Help Liam and Elis Avoid Homelessness
Donation protected
To anyone who may come across this GFM:
I’m Elis and my partner is Liam. We’ve been together 5 years, had our cats for two, and have been dealing with a situation that’s made our apartment unlivable and unsanitary since March 8th.
Our toilet and shower had been slightly clogged or slow to drain since late February, but we started to need to bail gray water out of our toilet/shower on 3/8.
We spoke to our landlord and he sent a plumber on 3/9. He put more than 100 feet of snake and couldn’t solve the problem, so he notified our landlord that he’d need a second guy to come to help him operate a larger, motorized snake. Our landlord refused and I could hear him screaming, “It’s not fair! It’s not fair!” on the plumber’s phone. It wasn’t on speaker. I don’t know if anyone was paid for that job and it was horribly embarrassing.
Later that night, the flooding got worse so we asked our landlord for an emergency plumber. Roto-Rooter came out around 10 PM with another 100 foot snake and couldn’t fix the problem either. The Roto-Rooter plumber said they needed to bring in a big truck with a pressurized water system the next day and they needed $389 to guarantee the appointment.
Liam needed to front that money because our landlord’s phone went straight to voicemail for several minutes and the plumber needed to leave. A few minutes after Liam’s credit card got charged, the landlord called back — too late of course.
The next day (3/10), a second crew came in and tried to use the pressurized water to clear the pipes. This video is disgusting, but shows a portion of how much Liam bailed out of the toilet, shower, and off the floor. Warning: it’s gross.
https://youtube.com/shorts/DK8KiUCooBE
Under advisement from the plumber, we left on 3/10 to stay in a La Quinta, believing this would all be over in a few days. We told our landlord, and he agreed to reimburse us for the cost of the hotel and for the fee Liam paid to Roto-Rooter.
He reimbursed us for 5 nights at the hotel ($525.25) and the money Liam had given to Roto-Rooter. He kept telling us to stay at the hotel because nothing was fixed yet. Then on 3/20, he sent this text:
Since we’ve been here, we’ve had to buy non-perishables from Trader Joe’s because our hotel fridge isn’t very cold and is quite small. The rest of our food has been delivered.
We’ve also had to buy new clothes from TJ Maxx since the clothes we had at home have been sitting in air tainted by sewage for 15 days. The laundry room is also out of order here.
Those costs (clothes and food) have probably cost us $750-1000.
We’ve also hired an attorney. He believes that the entire apartment is illegal due to several structural factors, that several portions of our lease are illegal, and that we are entitled to compensation for the time we’ve spent here. We’re happy to hear that, but we spent $1000 to retain his services (a huge thank you to J for covering that for us ), and $100/hour of his time (estimated $1000 right now, but it could rise).
It’s likely we’ll have to replace our bed, many of our clothes, our couch, and everything in the kitchen and bathroom. This is what the floors look like in there:
Next to our front door
Bathroom floor
Shower
What’s been tracked in through the kitchen as workers went inside and out (this stuff is in our carpet too)
And still we have to pay bills and care for our cats. Liam works, but I am unemployed and have been since January 1st. I saved some money to live on, but I wasn’t expecting these costs.
We’ve paid:
I’m Elis and my partner is Liam. We’ve been together 5 years, had our cats for two, and have been dealing with a situation that’s made our apartment unlivable and unsanitary since March 8th.
Our toilet and shower had been slightly clogged or slow to drain since late February, but we started to need to bail gray water out of our toilet/shower on 3/8.
We spoke to our landlord and he sent a plumber on 3/9. He put more than 100 feet of snake and couldn’t solve the problem, so he notified our landlord that he’d need a second guy to come to help him operate a larger, motorized snake. Our landlord refused and I could hear him screaming, “It’s not fair! It’s not fair!” on the plumber’s phone. It wasn’t on speaker. I don’t know if anyone was paid for that job and it was horribly embarrassing.
Later that night, the flooding got worse so we asked our landlord for an emergency plumber. Roto-Rooter came out around 10 PM with another 100 foot snake and couldn’t fix the problem either. The Roto-Rooter plumber said they needed to bring in a big truck with a pressurized water system the next day and they needed $389 to guarantee the appointment.
Liam needed to front that money because our landlord’s phone went straight to voicemail for several minutes and the plumber needed to leave. A few minutes after Liam’s credit card got charged, the landlord called back — too late of course.
The next day (3/10), a second crew came in and tried to use the pressurized water to clear the pipes. This video is disgusting, but shows a portion of how much Liam bailed out of the toilet, shower, and off the floor. Warning: it’s gross.
https://youtube.com/shorts/DK8KiUCooBE
Under advisement from the plumber, we left on 3/10 to stay in a La Quinta, believing this would all be over in a few days. We told our landlord, and he agreed to reimburse us for the cost of the hotel and for the fee Liam paid to Roto-Rooter.
He reimbursed us for 5 nights at the hotel ($525.25) and the money Liam had given to Roto-Rooter. He kept telling us to stay at the hotel because nothing was fixed yet. Then on 3/20, he sent this text:
Since we’ve been here, we’ve had to buy non-perishables from Trader Joe’s because our hotel fridge isn’t very cold and is quite small. The rest of our food has been delivered.
We’ve also had to buy new clothes from TJ Maxx since the clothes we had at home have been sitting in air tainted by sewage for 15 days. The laundry room is also out of order here.
Those costs (clothes and food) have probably cost us $750-1000.
We’ve also hired an attorney. He believes that the entire apartment is illegal due to several structural factors, that several portions of our lease are illegal, and that we are entitled to compensation for the time we’ve spent here. We’re happy to hear that, but we spent $1000 to retain his services (a huge thank you to J for covering that for us ), and $100/hour of his time (estimated $1000 right now, but it could rise).
It’s likely we’ll have to replace our bed, many of our clothes, our couch, and everything in the kitchen and bathroom. This is what the floors look like in there:
Next to our front door
Bathroom floor
Shower
What’s been tracked in through the kitchen as workers went inside and out (this stuff is in our carpet too)
And still we have to pay bills and care for our cats. Liam works, but I am unemployed and have been since January 1st. I saved some money to live on, but I wasn’t expecting these costs.
We’ve paid:
- $1500 on the hotel and expect to be here for quite some more time.
- $750-1000 on food and clothes.
- ~$150-200 on Uber’s to get to the apartment and the lawyer’s office when we need to.
We expect to spend money on:
- A new apartment (~$4500 for first, last, and security deposit on a decent studio)
- A new bed and frame (~$1100 if we go with the mattress in a box we currently have for my chronic pain)
- Sheets, comforter, pillows (???)
- A new couch (~$250)
- New clothes (no idea what will be salvageable)
- Everything from our bathroom (shampoo, conditioner, all my makeup, electric razor/beard trimmer, all our towels, etc.)
- Most everything from our kitchen (spices on counter, some cookware, mostly plates and silverware, etc.)
- Things we didn’t think to take that might not be treated with care during cleaning and that we’ll end up crying over later.
I know these listed costs don’t add up to what we’ve paid and what we expect to pay. That’s somewhere in the vicinity of $10,000. But if we can get to half that? I think (hope) we can manage the rest.
If we don’t make this happen, we will be homeless and we’ll have to surrender our cats. They’ve been rehomed at least twice already and I can’t imagine life without them. We can’t have kids right now, so they’re the closest we have to family and we can’t give up on family.
We hate to ask for anything and never would if we could solve it ourselves, but this is beyond us.
Please help in any way you can, by giving or by sharing with others who might be able to help.
From the bottom of our hearts, thank you
Organizer
Elis Aaron
Organizer
Boston, MA