The short version:

Couple with severe long COVID, finally getting better, now forced to move because their new landlord is starting construction in May. Construction dust + reinfection risk = guaranteed relapse. They have very limited income and almost no savings. Money unlocks a safe place to land. Let’s show up for them.

Our goal covers

The long version:

E and J* arrived in Montreal in the summer of 2023. They got sick in the fall. In those brief months before becoming ill, they helped set up a city-wide mask and test network, which has since evolved into a full-blown anti-COVID activism and advocacy group. Since getting disabled by COVID, they’ve spent an enormous amount of their time advocating for other patients: sharing research, making calls, creating self-advocacy tools for medical appointments, helping them navigate bureaucracy. All of this from bed.

They are extraordinary.

They were super COVID-cautious from the very beginning: N95s everywhere, kept up with the science. Knew they were high risk. They dodged infection for almost three years. Then, in late 2023, COVID found them. Maybe outdoors, maybe a mask fit failure. They'll never know.

Both developed extremely severe long COVID. They spent over a year bedbound. They had to re-learn how to read and slowly rebuild the ability to stand.

Slowly, impossibly, they clawed their way back. Through sheer stubbornness, they mapped their food intolerances from scratch. They read the medical research and internalized the importance of rest and pacing. They turned a dismissive doctor into an ally. One medication gave them 10% function back. Another gave 5%. Another, 20%. Small gains, stacked on top of each other, until they went from bedbound to housebound–still sick, but liveable.

They started preparing for a return to work. For the first time in years, there was a path forward.

Then in November 2025, their landlord sold the building. The new owner couldn’t renovict them, so instead he opted for veiled threats like the boss from a B-list mafia movie: "I’m renovating. You're welcome to stay, but it'll be awful. Awful dust, awful noise. I understand you have health issues, but construction proceeds regardless."

For people with Long COVID, dust and noise guarantee regression in health and quality of life due to a combination of completely disproportionate neurological, muscular and immune responses to external stressors: simple external event, bloody-minded weeks- or months-long retribution from their bodies. With something as disruptive as construction, we’d expect this to include the return of symptoms E and J have successfully kept at bay for a long time, such as cognitive dysfunction presenting similarly to a brain injury, severe pain, and inability to stand. If they stay through construction, they will get much sicker. Back to bedbound. Back to square one.

The doctor who had finally come to understand their situation moved away. Their new doctor is sympathetic, but won't advocate for them, says they haven't been in her care long enough. Without a doctor’s letter documenting their disability and the medical necessity of avoiding construction (or taking strict precautions), they have no legal footing to demand accommodations or delay the renovation. No medical backup = no leverage with the landlord.

Could they fight this at the TAL (Québec Administrative Tribunal for Housing)? Maybe. But fighting this will be legally challenging since the renovations are only in neighbouring units. And, even if they won, they'd still be in a building only accessible by two flights of rickety iron stairs, that has been keeping them housebound and slowly breaking them for three years, with a hostile landlord. Construction starts in May and will take months. They don't have months.

They have no reliable income–this situation has been taking up all the time and energy they would otherwise be spending on a planned return to work. Savings are almost depleted. On paper, they look like a risk to a new landlord. In reality, they're two people who have fought harder for their lives than anyone I know, and they need help to avoid losing it all.

The stress is already costing them. They need to move now, because staying is eroding their health.

When the landlord first voiced his intention to break the lease and renovate the building, he offered E+J a fraction of what it would actually cost for them to relocate safely. When they countered his lowball offer with a realistic estimate of the cost of moving, he escalated with threats.

Money unlocks the way out:

Professional movers so the physical act of moving doesn't render them bed-bound again

A new place they can actually live in

Time to recover from this ordeal without immediately having to find work.

We have a team ready to help with logistics. We have friends who are helping to find a new, accessible apartment. We've found a moving company willing to enforce respirator use so E and J can be safe during the move. All the pieces are in place, we just need the funding to make it happen.

Our goal is to have them moved by May, before construction begins. If you can donate, please do. If you can't, please share. Every dollar gets them closer to safety. Thank you.

This fundraiser is managed by Kate Hardin, to whom E + J are dear friends. Funds raised will be deposited directly to E + J's bank account.

*Names changed for privacy and to protect from landlord retaliation.