Hi everyone! My name is Michelle, and I’m making this GoFundMe on behalf of myself and my family, consisting of my mom, my brother, and my cat Jake. We are all living together and trying to navigate a difficult change in our living situation.
On Friday, March 6th 2026, we were wrongfully evicted from our apartment of nearly 10 years. A few years back, our apartment complex had undergone a shift in management to a new company. This new management has since made themselves notorious for both ignoring blatant problems with the apartment units and trying to take advantage of the low-income renters who live there. We are in Section 8 housing ourselves due to our low income, and are mostly disabled (I have autism and generalized anxiety disorder, and my mom and I both have osteoarthritis. Plus my mom also suffers from Crohn’s disease). For years, they would subject us to many forms of discrimination as we tried to simply get by and continue to live in our home. Then our biggest dilemma arose when they started claiming that we owed them more rent than what we were paying, which was not true, and we tried our best to communicate with them about this as much as possible. Despite this, they continued to claim we weren’t paying enough, and after making more baseless claims and threats from management, they summoned us to court under the narrative that we weren't paying enough rent. The lawyer we were assigned was generally unhelpful and did not provide much assistance (she basically just told us to sign the eviction paper and made no attempt to fight for us), and once the court date arrived, we didn't even get a chance to defend ourselves. We were given the notice that we were to be evicted, and that was that.
During our struggles with management, we tried our best to look into other apartments that would accommodate our income restrictions, but nothing ended up working out. Once we were given the eviction notice, we had to scramble to find a new place immediately, all while packing up everything we could in preparation. It took until nearly our eviction date to get a call back on a potential apartment for us. Thankfully, this last-minute apartment ended up working out for us, which we count ourselves incredibly lucky for.
When the sheriff arrived to escort us out, many of our belongings were either thrown out because we had no room to take them with us, or tossed haphazardly one story down by apartment workers while they were evicting us. They broke many of our plates, cups, and other personal belongings, so we’ll be needing to replace even more essentials due to how our eviction was handled. This event left us traumatized, and we’re still recovering over a week later.
As I type this, my family has just gotten settled into our new place, where management is treating us much more kindly, and they even let us move in early so we’d have a place to stay. Even so, we had to spend several days at a hotel between when we were evicted and when we were allowed in our new place, and then drive across towns to Denver to get there, all adding to our expenditures. Despite our eventual luck, this incident has set us back both financially and emotionally, and we need to do everything we can to make sure we can afford this new apartment while getting back on our feet. To those who read our story, thank you so much, and if it’s possible for you to donate, we would greatly appreciate it. Any amount would be incredibly helpful!