I've done a lot of scary things in my life, but creating this GoFundMe is the scariest. Multiple friends have been telling me for a while to do this, but I was embarrassed. And I feel weird because I'm always the one to help others! Long story short, my son Franklin and I are having to leave my ancestral home with very little time. We are actually supposed to be out on December 8/December 9.
***Brief version for today's attention span***
It's practically impossible to move when:
1. My credit has been on and off the struggle bus since I got laid off in 2020.
2. Freelance journalism has been pretty much my sole source of income for years, so I've always had just enough but nothing to spare. I've applied for so many jobs, but nothing. Even gotten to the last interview many times, but they went with someone else.
To apply for apartments, you need either great credit or a lot of money to give upfront.
Also if you'd rather not use this platform, I have all my payment apps listed here, on my website.
***Long story, all the details. I'll try to keep it cute.***
As one of my neighborhood uncles has said, "I put my trust in man and not the Lord." Twice!
This is the house I grew up in. My family died when I was 17, and it was left to me. That was 2002/2003. I went to college (Dillard University) and stayed on campus. In 2005, of course, Hurricane Katrina happened. I worked so hard to rebuild this house at 22, in 2007. Catching the bus to go to City Hall to file paperwork, riding around with my contractor at 6 a.m. But I did it! Yay! Mostly because, as I would always say, "this house is all I have left of my family."
I've written about this house for Apartment Therapy, back in 2020 when it was cool to [redacted]:
I even wrote for Apartment Therapy in 2021, about how hard it was to make ends meet:
And I've written about my soon-to-be former neighborhood too, the 7th Ward, for Gambit Weekly, in 2013.
The house was long paid for. My family bought it July 4, 1969. Which was weird, TBH, because my mom had just graduated from high school. Like... kinda late for stability but OK. Anyway...
In 2014, my now ex-husband and I had a baby. The day after I had the baby, while obviously still under the influence of the all the labor and delivery drugs, I was made to sign something to put my now ex-husband's name on my house, so he could put a mortgage on it. I remember a friend who was also the wife of a colleague came to visit me, and she was made to sign as a witness.
But, you do what your husband says. A lot of that money was spent fixing our carriage house his best friend stayed in for free and completely destroyed. I mean, completely.
Louisiana law makes it so if you have a kid, you are "separated" for a year before your divorce is final. Our "separated" year was 2015-2016. My now ex-husband only paid for the mortgage that year. The mortgage he put on my family home, the place our son lived. Oh yes and right after I told him I wanted a divorce, in 2015, he drained our bank account.
The people my then husband had hired to repair the carriage house were people I didn't trust from the start, Home Bright Construction (Larry and Ivy). But, you do what your husband says. I called Larry in 2017 to come check the roof because when it would rain, it would leak. He didn't think it was the roof. So he didn't bring a ladder. The ceiling eventually caved in at multiple spots.
But yay I went back to school in 2016 and finished my degree in 2017! I wrote a(nother) book! I was teaching! Eventually I left the classroom (the stories I could tell about JCFA in Algiers oh my goodness) and went back to freelance. It was great!
But as Franklin got older, I wanted a traditional job. In 2019 I was hired by Nexstar Digital as a daytime news editor and overnight copy editor. I loved it so much! Fully remote! One day in November 2019 I had a dream I was losing my job. Then, in real life I got an email/call that we were being restructured and that the entire editing department was being eliminated. Luckily I could stay on til April 30, 2020. My 35th birthday.
Of course we all know what 2020 was like. At first, you know, everyone was loving hiring Black writers! I had money and bylines galore! I was able to give to folks and it felt great! But then a lot of that dried up, once hiring Black ceased to be trendy. Which I knew would happen.
Eventually my neighbor started seeing the signs that the foreclosure monster was going to come for me. I'd paid the mortgage my ex-husband put on the house pretty well. Even though my name wasn't on the mortgage, so I'd have to Ca$h App him to do it. But after getting laid off, and of course with the world shutting down, I just didn't have the money. The people came taking photos of the house. One man even took photos of the house with me inside. Creep. Don't worry, I HANDled him perfectly. These are all people sent by the bank.
In 2023, I came home to a 30-day notice to vacate. I told my neighbor I'd be leaving and she said for me to come over, because she'd cry if Franklin and I left. At the time, I had strangers coming to my door, all sorts of people trying to buy my house. My neighbor is someone I trusted and called friend. One thing led to another, and she bought the house and said I could stay by simply paying her $1,500 a month in rent. I couldn't afford $800 in a mortgage, but, you know, miracles happen every day.
Except, no miracle ever happened to where I could afford to pay her regularly. She told me to try Unity, Travelers Aid, HANO, etc. Of course there was nothing they could do. Look at the number of people on the street.
In April 2025, my neighbor-turned-landlady came over and had the idea to turn the old den, a converted garage, into an apartment. "I gotta start making some money on this place." Cool. So for months, up until September or so, everything here was chaos. People in and out the house banging on everything. Hot water off and on, my laundry machines gone. A beautiful set of service stairs, my storage area, my gorgeous wrought-iron door and vintage door with the pretty glass panels, my carport, gone.
In September or so someone moves in downstairs. In October, I get texts telling me to find another place and that 5- and then 10-day notice to vacate on my door. I don't think she'll let me stay past about December 9, but she very graciously offered me to stay in one of her 16 AirBnBs.
I politely declined, mostly because I think God is using this to set me up to move to New Orleans East! Which has actually been my goal since May, when I founded my nonprofit newspaper, The New Orleans East Sunshine Weekly , which I'm praying I'll be able to focus on after securing housing for me and my son.
If you've read this far, thank you! This is TERRIFYING and EMBARRASSING. Have a very blessed rest of 2025!
Organizer
