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Kim L. Spearbecker
I had to retire before I planned to due to health problems which meant a substantial drop in income. Social security just isn’t enough to live on. But an apartment became available in my mother’s building, the owner let me have it for $300 so I took it. It was all I could afford. It was in bad shape but I got to work papering and painting and making it a fairly nice place to live…until winter came. The heating system was horrendous. The entire downstairs froze–radiators, water, food–everything, except the mice (I’m phobic about mice). Upstairs it was 90+ degrees with the windows open. So for 10 years, I made due by often turning the furnace off at bedtime and hoping the two cats and I wouldn’t die of hyperthermia by morning. The outside temp was often far below zero. By the last year I was there I had no running water, no working range or refrigerator (but in winter it didn’t matter), and bad electricity that nearly started a potentially tragic fire. Camp toilets are no picnic if you must use one every day. But, still, it was a roof over my head. The city stepped in and I found a vacate order on the door. (more…)
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Schfaun H.
I am 30 years old married with 6 kids. I’ve been with my wife for 12 years. I’ve always had well paying jobs but our credit is preventing us from getting any housing. So we’ve been hotel hopping but it’s not sustainable it takes all my paychecks and just my kids are so tired from this it’s been about a year we’ve been going through this cycle. I try to be strong for them as the man of the house but it’s just been breaking us down. I have such wonderful kids and a beautiful family everyday seeing them going through the struggle breaks my heart.
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Shanell L.
A year ago, in May 2023, while in the middle of my divorce, I lost my job. My ex husband also lost his job a month later, so he could no longer pay me child support. We were both previously making $90,000/yr, but in Georgia unemployment only paid us $1,200/month. My rent alone for my two bedroom apartment for my daughters was $2,000/month. Unemployment ran out after 3 months, and it took me a total of 11 months to find work again.
The apartments weren’t willing to take partial payments, and in all honesty, I don’t really know how I would have been able to pay them anything. Now I am working again, and it has been the absolute hardest experience trying to find a clean, non roach-infested and safe place for my two daughters and me. Right now I’m paying almost $4,000/month for us to stay in a furnished hotel. Many landlords and property management companies won’t even look past my eviction to actually hear my story.
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Haven A.
I am sharing with you this concern for myself and my three babies. I am a 27-year-old mother of 3 children, and I’m also juggling school. The past four years I have resided in a rental house in Pascagoula, and in those four years I have met my landlord one time and that was at the time of signing the lease. I have never been a problem. When things break I fix them myself instead of calling my landlord (he lives 15 hours away). At the end of May, I contacted my landlord to make him aware of the mold, and he ignored the repairs that affected our health and well-being; he disregarded requests to repair the property to make it more livable. (more…)
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Anonymous
A few years ago when COVID-19 had started, it was spreading like wildfire everywhere. It was awful that so many things were closed due to COVID. It was even worse staying in one small apartment in the Bronx, New York. So the only solution that my family had was to go visit some relatives and we did. We went to Indiana. (more…)
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Scott Rapalee
We had lived in a location we rented from a man I worked for 30 years ago. We remodeled the place as it was uninhabitable. We had zero issues for 5 years. Then he sold it to his family and his nephew came to evict us. 18 months later, after being put through the worst treatment you can imagine, my family is now homeless. Not because we didn’t pay our rent or violated anything, but because no one would represent us and the court is biased against pro se litigants.
We were put through all of the self help eviction programs and more. Not one group would help. No one would take our case. We fought it best we could with a biased judge, who in the end set our emergency hearing eviction 2 days after the execution of the eviction by the sheriff’s office. As we have been told, this was a violation of the judge’s ethics code. (more…)
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Karl
In 2021, I made almost $100,000 that year. In 2022, I was fired from my job for an act I didn’t commit. Since then, I’ve lost everything, including my home of eight years. I’m now homeless. The shelters for homeless people are dirty and mostly don’t accept people and treat people inhumanely. I’ve been thinking about suicide frequently. Tried calling my town about assistance but get nowhere. I need help with housing and employment.
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Michelle R.
After 10 years of renting our home in San Pedro, CA, there came a new buyer to live in the front house while we stood in our back house. Well it was a nightmare since he came to live in the house. We never expected someone could be so ignorant and cruel. He had a drinking problem, which ended up with me getting a restraining order on him. Out of retaliation he evicted us. We had no attorney, but we had our facts in line to go to trial. (more…)
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Carrie
My husband and I have been separated but living together with our two teen boys, ages 14 and 16, so our kids don’t have to struggle. Well, my husband lost his job and we fell behind on our rent. He found a job a few months later, and we needed an agreement with our landlord that we would pay every two weeks until we were paid up. We sent our landlord over a thousand dollars, and not long after that he reneged on his agreement. In December 2022, I tried to commit suicide because of the stress of what my landlord was putting us through. I was hospitalized for a week in a mental institution. When I left the mental institution on December 17, we had been evicted from our home. Thrown out on the street within 20 minutes. My landlord knew where I was, but told the judge that he had no clue why I did not show up for court.
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Monica Delancy
I am the founder of the non profit We Thrive on Riverside Renters Association. We are 100 percent volunteer-run for 16 years in Cobb County, Georgia. As I am a renters advocate, in 2018 I was asked by residents to help them with maintenance issues they were having with their property. In 2019, the residents won counter claims against the property. I was asked to help negotiate the $86,000 fees that they were required to pay, and the fees were waived when they agreed to donate $10,000 to a non profit. The property was sold, and the new owners took over. In 2019, they requested my assistance to help with resident relations and agreed to repair the property. I moved on the property, and my organization had access to the community room. I organized resident meetings, workshops and activities for the residents. The Oprah Winfrey foundation awarded my non profit a grant because of my work in the community.
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Patty L.
I have rented this one bedroom since May of 2020. I was able to “port” my section 8 rental choice voucher from another city in Wisconsin. First, I was threatened by the Richland County Housing Authority (who runs the section 8 program) of paying an almost 3 thousand dollar overpayment because of not reporting wages when I had worked full-time in the other city. They called it “fraud”. I contacted Legal Action of Wisconsin and was given a lawyer who really didn’t care or help me, so I started on my own. (more…)
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Cecilia
I live in subsidized housing, after being homeless for 8 years. My 2 teenagers and I moved in on 3/11/2020. In October, my daughter turned 18, and my son moved out. My child support and welfare cash aid stopped too. We were in a 3 bedroom. Since my son left, my daughter and I needed to go to a 2 bedroom. We moved in December 2022. I am looking for work and so is my daughter. (more…)
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Jerry VF
I’m being evicted because of something that is out of my control, and have asked many for help. My landlord says I’m a liar. On May 3rd, my car breaks down and it’s towed to a mechanic, A Plus Automotive. Within a few days repair shop spoke with my warranty company and they agreed on the work of replacing the transmission with a used transmission that the warranty company will send. Took almost a month and a half to fix the first time. I get vehicle back and 5 days later it breaks down again. (more…)
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Adrienne
My name is Adrienne. I’m 25 years old with 2 children. A boy, 5 years old, and a girl, 12 months. My mother also resides with us, and she’s 54. I once had a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment located in Illinois that I got with my daughter’s father. Unfortunately her father couldn’t keep a job and was unable to help me with rent, bills and living expenses. He eventually left and everything fell on me. I worked long hours at a factory and as a Door Dash driver when I was off, but it was never enough to catch back up. (more…)
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John J.
My name is John and my wife is Stephanie. We rented out a farm, actually a part of the farm out in the pasture, with no electricity. It had goats, ducks, and pigs running all over the place and animal s*** everywhere. We turned this pasture into a beautiful piece of property with 3 different types of grapes, a country kitchen with a wood burning stove, open fire pits, and a small shooting gallery. Yes our landlord liked it too because they told us we had to move. They increased our rent by $300, made a sign, a new lease, and they were gonna put us on a new small concrete pad that was about 20′ wide and 20′ in length. That’s all we could have, and they were going to rent out what we’ve done to the pasture to other people so they can enjoy it. It was really a slap in the face. So now we are homeless and have been for the last year.
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