Never ceases to astonish me, how miserable some people can be to other people.
My wife knows someone from an online who lives in Portsmouth, NH, which is about 30 minutes north of Boston. Let's call him "D".
"D"s life is not exactly awesome. He has crippling agoraphobia. He lives in a double-wide trailer that, by his accounts, startles him by how much it resembles the houses he's seen on the show "Hoarders"... not because he has a particular desire to keep things, but taking it to the dump would be extraordinarily difficult for him to do because of his phobias.
It wasn't always this way. Things first started to get problematic around the time he was finishing high school. Up to that point he had anxiety but it didn't really mess with his life. After graduation, it got progressively worse... today, he's pretty much done unless he gets serious treatment. Tough to do given his economic situation.
Enter the parent(s).
His parents divorced pretty early on, and his father died several years back, leaving him an inheritance of around 50k. His mother (on disability for something unrelated, I think she was injured on the job or something) got him to lend her the inheritance money as a downpayment on a house so he could have the trailer to himself, along with a promise that she'd fix up the basement for him so they could both live in a nicer place.
Fast forward to this year: his condition is worse, economic times are tough. His mom comes over to get him to help decorate her house for christmas which he's able to get through... after which she tells "D" to move out of the trailer by new years. She's going to sell it to help with payments on the house he gave the inheritance to her to buy. He's been told that under no circumstances will he move in with her; she's tired of dealing with his "situation". The basement idea? She decided long ago that she couldn't be bothered.
So that's where it sits right now. In a couple weeks he'll be on the street (doesn't really have any friends nearby, living for years basically never leaving your house except in highly specialized circumstances tends to limit your social options), no job, no cash, with his mom living high off his inheritance while signing his eviction notice.
I don't really know the guy all that much (most of my information is second hand from my wife), but I gotta do what I can to help him out. The whole situation is just so... wrong. My first suggestion was to give a call to legal aid and see what can be done about sending the mother a legal nastygram and maybe give her head a shake, to which he replied simply "... but, then I'll lose my mom too!"
What he really needs more than anything else is counselling and medication so he can be a productive member of society. Anyone know a head shrinker with an altruistic streak in the Boston, MA / Portsmouth, NH area willing to help out someone broken and in serious need of help?
Any other suggestions of how he can get from where he is now to something, anything, better?
Edit: The common theme in comments seems to be for him to talk to a lawyer. My wife has been trying to get him to realize that its important for him to contact legal services, regardless of what happens... if for no other reason than to find out what options will be available to him in his area. I'm pretty sure he's not in the headspace at the moment where he's going to face off against his mother in a court of law; as shocking and infuriating as it might be to us seeing it all go down from the sidelines, to him that's still his Mom. It's a hard card to pull when you're told you need to sue your own mother for your own protection.