Familyneedshelp

I'm a single mother of 2 teen boys.  I live with my best friend of 17 years and her 3 children.  We both work, she works for a large chain store in thier warehouse, I work at home doing child care, making handmade jewelry and some local computer tech work. 
I also care for my mother who has Myasthemia Gravis.  The short explanation for this disease is that none of her muscles are working right including her lungs and heart and she's very weak.  Just moving around home for day to day things tires her out as much as running a marathon would a normal healthy person. 
We ALMOST make ends meet, but not quite (sometimes the pantry is a bit bare).  I've tried finding a job outside the home locally, but because I don't drive and there are no jobs available within walking distance, it's hard.  I have a vision problem (from birth) that doesn't allow me to judge distances and I frequently walk into things which is a pain, but better than having no sight at all. 
We have a decent house, it needs work, but we're fixing it up slowly.  Unfortunately everywhere we go for financing the minimum they want to lend is $50,000, which is WAY more than we owe.  We don't want to borrow more than we need.  The payments, even if we paid back what we don't need immediately to the loan would increase enough over our current payments to become a severe problem in a few short months. 
We bought the house based on income and jobs we had 2 years ago.  Within a few months of us getting settled in, the company started cutting hours for everyone at work every other week until we had to go out and find new jobs.  This county in NY is the most severely depressed in the state, and jobs are hard to come by, so we took whatever we can, and this meant less than what we were making before. 
I'm not unwilling to work, and I definately don't want something for nothing.  I just don't know where else to turn at this point.