Family Facing Eviction

Introduction -


Hello everyone. First, thanks for taking the time to click on and read this. That alone means the world. I’m reaching out on behalf of myself and my family for a rental eviction emergency situation. Sadly, again.


The situation has gotten to be very similar to the other time we reached out, with hopefully another light at the end of the tunnel.


Who We Are -


My name is Josh Bray, and I live with my family currently: my mom, my sister and her boyfriend, and my one year old niece. We’re just a consolidated household trying to keep our ship afloat in these times.

My sister, Celeste, and my niece Shelby

My mom, Melody

My ugly mug

Why We Need Help - 


In the past two months my mom and I have had some overlapping issues with jobs, with my mom getting the worst of it. She has had two jobs just completely pull the rug from under her in a couple different ways. At a position she got in July, they had a company car she had to drive for it… Until they picked it up after a week and a half of her working and doing well, saying it needed “work”. A week went by, and turned into two weeks, and they still didn’t have the car ready for her and she needed to start looking for new work once that week turned into the third.


Whether that company was on the level with what they were saying about that or not, it ended up going on even longer. With them even saying they had to sell other company trucks to get vehicles for their new hires. Either way, my mom couldn’t wait for them to sort out their stuff.


Having a great skill set, it wasn’t hard for her to setup a series of interviews, and another place was interested in hiring her. This is rolling into August, and she is working a temp job (that was only a couple weeks of work) while waiting for this new permanent one to start. And she kept on waiting. After two weeks of waiting… she started looking for new jobs again. No one from that office answers anymore, and she never heard anything back from them.


BUT she was able to start a new job last week! Small miracles, right? So that is where she stands now, having a week into a new job working from home making appointments for insurance sales folks.


I’m currently doing small IT stuff (few and far between) and misc. PC repair and web stuff, making for OK PT work while I am looking for full time position I can get to or work from home myself (No car right now, more on that in a moment).


Even my sister just recently started a new job at a pizza place that’s right down the block. Thankfully her boyfriend is a great dad, and is great free babysitting (he can’t work thus why my sister is, boy has social anxiety like 6 degrees higher than me even).


Something that makes our situation more strenuous is that our only car, the PT Cruiser, is going through overheating issues. I’m systems friendly enough to be able to work on a lot of it myself, if I happen to have tools available for it. We’ve gotten it darn near nailed down (high fan doesn’t seem to be coming on, plus radiator hose leak), but we have NO money right now to even fix that. I can at least put free labor on it, but we need things like parts and jack stands and whatnot before I can even think about it fixing it farther.


I’m not even putting costs towards the car on this fundraiser, as much as I would like to. This is just to define scope of our situation.


We’ll be able to sort the car out with paychecks coming in, and with my mom working from home, me being able to do PC repair and web stuff from home part time, and my sis working  down the block… we can get to the car once we have this stronger income stream coming in.


In the meantime, our property managers have been able to work with us, but of course they can only work so far. They allowed us two months before they filed for eviction, and even then they will work with us up to the Sheriff set out date even. It’s not like they are monsters here, they just have jobs to do. They did say they can work with us on pushing back needing to pay the court filing fees at least (the extra 200 on the overall total).




But that means we are sadly two months behind on rent, and that is what is on the eviction tally. The total I have made for this GoFundMe covers just under the total amount of evictions costs (minus GFM fees) with us picking up a bit with our own money even if this is 100% funded.


Our court date for eviction is on Sept. 5th. But even then, we still have some time after that, as our property managers will take full payment up to any set out date given. So we have 2 weeks at a minimum.




If this gets over 100% funded (God bless if it does), that means we can use the income we’ll have coming in the next week or two to start dropping it into things like September rent, and any fees we have left over with the property company, and towards getting parts for the car, and other bills.


If you would like do help via other methods like Paypal or Venmo, then please let me know. I can provide those details as needed and add these to the total here.


What else we have tried -


It’s not lightly I come to you all here with another GFM.


But the saying “Pride comes before a fall” is a popular one for a reason.


I’ve talked to organizations around my area, and some churches even. But sadly, if the places are still open even, a lot of places are out of funding or light on it. The Salvation Army is the big place in this area that helps, and they are out of funding until the new year.


We did talk to St. Vincent DePaul, and they said they were able to help with a max of $100 if we were able to get funds up enough that it would push us over the edge of stability. Bless their hearts, for that. If that happens, I will end up adding it to the GFM total here.


Same with any small help that comes from family or local friends. My family is not a rich one, but some might be able to help in the littles. Beyond moral support, it’s all anyone can really hope for.


I did find a place called SELF that helps with utility bills. Assuming we don’t get evicted, I’ll certainly be reaching out to them for the next city utility bill here (our city handles ALL utilities in one bill. About $250-$270 a month)


What happens if we get evicted -


Well, despite not wanting to think about that, one has to. The best case scenario if we are evicted is that we move into a motel in the area and try to rebound as quick as possible. But with an overheating car, and two of us depending on home offices for our work at home jobs currently… it would be pretty damn hard. Not to mention reviews of the motels around Hamilton, OH are less than stellar.


We are trying to avoid this, for sure.


So here we are. I’m once again coming to you wonderful people with hat in hand. I’m sorry that we have gotten to this spot again, as much as we are working to not be.


I want to thank you all again for clicking by here, and reading this all if you got this far. I know not everyone is in a position to help (man do I know that TOO well right now), but your care in reading and sharing is enough. Bless you all.