Help me Avoid Eviction this Week, & Find Stable Housing ASAP

Please help me to avoid eviction this month, and get into a living situation asap that is safer for my physical and mental health. I am dealing with an extremely retaliatory landlord (who will, tomorrow- 12/10/24- attempt to evict me in court), as well as with heavily disturbed asbestos in the house where my apartment is.

I do not anticipate that I'll get my security deposit back without a fight, so I won't have that to help me move. At this point, one of my jobs has entered slow season and although I am looking for another job, I will not be able to come up with this money within this timeframe.

Tomorrow is our second time in two months in eviction court. Please note that I have only been a month behind on rent both times. The previous time, I attempted to pay him a few days before the court date when I had the money, only to have him send it back and block me on Venmo.

After we settled by talking back and forth with my landlord's lawyer (who represented multiple people there that day), and I (that time - 10/9) was able to pay him, I brought up the current and most dangerous problem with the house - a room in the basement, completely filled with heavily disturbed asbestos tile. When I first brought it up via email, he made it clear that he was angry, and insisted that it was safe, and that he'd be getting a new lock and door for that room to ensure that no one go in there (no one was - you could just see it). Outside of the courtroom, he responded to this by immediately getting reactive and exclaiming "Well, the basement is OFF LIMITS!" and storming away). As a related side note, we also have coin-op laundry in that basement, directly next to the room with the tile.

The next day, he wrote a vague email to all tenants in the house, stating that basement storage was no longer allowed without written permission (which I had in the form of a text from last year). He said he would be hiring a junk removal company and that everything needed to be out. This clear act of retaliation was in response to a tenant asking for a heavily regulated hazardous material to be removed. This past week, he carried out that threat by writing an email just before midnight Wednesday night, saying everything would be thrown away if it was not removed by Friday morning- he included a paragraph about a laundry sorter that belonged to me (he claimed not to know whose) being a "fire hazard" because it was "leaning on the boiler" (it absolutely was not), and proceeded to passive-aggressively explain how a boiler works.

Back in March, this man took over a week of pulling me back and forth to decide if he'd renew my lease, which was set to happen on 3/1. He referenced the few times I'd been a few days late, ignored entirely the time I paid him for three months upfront when I could, and refused to acknowledge the many repairs that, at this point, still were not done.

I re-signed the lease on 3/11 of this year, and during the days prior, myself and the other first floor tenant did not have working heat. In addition, the basement was several inches flooded (an issue he hadn't addressed) by the time an electrician came to check our furnace, who was, with good reason, unwilling to work in the basement (thankfully the solution ended up being upstairs). This electrician wasn't scheduled until three days after I'd first told him about it, leaving us without working heat in freezing temperatures.

The stipulation included by my landlord for renewing my lease, to back me into a corner, was a late fee of $50/DAY after the 2nd. I truly felt like I was being punished for having the hardest past year of my life. I wasn't actively planning on changing my living situation or having so many other financial hurdles all at once.

At the point when I re-signed, major repairs still had not been done that I first brought up on 12/3/23, including persistent and high level basement flooding, an oven that smelled heavily like gas on certain settings, and minor ones, like a broken detachable shower head, ripped window screens, and faulty kitchen faucet. He insisted I be out of the apartment for repairs, allegedly by his plumber's request. On more than ten occasions, I agreed to this, we chose a day and time I'd be going to work, and I locked the cats in my room. This was to only to be ghosted entirely, for neither him nor anyone else to show up to fix things, and for me to not hear back from him for days, sometimes over a week, and once, an entire month.

In July, I decided enough was enough and legally exercised my right to withhold rent, stating which unaddressed issues had led me to do so. In our chain of emails, he attempted to gaslight me, saying the repairs were not done because I did not make time to accommodate for them. I received my first 5-Day Demand notice for nonpayment of rent after 7/15, but at this point, he'd begun scheduling people actively to fix the repairs (which he said were not grounds for me to withhold).

This is the man who offered me a lease so quickly after my last apartment caught fire at the end of February 2023, after seeing my post in a local Marketplace group. This time, I truly can no longer afford it, and I just want to make it through the rest of this month and find a room to rent ASAP. I am completely at my limit mentally and emotionally. I am so shattered to think about leaving Warren (this little town brings me a lot of joy when I need it), but I need to get away from this house for my safety, and work on truly recovering mentally and financially from the last year and ten months.

I am so exhausted, and am constantly so sick with anxiety I can hardly function. It has taken so much out of me to constantly be fighting this battle when I should be trying to recover from fresh trauma. It has been so intensely triggering to have my housing constantly threatened and made to feel unstable.

Please, if you can, help me escape this and find peace elsewhere.