (yes, technically smart phones are handheld computers), word of mouth, even through an internet connection can work wonders when connecting people to resources.
I emailed the healthcare provider, and her response was that of joy.
We will be working to either pick up the chair and walker or the donor may have a relative bring it to Old Town and our warehouse.**
In a semi-related note, a few weeks ago we heard from someone that they heard a story of a man who lost his leg and the insurance company offered one of two options. One was they would provide a wheelchair. The second option was to help him get a prosthetic leg… wait for it… NOT both.
So even if he were fitted for a prosthetic leg, he would still likely need to use a wheelchair while he got used to the new artificial limb. That doesn’t even take into account any number of complications that could arise.
At a recent Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce Business After Hours, I met a businesswoman who works with a company that HELPS people when they need to make an appeal to an insurance company. In other words, when a claim, especially for something most of us would consider reasonable, is denied, they can help put together an appeal to the insurance company.
***She went on to say that quite often when an appeal is filed, what was originally denied gets approved. That’s what we like to hear.
The people we work to help all have one thing in common. Challenges. They come from different circumstances, but those challenges are things that most of them have in common.
Many are recovering from substance use disorder, some are escaping from or dealing with someone who is in need of recovery resources. There are challenges with mental illness and working hard to get support for mental health, whether it’s getting into a program and sometimes the challenge is building a network of support, especially if they have come to Maine from another part of the country and have no family/friends to support them. Then there are people moving to the United States and being lucky enough to find themselves in Maine
Updates/Good News!
**The husband of the lady needing the bariatric chair will be connecting with and visiting the lady donating the bariatric chair and bringing it back home to his wife. We still keep record of that, records that are purely for statistical purposes and do NOT fall under the HIPAA laws.
***Tomorrow yours truly is meeting with Brianna Henward on Google Meet.
The meeting went exceptionally well with Brianna today and she was happy to share a LOT of information people may not know about healthcare insurance and claims etc.
She’s going to put together some sort of flyer or informational piece that I will be sharing with our Board of Trustees (Yes, Lisa Tissari and our SCORE Mentor Dennis Wint decided “Trustees” sounded more appropriate… When I heard “Board Members” my inner 12-year-old laughs and shouts “BORED” members?) and MANY other people through the following groups:
Maine Homeless Veterans Action Committee
Maine Veterans In Need
Maine Reentry Network
Penobscot County Cares
Connecting people is a joy. If anyone remembers the Crocodile Dundee movies there was a great scene between Dundee and his lady friend from New York. She talks about how her mother sees an analyst. Being from a rural part of Australia, he asks her what an analyst is. She explains that it’s a person her mother pays so her mother can tell the analyst about her problems.
Sue Charlton: “She found a wonderful shrink…I suppose you don't have any shrinks at Walkabout Creek.”
Michael J. "Crocodile" Dundee: Nah. Back there, if you got a problem, you tell Wally. And he tells everyone in town. Brings it out in the open. No more problem.
The only the flaw with that, (as effective as it is) we have to respect confidentiality. However, for our records or rather statistics, we keep track of age range, gender, how many people in the household, whether they’re veterans or not and the agency they come through and if they come with a caseworker, the name of that caseworker. We ask the caseworker to simply put down the initials of their client and that’s ONLY for them to get back in touch with their client if something they need comes in, or if something they took has an issue.
Recently we had a health advocate reluctant to share ANY of that non-identifying information, claiming it was a HIPAA violation (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). My beloved (our treasurer) thinks that the advocate may have had a scolding over something to do with HIPAA in the past by the way she was reluctant to share anything, instead of “Pleading the Fifth” she kept pleading the “HIPAA.”
I’m so glad I don’t have a “Boss” or a “Supervisor” anymore. I have a GREAT Designated Broker in a friend named Mark Dube who I have known for many years, long before starting Welcome To Housing Home Goods Bank, Incorporated. He started American Dream Realty, LLC and will be my last DB as I renewed my license as a REALTOR ® for the last time, as when my 2 years, 22 in total is up, I won’t be an agent anymore. I went from being a Sales Agent for 2 years which is normal, then to being an Associate Broker which is the level of real estate licensure you can remain at for the rest of your career. However, some of us, myself included, took the Designated Broker class to become a Broker. One older DB from another agency told her new agent at a lunch of the Greater Bangor Association of REALTORS ® “There’s NO REASON you need to take the DB course.”
It was all I could do to NOT say something to the living fossil. There a several reasons you move forward to the Broker level. First, so you can get a better understanding of what your Designated Broker does. Second, you learn MORE and can do MORE for your clients, whether they’re buyers or sellers.
I learned by example, if you want to learn how to do something, GO FOR IT and don’t do it halfway or pardon the expression Half-assed.
Speaking of which, I need to call it a bi-week as we have a Board meeting coming up on Tuesday the 26th of August.
August 24, or Sunday? It marks the 40th anniversary of Robin and my wedding. We had our first date, May 24th in 1980 and were engaged December 24th in 1984 and got married next to South Pond in Warren on the LAST sunny day of that summer. Why the long wait? Or as my late, great father-in-law, Ralph Pinkham asked, “How long do you plan on courting my daughter?”
Why? I wanted to ensure that my wife, Robin Pinkham (she kept her maiden name, most blood relatives forget that, but unrelated friends/loved ones remember), was able to attend and GRADUATE from college. She went to the University of Southern Maine and graduated Magna Cum Laude.
Why did I want that? Other than OBVIOUS reasons of encouraging an extremely intelligent young woman, I watched another couple and didn’t want to repeat their mistake.
My half-brother Greg, about 10 years my senior, the one who died from his alcoholism in February of 2024 was married to a wonderful lady for his first marriage. Her name is Arlene. She and Greg got married and she never had a chance to attend college and get a degree. She remarried a few months after Robin and I wed in 1985 to a wonderful man named Martin.
I need to head out, as I have an agenda to pull together from my notes and typeset for the next meeting of our “Trustees.” Again, Yes, Lisa Tissari and SCORE mentor Dennis Wint who are near the end of the final By-Laws agreed rather than Board of Directors, Board of Trustees sounded better and I have to AGREE.
Peace, love and stay tuned two weeks from now for another bi-weekly blog as I work to do a better job “staying on point.”
Oh, almost forgot. I have applied for a testing program offered by the University of Maine for ADHD testing. Something that I have wanted to do for years.
Sincerely yours,
Christopher Olsen
Founder and Board President
Welcome To Housing
