Help Iggy & Zovi Move to a More Accessible Apartment

Hi, I’m Zovi! I am a trans woman living with my partner Iggy Oddity, who is a disabled nonbinary multimedia artist. Currently, we are living in an apartment in Albany, NY that is too difficult for Iggy to get around easily and feel comfortable living in day to day due to their worsening condition.

Iggy has Klippel-Feil Syndrome, a spine condition they have had since birth, and they have recently been dealing with a complication called basilar invagination where the top of the spine is putting pressure on their brain and spinal cord. They have trouble walking and need a cane, and much of the walking space in our current apartment is narrow or awkward. There are better options nearby, but we need help to bridge the gap of moving.

In 2022, Iggy moved to where I was living before, downstate in NY, when I helped get them out homelessness so that we could be together and live together. The apartment I was living in, though, was not big enough for both of us, and on top of that, it was about to be sold to be torn down, so we needed to move only a few months later in early 2023. We moved upstate because we were priced out, and we took what we could find that seemed livable.

But the move upstate drained a lot of my savings, and I do not have savings left. I do have my job, but since Iggy cannot work due to their disability, it comes out to being tight. We can always afford rent and food, but saving is very difficult or impossible, especially several thousand for a move. We have already been selling some of our things, and we’ll try to sell more, but we are running out of things to successfully sell that we would not later horribly regret. So we need help.

We are looking at apartments around $1500 per month, so we would need $1500 deposit + $1500 first month’s rent, ideally, just in case we do not get the deposit back for where we live currently (though I hope we do). There is a specific apartment nearby that we are hoping to get, so we are hoping we can raise enough soon to secure it. And if we are able to raise the full $3500 of this gofundme, it would help us offset moving costs.

We would really appreciate any help you can give. Iggy is in a lot of pain every day and a move to a better apartment would make a huge difference for them.