Help Alexander and Julianna Find a Safe Home

My friends, Alexander and Julianna, are two of the best people you’ll ever meet. They’re always kind, friendly, and willing to lend a helping hand. However, right now, they need one themselves.

Julianna is a volunteer firefighter with the Madrid, New Mexico Volunteer Fire Department, an in-home caregiver, and a community activist. She spends her free time going around Albuquerque and New Mexico more broadly, giving water, food, rides, her time, and kind words to people in need. Two of her current personal projects that she’s working with off donations are the distribution of water and safe-use kits. The kits include life-saving supplies, like Narcan, anti-fentanyl test strips, alcohol wipes, and sharps disposal containers to keep everyone, animal and human, safe. She also occasionally does work trapping, spaying/neutering stray cats, and finding them homes. As a firefighter, she serves the communities of Madrid, Cerillos, and Golden, New Mexico, as well as further areas when major fires or accidents occur.

Alexander works part-time training AI and generative text models. He works to ensure that they “Hallucinate” as infrequently as possible, to ensure they can find and produce useful and factual information, and doing as much as he can to prevent it from otherwise producing harmful advice or results. In his free time, he also enjoys working on community service projects with Julianna, and taking care of their two formerly homeless cats, Lucita and Cheezit. Alexander has multiple upcoming surgeries and other medical appointments that will negatively impact his earning potential. He also needs to get into a new, safer, private place to recover from those appointments and surgeries.

Their current living environment is unhealthy, potentially dangerous, and extremely cramped. To be able to afford to make ends meet, they moved into a room with another friend of theirs. The three of them live in a 270sq ft. studio apartment with their three total cats. The Bernalillo County fire code says that there should be a minimum of 150sq ft to start, then 100sq ft more for each additional occupant, meaning their current place is about 80sq ft too small according to regulations. At their apartment, Julianna has been repeatedly sexually harassed, verbally harassed, followed around the building, and has had multiple neighbors try to sell her drugs, or buy them off of her. Alexander in particular can’t breathe well with the mold in the vents/walls, as well as due to the AC not working. All the habitability issues they’ve had have been addressed with management, who has done absolutely nothing about the issues, besides harass them for calling the city inspector.

Albuquerque is going through a particularly acute housing crisis, and it’s affecting my friends particularly badly. Despite all the work they do, most of their income is eaten by rent, with precious little left for other necessities. They easily make enough to pay the rent at another place (Up to about 1,000 Dollars per month on their combined income,) but due to landlord requirements far outside what they’re legally allowed to ask, the only way to get into a new apartment has repeatedly been shown to be to present several months’ rent and security deposit at once. It’s for that reason alone that they haven’t been able to get into a better place in their own in over a year: Extreme requirements, or the need to cough up thousands up front to get them to take a chance on you. Once they get into a place, they’ll have to buy all-new furniture too, which’ll eat up a few thousand more.

By helping my friends get into a safe, new place, you won’t only be helping two of the best people I’ve ever met; you’ll also be helping everyone they meet. If they’re given this helping hand up, I know that they’ll do everything possible to pay it forward to everyone they can for the rest of their lives. Please, give what you can today, and help Julianna and Alexander finally have a safe place to lay their heads at night.