Lack of safe housing drives woman to suicide

Keywords: Suicide, housing, environmental illness, chemical sensitivity, electrical sensitivity

Loni R. lived in Mesa, Arizona with her husband and two teenage children. Their house was moldy, which may be the reason she became sick with multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS). About 2008 she also got electrical hypersensitivity (EHS), which happened soon after a major upgrade to a cell tower next door.

Unable to live in her home, she moved to a travel trailer at a rather primitive campground. Then she moved into a van, which she slept in for the next eight years. Her husband didn’t understand what was going on and was of little help.

While camping, Loni found another woman, “Ann,” who was in a similar situation. Ann had mostly MCS, and her husband was much more helpful. They bought forty off-grid acres in rural Apache County, where Ann’s husband put up a small primitive cabin for Ann to live in temporarily.

Ann invited Loni to camp on her land and the two women stayed there the summer of 2008. Meanwhile, Ann’s husband renovated their house in Phoenix, so Ann could move back again late in the fall. The following years Loni drifted around Arizona in her van, hoping to find a house she could live in.

Loni divorced her husband in 2015 and used the settlement to buy a house, but it was a disaster. She could not make it work.

In early 2016 she bought land near Paulden, where she wanted to build a healthy house from the ground up. The contractor had no prior experience in healthy house construction and Loni did not have the skills herself to research and manage such a project. There was also a cell tower about a mile away. It was not a good situation.

The house was finished by the fall of 2016. It was another disaster Loni couldn’t live in. In December she committed suicide.

2023