Though donations of clothing and furniture are coming in to the Moore family, whose , the family's greatest need—a new home—remains elusive.
"We're just scrambling," says Lydia Moore.
Cupertino's rental market is a small inventory that is riddled with scams and bidding wars, Moore says.
"It's the schools," she says of the high demand.
At one rental home, Moore says someone offered to pay an additional $500 a month more than the asking price, which was followed by another person who offered to pay five times the asking price.
An email inquiry she made on another property came back with a reply to send a check for first and last month's rent to the man who was in Africa on business. He wrote that once the check cleared he would send the Moores the keys to the home.
And another landlord told Moore that she preferred not to rent to people with kids—the Moore's have four children.
The Moore's would like to have a house with three bedrooms but will settle for two if necessary.
"Two bathrooms would be my dream," Moore says.
They were paying $2,000 a month for the Rose Blossom Drive home, which is owned by Kevin's parents, and would prefer to stay within that range.
Ideally they would like to stay in Cupertino, as close as possible to Lincoln Elementary School—where the couple's school-age children attend school—but they will look at homes in nearby Sunnyvale, Mountain View, West San Jose or Saratoga.
Through a rule that states that as long as they have a start and end date for the rebuilding of their Rose Blossom Drive home, Cupertino Union School District allows the Moore children to continue to attend Lincoln, even if they do not live in the school district.
In the meantime, the family is living with Moore's sister in Sunnyvale, which is fine for the short term, but they could really use anybody's help in finding a suitable home, Moore says.
Read more about the blaze and how it is effecting the Moore family:
