Help Duane Escape a Nightmare
Donation protected
Hi everyone! To anyone that doesn't know, I'm Megan, Duane's little sister. (€ link at bottom!; Use “Contact Organizer” if you’d rather help with a direct e-transfer )
This a weird and uncomfortable thing for me to do because, as many may know, we’re not a family that’s overly good at asking for help, no matter how badly we need it, and Duane might be the worst of us all (...which really says something).
If you know Duane, you should know that he is insanely generous, adventurous, and will drop everything, at a personal cost, to try to help any of his friends and family.
Right now, Duane needs help.
When people ask me “How is your brother??”, I usually reply “Good? I think? I don't really know... We don’t really talk about our lives, we mostly just share memes… ”
Over the past year though, Duane and I have started to talk very frankly about our respective life challenges. Duane turns 50 this year. The big 5-0, and was trying to establish some financial security by renovating his condo apartment to reduce energy costs and earn better rental income.
…Only to learn some devastating life lessons...
Amsterdam’s over-zealous renter protection laws:
- In short, you can almost NEVER evict a renter in Amsterdam - not by selling, not by giving notice… Even if your family is moving in, you need to apply for the COURT to approve it and ORDER the eviction.
- One of Duane’s renters absolutely refuses to end his lease.
- What's more, Duane was recently ordered to pay that renter THOUSANDS in rent compensation to live elsewhere, continuing until the tenant can move back in and continue living in Duane's condo.
- Duane has also had to pay relocation supplements for other of his more reasonable tenants to move out.
And that might all be fine… until you get scammed by a plumber… within a condo association:
- The plumber Duane hired didn’t properly attach Duane's new toilet during installation… which lead to a leak into another condo.
- The plumber then “vanished” after taking thousands more of Duane’s money for further work that was never completed.
- Now the condo board has ordered that Duane must keep his water turned off until the plumber of their choice can correct it...
- Except, after more than 4 separate visits, over more than 2 weeks, those plumbers still have not been able to determine how to resolve the leak (...which is also starting to feel a bit scammy?)
- Duane’s entire apartment presents like a warzone. No living thing should be living there right now. There is no kitchen, no bathroom, no shower, and the air is pure construction dust. And yet, Duane has to stay there to as he waits for plumbers to show up for 5 minute at a time, every couple of days, only to shrug and leave.
Running out of money, and selling is not an option…
- Duane has placed most of this debt ONTO CREDIT CARDS, ( ><), and is not eligible for bank loans or a line of credit in Europe.
- Duane cannot evict his renter (to stop having to subsidize him); and because of the new zealous renter protections, Amsterdam is facing a mass real-estate dump and the market is apparently saturated.
- Even if it were not, Duane cannot realistically even sell his place — because who would buy an unlivable, unrentable warzone, with a renter that refuses to leave the payroll of the court enforced relocation subsidy?
Within the past month or so, Duane has incurred almost $25,000 CAD ($15,000 EURO) in debt due to this tenant and contractor scams.
So, Duane needs our help for the next little bit to help dig him out of this mess and keep him on is feet. Both financially, and physically (-- because at this point, he doesn't even have money for groceries).
I know our Canadian dollars don’t mean much to Europe right now, but every little bit helps…
To save everyone the conversion fees, I have set this up in CAD, but for anyone who wants to help directly in Euros instead, we set up a second fund here:
Thanks everyone for any support you can give, love you all. <3
Organizer
Megan Mattos
Organizer
Peterborough, ON