Give Us A Chance At A New Life!!!
Hello! A lot of you coming here may know me as Yaschiri or Shiny Spinda, and some of you may even know me by my legal name, Heather. I'm asking here on behalf of myself and my partner for help.
The long and the short of it is, my partner and I of nearly 7 years were squatting for a short time. We squatted for nearly 3 weeks in a house thought to be abandoned for a very long time. We genuinely had no choice. It was either squat or sleep on the streets. Unfortunately, we were caught and kicked out. There were no charges against us thankfully, but the situation was, and still is, dire. We're currently staying with a friend of my partner's, living in a basement, in a house of 6 others.
The events leading up to this are irritating and disheartening. The gist is, we were unable to find a room to rent, and are unable to currently afford an apartment. Due to our jobs and other factors, we did not have anyone to stay with. We have desperately been trying to move out of Illinois for the last 4 years, and we are determined to do so before the fall of this year.
This campaign is meant to help give us the needed funds to move, settle in, and start our lives in southern Colorado.
If you'd like a deeper look at our story, the breakdown of the funds, and other information, please continue to read below! If this was enough information for you, I hope you have decided our cause is worth a few dollars.
A (not so) Brief History
I would like to clarify first and foremost, I'm making just a few dollars above Illinois minimum wage, and my partner, who is a nurse, works in an immediate care center which does not pay nearly as well as some people think unfortunately!! We do not make much money between us, in case anyone was confused on why we have money issues. (:
On to the story....
My partner and I have been through quite a many hardships. In 2018 he had a herniated disk that was undiscovered until August of that year and didn't heal until the following spring. The entire year it took him to heal was filled with nothing but excruciating pain. The same year we totaled well over 4k in car repairs for the ’05 Mustang he had at the time. She had over 170k miles at the end of her life. The end of 2019 saw the rent in the apartment we shared go up beyond our means, so we moved out and rented a tiny room in a house that was barely big enough for one person let alone two. Then of course in 2020...well...everyone knows what happened. I don’t know a single person it didn’t affect in some way. My partner is a nurse and has been most of his adult life, so naturally he was in the thick of the pandemic. December of ’20, we both caught COVID. He was sick for 3 weeks straight with a high fever that would not break, and I lost all sense of taste and smell for a long while after I was otherwise recovered. My taste and smell to this day aren’t quite the same.
Due to another housemate harassing me, and my partner sticking up for me, the owner of the home found it to be a disturbance and asked us to leave by the end of the year. So recovering from COVID and facing another move in the middle of winter, we left and ended up renting a room after staying in a hotel for nearly a month in ’21. February of ’21 had us in another house, in another room. The house was shared with 7 other individuals, not including myself and my partner. The transition was difficult but evened out for a few months before other housemates began becoming a problem. And other nuisances relating to our comfort and safety. Regardless of the number of times we brought problems to the landlord, solutions were slow or never came. Somewhere along the way, our Mustang died (170k miles!!! I still can't believe it!) and we traded her for a ’20 Jeep which we had to make payments on!
We continued to make the best of it, and things were starting to look up at the end of the summer of ’22. We even got to take a vacation for a week! The first vacation we ever got to take as a couple!! Then we came back and the landlord told us he wanted us out by the end of the year. Naturally, we were crushed and we did all we could to convince him to let us stay until we moved out of state, as we had been planning to do in ’23. He extended the month-to-month agreement to January, and then March eventually, but would not budge any further. Claiming at first he wanted to go to a single-occupancy room and then insisted he was remodeling the bathroom and that he couldn’t push it back for us to stay. Even going back on his promise to let us know if something at one of his other two properties opened up (we saw several rooms over the course of our search that we knew belonged to him, and despite asking, he insisted that there wasn’t enough room for us).
Despite the heads-up in August and ample time to find another place to go, nobody was biting. We couldn’t find anyone willing to rent a room to a couple. We weren’t willing to get locked into a year lease, and even if we were, we couldn’t afford it. The average rent in our area for a 1 bedroom is at least 1200$ a month, with great credit and the expectation of making 3 times your rent amount. There was (and still is!) no way we could have afforded that.
Cue my partner finding a house that was very clearly abandoned for a long, long time. While trying to find somewhere to rent, anywhere, we secretly started to prep this house so as to live in it. I don’t want to give any more details about it, but I can assure you it was a lot of work we were hoping would be a waste. It was our last resort as we had nowhere else to turn. It turned out not to be a waste.
On top of also squatting, my partner was injured yet again, this time doing his job saving a woman’s life. He tore cartilage in his hip, called a labrum tear, which caused him excruciating pain. He sustained this injury at the end of October of ‘22. It caused him to call in quite a lot and though at the beginning his appointments and treatments were being paid for by the worker’s compensation insurance, they did nothing about his lost wages. Eventually they had him see one of their doctors to check against the specialist we had seen, and they determined that it was not in fact a hip injury, but a back injury, despite the evidence showing otherwise. They said it should have healed by now, and that they were no longer going to pay for any other therapy or doctor’s appointments, even lifting his restrictions at work.
So now, having been clearly misdiagnosed by this other doctor so the insurance could get out of paying for his physical therapy and doctor appointments, we had to get a lawyer as well. Because of the days and money he missed, we were even more behind on bills, barely getting by and sometimes not even eating due to no money. Coupled with the slow season at work for me, we were really hurting (still are actually!!).
And then the third week came and went, and we were found out and evicted despite our best efforts. We had really just begun settling in and making repairs to the home, but unfortunately the fates had other plans for us.
And basically now we’re here, relying on the kindness of a friend of my partner.
Everything has beaten us down time and time again, bringing us to the point of deep mental and physical exhaustion.
On top of all of THAT, we also unfortunately have to cope with our mental health declining as well. I concluded that I am likely ADHD, and cannot be diagnosed at this time due to the uncertainty of our situation on the whole. And my partner has PTSD along with anxiety and depression, all making a rather emotional combo. Both of us are not medicated, wrangling our brains to the best of our ability while trying to move and prep a house for squatting and consulting a lawyer and—and—
Yadda yadda! On and on into infinity!
So that’s how we got here! Wild ride and it’s not even over yet. Hope this has given you, dear reader, a better idea of why we’re here. <3
The Move Timeline
In this section, I will detail our (hopeful) timeline for moving!
May: We're in the middle of trying to get my partner on the national registry for nursing so that he can practice in Colorado (or nearly anywhere else in the US if he wants to at any time). It's a 205$ cost plus a lot of paperwork, but I have not figured this cost into the funds as we'll be getting this far before we leave so as to be prepared. He'll need it before he can even apply to any work in Colorado, so it is our top priority while I figure out a way to get us more money set aside for the move. This month is dedicated to that and also starting up this fundraiser.
June: By June we hope to have him registered and already having started looking for work. As soon as he begins to look for work, I can as well, as we share one car and I do not have a license at this time due to a lot of backstory that is messed up and long. I can land anywhere that is hourly and retail or food service, so thankfully this will be the easiest part of this whole thing. By the end of the month, we should have our jobs secured and have a date for when we'll leave Illinois.
July: This will be the last leg of our stay in Illinois. We're looking to leave no later than mid-July. This is where we'll hopefully have our reservations for the uHaul, the hotel, and some money set aside for our travel expenses. We're going to make the journey by car, which is a 17 hour drive, split into two days. We'll be landing in a campground that is dispersed, right outside of town where we'll be staying. The money donated here will get us a long way to our goal of finally having a peace of mind and our own lives.
Fund Allocation
In this section, I will detail how the money is going to be spent!
• Travel-880$
• Food-400$
• 1st month's rent and deposit-1,400$
• Storage-65$
• Bills for the first month-700$~
• Emergencies-400$
• Extra Stuff (stretch goals!)-1,000$+
Travel is self-explanatory; funds to rent a uHaul trailer, gas, and the hotel we’ll be staying at halfway through our trip to rest for the second leg of the driving!
Food; for the trip and for the first two weeks minimum we’ll be there camping.
1st month’s rent and deposit; we’re ideally hoping for a place that will be between 600$ and 700$ for a room as a temporary place to land until we can get a more permanent residence. I’m budgeting on the high side at 1,400$, but it may be 1,200$, or even less! Less would be super ideal!!
Storage; also self-explanatory. We’ll need a place to throw our things in while we settle in!
Bills for the first month; these are the reoccurring bills that we have to keep up with (and catch up with if I’m being frank). The bills are Planet Fitness (a nationwide gym, so that we can shower regularly and practice good hygiene during the first two weeks camping), car payment, car insurance, several credit cards, and our phone bill. I’ll try to get exact numbers later which may change what the goal is.
Emergencies; in case we need to go to an immediate care center, or repair something on the car, or whatever else we may suddenly need money for!
Extra stuff is exactly that, extra! I did NOT figure this into our goal. If we hit our goal, these extra funds would go toward getting myself a new computer so that I can more properly work from home once we settle in, which will give me a lot more freedom and a much better chance at better wages!! It’s overall something I REALLY want to invest in, but cannot as I am BROKE.
As you can see, the total comes out below 4,000$. I've made the goal 4,000$ to account for any wiggle room needed, other expenses that pop up, and also as a counter to the fees that get taken out by GoFundMe. It can't be helped that it happens, but I'd like to mitigate it as much as possible.
After all of this, if you find you still have questions, you are absolutely welcome to ask me. If you find you'd like to help in other ways, please consider sharing this to your social media accounts, anywhere you can. If you'd like to donate off-platform, please feel free to ask, and I can provide an alternative!
I apologize if this is messy, or unprofessional, or whatever, but I am desperate to stop struggling. I want a chance at a better life for my partner and I, a better future where we can have a family and my own home, and this is exactly the hand up that we need. Thank you for getting this far, and I hope that you consider donating to us.
