I have a two bedroom apartment over my garage that I used to rent out for 1,200 a month, but when my mother-in-law needed a place to live my wife and I let her move into the apartment when the tenants lease was up. She is on Social security and Medicare and is considered permanently disabled. We do not charge her rent because she simply can not afford it with her medical bills...although she does pay for her heat/electric and cable. I know I can claim her as a dependent on my taxes, but are there any other programs either with the federal government or with the state of NJ that I can apply for? My wife and I really counted on the 1200 a month to pay our own bills and maintain our house, is there anything that can be done?
Your mother-in-law is quite young, too bad she cannot get a part-time job as sitting home at 65 isn't good for the mind nor the body. I am a recent cancer survivor, 68 years old and believe me if it wasn't for my career, I would be a basket case... especially now since I am on call to help my 90+ year old parents who still live alone in their own home.
A total of 23 federal housing programs target or have special features for the elderly. Specifically, one HUD and one USDA program target the elderly exclusively, while three HUD programs target the elderly and disabled. The remaining 18 programs serve a variety of household types but have special features for elderly households, such as income adjustments that reduce their rents. The 13 programs for which data were available provide about 943,000 housing units designated for occupancy by the elderly. However, many programs also serve the elderly in undesignated units."
"Undesignated units" would be apartments like yours, I think. This site doesn't allow links, as I understand it, so I'm putting the address here with spaces. Omit the spaces and enter it in your address bar:
www.gao.gov/new.items/ Don't forget the slashes and periods.
Hope this helps.
Other than that, I rather doubt it.