Campaign to Escape Hostile Apartment Environment
Donation protected
So I'm going to be honest I've never had to start a gofundme in my life so please bare with me. This gofundme would be to help me, Kelli Bowman, and my roommate get out of a very hostile and quite frankly unlivable living situation here in Kansas. My roommate has requested to stay anonymous and I'm respecting that.
For the past eight months of our 2 year lease our landlord had started getting increasingly more hostile. As most know, that's when COVID started getting super bad. Due to me losing my job about 1-2 weeks before COVID really kicked into gear I didn't qualify for any aid.
Unemployment was out the window and I thought that with such an unprecedented event that perhaps our apartment complex would work with us. Turns out that wasn't the case. In fact everything stayed pretty much the same. While I was busting my ass trying to find a job they continuously heaped on late fee after late fee. I even had to take odd jobs here and there, nothing illegal just temporary jobs that gave little to no pay. Hell I even sold half my shit that I didn't even want to just so that we could have something to eat that night.
My roommate has a job and does pay their share of the rent but unfortunately her job is very unforgiving as well. Paying her piss poor wages for doing three people's worth of work and pushing an impossible quota onto her knowing full well that people aren't going to pay big bucks for anything in this economy.
To top off the fact that the complex was being super unforgiving with the rent we've been having a lot of issues with the maintenance around our apartment. Half of the electrical outlets don't work, the plumbing hardly works, and we're lucky if we can get hot water in the shower for more than two minutes.
Because we were having so many issues with our bathroom we asked for maintenance to take a look at it. He did and somehow made it worse. Our toilet runs forever like it can't fill up all the way and our sink leaks constantly and we've had a bucket under there for almost a year now permanently because they never fully fixed whatever was wrong with the sink.
Then this past month and a half on three different instances ( warning this is not going to be pretty ) our tub and our stool filled to the brim with human feces that was not even our own that we were forced to clean ourselves because the apartment complex refused to do it themselves. Me and my roommate both have really bad sensory issues so it was very traumatizing for the both of us.
When I confronted my landlord about the issues that were wrong with the apartment she told me that I 'wanted to complain that the apartment was trashy because I can't afford to pay rent' which was very far from what I said. We have two different recordings of her being very outwardly hostile towards both me and my mother. Because me and my roommate now have weekday jobs we're never able to speak with our landlord as she's never there. My mother went on our behalf as we got a 3 day notice to vacate the premises in the mail and tried to see if there was a payment plan or something we could do to make it work.
A very simple request right? No. She got hostile and started bringing personal things into the conversation that were quite frankly unnecessary, stating that I had never had a job in the first place before COVID hit which is false. When we moved in I had a job continuously until the tail end of January and things with the pandemic kicked gear in February which made it extremely difficult to find my job. This apartment was only willing to help people who were receiving unemployment due to the crisis. Which unfortunately was a category we didn't fall into.
We tried time and time again to get rental assistance from programs around us and even went to Churches to see if they had programs for that as well to no avail. Somehow we were still able to make it work even if we were late. However the late fee's at this apartment complex are $75 dollars and they add another $75 fee if you don't pay by the 15th of the month which totals $150 onto our rent.
At this time we are able to keep things current however we do not have enough money to get out on our own. We want out of this apartment riddled with problem after problem and we want out of this hostile environment. We did the math and there are places that we would like to move and this would be for the deposit, application fee, pet deposit as we have two cats, first months rent, moving truck to move all our stuff, changing our utilities over to a new address, and groceries.
Literally if you only want to give $1 that's fine. Any amount helps. We're just tired, scared, and sick of this place. We want to escape this hell so bad, we just need a little help, please. I'm sorry it's a lot of reading but a lot of stuff has been happening. Thank you so much if you can donate and even if you can't donate please spread the word, that would mean the world to us.
For the past eight months of our 2 year lease our landlord had started getting increasingly more hostile. As most know, that's when COVID started getting super bad. Due to me losing my job about 1-2 weeks before COVID really kicked into gear I didn't qualify for any aid.
Unemployment was out the window and I thought that with such an unprecedented event that perhaps our apartment complex would work with us. Turns out that wasn't the case. In fact everything stayed pretty much the same. While I was busting my ass trying to find a job they continuously heaped on late fee after late fee. I even had to take odd jobs here and there, nothing illegal just temporary jobs that gave little to no pay. Hell I even sold half my shit that I didn't even want to just so that we could have something to eat that night.
My roommate has a job and does pay their share of the rent but unfortunately her job is very unforgiving as well. Paying her piss poor wages for doing three people's worth of work and pushing an impossible quota onto her knowing full well that people aren't going to pay big bucks for anything in this economy.
To top off the fact that the complex was being super unforgiving with the rent we've been having a lot of issues with the maintenance around our apartment. Half of the electrical outlets don't work, the plumbing hardly works, and we're lucky if we can get hot water in the shower for more than two minutes.
Because we were having so many issues with our bathroom we asked for maintenance to take a look at it. He did and somehow made it worse. Our toilet runs forever like it can't fill up all the way and our sink leaks constantly and we've had a bucket under there for almost a year now permanently because they never fully fixed whatever was wrong with the sink.
Then this past month and a half on three different instances ( warning this is not going to be pretty ) our tub and our stool filled to the brim with human feces that was not even our own that we were forced to clean ourselves because the apartment complex refused to do it themselves. Me and my roommate both have really bad sensory issues so it was very traumatizing for the both of us.
When I confronted my landlord about the issues that were wrong with the apartment she told me that I 'wanted to complain that the apartment was trashy because I can't afford to pay rent' which was very far from what I said. We have two different recordings of her being very outwardly hostile towards both me and my mother. Because me and my roommate now have weekday jobs we're never able to speak with our landlord as she's never there. My mother went on our behalf as we got a 3 day notice to vacate the premises in the mail and tried to see if there was a payment plan or something we could do to make it work.
A very simple request right? No. She got hostile and started bringing personal things into the conversation that were quite frankly unnecessary, stating that I had never had a job in the first place before COVID hit which is false. When we moved in I had a job continuously until the tail end of January and things with the pandemic kicked gear in February which made it extremely difficult to find my job. This apartment was only willing to help people who were receiving unemployment due to the crisis. Which unfortunately was a category we didn't fall into.
We tried time and time again to get rental assistance from programs around us and even went to Churches to see if they had programs for that as well to no avail. Somehow we were still able to make it work even if we were late. However the late fee's at this apartment complex are $75 dollars and they add another $75 fee if you don't pay by the 15th of the month which totals $150 onto our rent.
At this time we are able to keep things current however we do not have enough money to get out on our own. We want out of this apartment riddled with problem after problem and we want out of this hostile environment. We did the math and there are places that we would like to move and this would be for the deposit, application fee, pet deposit as we have two cats, first months rent, moving truck to move all our stuff, changing our utilities over to a new address, and groceries.
Literally if you only want to give $1 that's fine. Any amount helps. We're just tired, scared, and sick of this place. We want to escape this hell so bad, we just need a little help, please. I'm sorry it's a lot of reading but a lot of stuff has been happening. Thank you so much if you can donate and even if you can't donate please spread the word, that would mean the world to us.
Organizer
Kelli Bowman
Organizer
Kansas City, MO
