?Linda? and ?Joe? ? not their real names ? worked hard for years in low-paying jobs to own their own home.

The couple built it with their own hands ? labouring away in their minimal free time.

For Linda, the house represents everything she and her husband built together and all their sacrifices.

But today, with the home?s annual rental value (ARV) ringing in at $24,500, her pride and joy may be costing her the financial assistance she desperately needs to care for Joe.

Linda is 63 years old, but her husband, at 84, is considerably older and is succumbing to many of the curses of old age.

Joe has cancer, Parkinson?s disease and recently suffered a stroke.

For years, Linda has been carrying the bulk of the couple?s financial burdens.

While Joe worked hard in the construction industry for decades, today he only receives a small pension of roughly $400 a month.

As Linda nears retirement age and Joe?s condition continues to deteriorate, she worries how much longer she can keep her small family afloat.

She earns just $8 an hour in her part-time job and since Joe?s stroke she has had to take time off to try and sort out care for her husband during the day when she must be at work.

Joe can go into day care at the Matilda Smith Williams seniors residence but it will cost Linda $20 for each hour he is there and transportation costs.

She can ill afford the extra expenses and feels trapped.

?I can?t leave him to go to the kitchen or bathroom without him following me,? Linda said. ?The other day I was washing clothes and he couldn?t see me, so he bent around on the chair until he fell.

?What if he had broken something? I had to pick him up and now my back is in pain.

?He wants to know where I am at all times, so the idea of me going back to work is a difficult prospect to think about, if I don?t have him in care.?

As important as the extra income is from her job, Linda also needs to keep working to ensure the couple has health insurance.

?I cannot give up my job and take care of him,? she said. ?I keep working for the insurance. My husband is on six different medications and I can?t afford to pay for them now.

Even before he suffered the stroke, Joe would often leave the house and go to neighbours? homes looking for her.

?When he realised that I wasn?t there, he would demand that they call me home from work,? Linda said.

?It has been difficult. I am not a horse and I can?t keep carrying him alone.?

While it might seem to offer an easy solution, Linda does not want to sell the family home.

Nor does she want to see her husband go into residential care.

But these are the hard choices that many seniors are forced to make.

?Many of my friends have had to sell their homes in order to get help from financial assistance, but I am not giving up my home that we built,? Linda said.

?We worked hard for this house and we cleared out the garden, we knocked down the walls ourselves. We worked until our feet hurt so much that we couldn?t work any more.

?We are not and never were beggars.

?We don?t want a handout, especially when it means that we have to give up our home in order to receive a little bit of money from the Government.?

Linda feels they are being almost unfairly punished for their hard work, while others, who perhaps did not put in the same level of effort, remain eligible for financial assistance.

?It?s not fair that we worked so hard and the people who didn?t get assistance,? she said.

The couple did have one child who now resides in the United States, but he cannot help his parents financially because two of his three children are in university and the third will be starting in September.

?He wanted us to come up and live with him, but the problem would be that we won?t have insurance if we went,? Linda said.

?I am not a senior yet, but I hate to think what it will be like when I get there.

?I don?t want to put him (Joe) in a home. I love him and he was always a good husband to me.?