Mods, feel free to move this to off-topic soon, I'm posting it here for now for visibility reasons.
I've been fighting having to do this for a long time, but my back is up against the wall, I don't have much choice.
The story behind this is long, but there's a lot of details that I have to describe to accurately portray what is going on... so here goes.
I suffer from a very rare auto-immune disease called ITP. It causes the body to attack the platelets in the blood, leaving you with no ability to clot, which causes extensive bruising, bleeding, and can prove fatal easily if you fall or take a hit to the head or chest. It rarely flares up, it has only flared up one other time in my life, last April... It is believed to be a secondary symptom from the long-covid I have been suffering from for 3 years now. It flares up any time I am under immense stress, which unfortunately, due to a lawsuit I am entangled in with my landlord currently, I am under right now. Here's the back-story of all that.
Story time... I wanted to give you guys a glimpse into the challenges I'm currently facing.
The main reason I'm in this position is due to the stress I've been under from a lawsuit I'm caught up in with my landlord. This lady is a certified Grade A Karen. One of the worse humans I have ever met in my life. Entitled as they come, doesn't think she has to answer to anybody, dishonest, and spiteful.
Last April, I was looking for a new home. I found this nice little house I'm in, it's in a beautiful neighborhood with oaks that form a natural canopy over the road. It has a porch swing, and a fenced in back yard with a fire pit. It has a garage! I've never had one of those before, and always wanted one (especially since the weather here can get nasty during the spring and autumn months, not counting hurricane season). So, it all seemed perfect. I asked to tour the place, and she met me here.
While showing me the garage, it was full of her belongings. She'd been using it as a storage shed for her stuff for 20 years or so, and for some reason, none of the previous tenants bothered to do anything about it, they just let her leave it there. But I told her that one of the main reasons I was looking at this home was because I wanted to be able to park my car in the garage, and she assured me that she would have the garage cleared out before I moved in. While touring the living room, she also showed me some electrical problems (the ceiling fan light flickered when you turned it on) and assured that too would be fixed before I moved in.
So, I was in a bit of a bind, the lease on my previous house ended (they sold it out from under me, so I had to go) and I needed to get moved in immediately to the new house. I paid my deposit and first month, and she gives me the key. The repairs and cleaning had not been done yet, but she'd given me the key a week early, so I didn't mention it.
A month later, she still had not made good on her word. I politely reminded her, and she said "OMG! Thanks for reminding me! I will have a truck out there Friday." Friday came and went, nothing. At this point, I also notice some soft spots on the floor in the kitchen and laundry room, where the floor is rotting through. I mention those to her, she sends a guy out to look at them, and then nothing happens.
3 months in, still nothing. Another rminder, another promise, another failure to deliver.
6 months in, ditto.
On the 6th month, I was late on rent due to a net30 paycheck (meaning I didn't get paid until 30 days after the gig) I was relying on to pay that month's rent. I assured her the check was on the way, but it would be late. "You mean to tell me you're going to be a whole month late on rent? WE MIGHT HAVE PROBLEMS."... Yes, we might... we're 6 months into this lease and she's still in violation of it, which I politely remind her. She claps back "That isn't your garage.", to which I remind her that my lease states otherwise, and ask if she'd like a judge to make that call. She shuts up for 2 more months...
Here I am 8 months into the lease, my electrical issues are still there (a fire hazard), my floor is still rotten, my garage is still full of her shit, and I've paid her every month for 8 months regardless. She knocks on my door to inform me her insurance company has told her she needs to trim a limb off my garage, so I agree to let them get up there and do that. Later that night they knock on my door again to say they made a mess in my yard with the cut down limbs, and asked me to clean up their mess, and then she proceeds to tell me I am not maintaining the yard to her satisfaction (I'd been cutting it, but do not have an edger or clippers to trim the hedges, so those had not been done, even though my lease doesn't specify I have to do all that). She gives me a bogus 2 week warning to get that done. Fed up, I call an attorney.
My attorney makes a more than generous offer. Clean out the garage, fix the electrical and the floor, and give me 1.5 months rent free for having to call an attorney to make her do that. She tells us to GFY. "We'll give you $300, we think that is more than sufficient."
OK. Looks like this is going to be a fight. My attorney (Apex Law, any of you in Missouri or AL who has landlord issues, this guy is AMAZING) tells me he used to be a landlord himself, and he knows just the thing to get under her skin. He calls the city code inspectors out, and they start writing her up for code violations left and right. By the time they are done, they've cited her for about $15,000 worth of repairs that must be done to this house to bring it up to code, and they give her a deadline to have them completed by, or they will start fining her $200 per day until they are completed, then she has to call them back out to re-inspect the house once the repairs are complete.
I've been paid up current on my rent up until this point, but this is the point where she pulls some really shady stuff... As soon as she realizes we'd called the code inspectors, even though I paid her December rent (late, but within the window we'd been given to cure it), she files an eviction notice with the courts claiming I never paid her. I have the receipts that prove otherwise. But it gets even more shady... she doesn't tell us she did this. She hides it. She doesn't have papers served to me to notify me there's a hearing scheduled January 9. By my birthday, January 1, I'm so stressed out over all this back and forth that my ITP, a very rare auto-immune disease that causes your body to attack the platelets in your blood, flares up again and I'm left bruised and bleeding all over, fighting for my life. Each time my ITP has been triggered, it was due to extreme stress. I am then stuck in the hospital for 2 weeks, I spent my birthday in there this year. This hearing comes and goes without my knowledge, and because I'm not there to defend myself, the judge rules against me by default. THE DAY AFTER the judge rules this, the sheriff shows up at my house to serve me my papers to notify me of the hearing. Obviously this is completely backwards, and we're filing a motion to have the judgment dismissed on those grounds, but technically I'm supposed to be evicted tomorow morning based on the ruling from that judge. So, I scramble to borrow money from friends to pay Janurary rent when I got out of the hospital yesterday (still in very dangerous condition, my platelet count is so low right now that if I fell it could kill me from internal bleeding) so that she cannot say I'm behind... I'm still not cleared to work and likely won't be for weeks... I'm basically hoping the judge grants our motion to dismiss his judgment against me in the morning and I'm not stuck here sick as a dog trying to get my stuff moved out of my house.
This is why I need your help so badly right now. In addition to tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills that I'm facing, I have to stay current on my rent to keep this lawsuit going, if I fall behind, AL is a very landlord-friendly state, and it will completely derail my case. I have $2600 worth of rent left on my lease for Feb and March, then I will be out of the lease. My plan is to pay her off, and then counter-sue to get at least 3 months of that back so I can get at least some compensation for losing use of the garage, etc and have some money to pay my absolutely amazing attorney what he deserves for his efforts. That is why I set my goal at $8500, it isn't even close to enough to cover even the medical bills (gotta love American healthcare, last time I was hospitalized for ITP it cost me $23,500, and I was in the hospital twice as long this time...), but it will handle taking care of this lease and put a big enough dent in the medical bills that, once I can get back to working again, I should be able to handle the rest on my own.
I thank you for taking the time to read all this, and hope you can chip in to the cause, or if you cannot, that you will share this GoFundMe to your page so that others can help. I really need it, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for helping.
I must stay current on my rent in order to keep this legal fight alive, but unfortunately I'm basically bedridden right now, I cannot work and won't be able to again until my platelet count is healthy (last check it was 29,000 per ml of blood, 150,000 is the minimum to be considered healthy), and within 2 weeks I have more rent payments due... plus the bills are stacking, they are not far from cutting my power off, gas and water as well. I really need to address this soon.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Again, sorry for posting this off-topic, but the video section is where the traffic goes here, so I wanted to make sure it got seen by as many people as possible.