My name is Chris Lee. I've been the sound tech and main booker for a DIY venue in Chicago called The VCR since May of 2017. In that time, we've hosted over 150 shows. From the start, it's been our ethos not to take a cut of any money donated at the door, giving all of it to the artists.

I mention this, because the venue takes up the entire building, with two bedrooms on the first floor and three on the second floor. Originally, I shared the lease with four other people and we all split rent and bills equally. with the rent being $480 a person in 2017.

About two years ago, however, the housing situation started to change. As various people moved out, I eventually ended up as the only person on the lease, with all of the bills in my name. I took on this responsibility to avoid losing this space, my studio, and my home. Because of the unofficial nature of a DIY venue, people who moved in would not be on the lease or have a bill in their name, and I did not have the luxury of paying for an empty room. The landlord also refused to add anyone else to the lease.

Over time, some people who moved in would stop paying their share of rent and bills. There are likely many factors why this started happening: The cost of living rising after COVID, the aging of my peers limiting the number of reliable people I knew who would want to live in a DIY venue, and the increasing precedent of other roommates not paying rent or bills and then moving out without notice or warning. This created a cycle where I was continually desperate to fill the vacancy.

In the last two years alone I’ve ended up paying over $15,000 in rent and bills for various roommates. It’s actually kind of insane looking at that number now that I’ve added it all up and typed it out. I guess I was so determined to keep the venue alive that I didn't really keep track of how much the housing side of things was costing me, both financially and mentally.

Therefore, I’ve made the difficult decision to end The VCR. There is more to the story, but in the interest of brevity, I'll leave it at that for now. I have always loved shows and doing sound for live music, but it has just become too taxing to continue to run this space.

I started this GoFundMe to help me pay the remaining two months of my lease on the building, which is $2,650 a month.

If you’ve ever enjoyed a show at The VCR over the years, please consider tossing a dollar into the hat. This is my first time asking anyone to donate to me, but it will certainly help me not fall even deeper into this dumb hole I’ve dug for myself.

Thank you, and DIY or die.

-Chris