tldr; our roof is falling apart and we need your help to fix it.

Hi! My name's ida, i'm a 32 year old disabled trans woman living with two of my partners, both trans as well, in a house my partner Kate and i bought in June of 2023. The inspector hired for the sale told us the roof was in good condition. There was some mild apparent water damage staining on the ceiling in one of the upper level bedrooms, but they assured us there'd been recent roof repair. I replaced the stained sections of drywall myself, and my partner Michelle moved into that room in early 2024.

A couple months later, during a snow thaw, leaks appeared in the ceiling. We poked holes, placed buckets, started looking for loans and other means of financial assistance, and tried to figure out how much we could save up for repairs. We had the roof inspected by a roofer friend, determining the condition was much worse than the previous inspector indicated -- in Maryland, inspectors aren't even required to go up onto a roof and look at it -- there were 3 layers of roofing material, with plenty visible cracks and slumps.

Many of you might remember me fundraising for this same thing a little over a year ago. At the time, we raised enough to afford some patching of the area the roofer thought the leak was probably coming from, so i closed that fundraiser. However, from the snows this past winter the leaks returned, suggesting water was getting in from other damaged roof areas and running between layers to the back, to Michelle's bedroom, displacing her for months now. She's staying in my room until we can repair everything.

Our home repair needs

As mentioned in my previous fundraiser, there's also a lot of damage to the cinder block walls, with more leaks coming in above some windows. The area up near the roof is especially bad and may be contributing to the leaks in Michelle's bedroom.

[current appearance of that ceiling]

For a full replacement of the roof, the cost is around $18,000 with removal costs, with possibly more if any of the roof decking is rotten. The roofer suggested that re-pointing and grouting the cracks in the walls near the roof may be another couple thousand. so, We're looking at around $20,000 total.

We're applying to a home repair grant provided by the state, which has a maximum award of $10,000 (although, vaguely, it says on the application that they may consider up to $15,000 for special circumstances, so fingers crossed.)

So, i'm setting the goal for this fundraiser at $9,000, with the goal of saving $1000 by other means, but will raise it if we don't get approved for that grant.

Our financial situation

I'm basically unemployed -- I bartend for a catering company, minimum wage "plus tips" (rare) but I'm lucky to get 3 shifts a month. I've been unable to secure adequate employment for years, despite finally getting my bachelors degree last May and having over a decade of experience in foodservice and general labor, as well as some administrative and technical experience.

Kate has a good job, but between paying the mortgage, student loans, car payments and medical needs, they haven't been able to save much. They're the only one on the deed, because the mortgage company told us joint tenancy would negatively impact our mortgage options. I paid a portion of the down payment with my own savings when we bought the house, and we have an agreement that we'll convert the deed to a joint tenancy in the future, when the other two of us can pay into the mortgage, but I've been unable to do so for over a year now, and Michelle has barely had her own bedroom in all the time she's lived here due to the recurring leaks.

How we got into this situation

The house we lived in prior to this one had a lot of problems and our landlord was frequently bad at addressing them, increasingly so. We had 7 trans people living in a rowhouse with constant radiator problems, leaks, etc., but because Kate had been leasing the place for so long with fixed annual increases, our rent was much lower than our neighbors.

In early 2023 they finally gave us an ultimatum which explained their negligence -- they would not be renewing our lease, and offered us 2 months rent-free if we left early. After spending weeks trying to find somewhere we could afford to rent that wouldn't be too far outside the center of the city for me to be able to bus to jobs, we determined that it would potentially be more affordable to buy a house, and by that point Kate had been working at their decent job for long enough to open a mortgage. So, with the rent we saved for those two months, along with our savings and donations from friends and family, we raised a down payment and bought a house, and Michelle agreed to move in later on. But yeah, here we are, going on 3 years later, with impending uninhabitability.

A bit more about me

i am badly trying to find a better job, one that pays closer to a living wage, provides more hours, and ideally is more accommodating than my current job, which is physically rough and long hours (though shifts are rare.) i have fibromyalgia, arthritis and various other problems that make being on my feet or even sitting up difficult to sustain. I suffer from chronic migraines and struggle with noise and light.

Most of my work history had been food/beverage stuff -- food manufacturing, restaurant front- and back-of-house, cafes -- along with some general labor jobs -- field tech for a civil engineering firm, pet waste removal tech, lots of craigslist gig trash removal, drywalling, painting etc. My disability got a lot worse earlier on during COVID quarantine, around early 2021. Shortly after quarantine started in spring of 2020, I helped build a food bank here in Baltimore, Bmore Community Foods, starting as a mutual aid effort in a closed restaurant and moving on to a whole warehouse, 24ft trucks, and multiple drop sites -- I had to finally quit a year later due to loss of physical ability.

I switched my volunteer focus to an anti-carceral advocacy group for a while and finally got more into Democratic Socialists of America the next year, with whom i've organized in leadership positions for a few years now, locally and nationally. I was a leading organizer of our Vote Uncommitted, Avelo Out of BWI, and Sanctuary Maryland campaigns locally, and the short-lived Queers United Against Censorship campaign from DSA's national queer formation which I led for 2 years. I've fundraised for anti-ICE trainings and Baltimore Safe Haven, the local trans shelter.

I'd been enrolled in a Simulation and Game Design program at school, which I finally graduated last May, and my main source of employment since 2020 had been part-time, minimum wage paid internships provided by my school. I also worked as a shift supervisor at a Starbucks, which i tried but sadly failed to salt (organize a union) before succumbing to disability and quitting. I've frequently depended on low-paid gig work and fundraising

Long story short, I've applied to jobs pretty much every week for 5 years to no avail. I've tried to prioritize jobs that would actually accommodate me -- jobs where I can sit, ideally work from home sometimes, most ideally have some flexibility of hours for the sake of accommodating occasional severe pain -- but I abandoned that about a year ago and started applying to bars and restaurants again. Still, nothing. Been bartending for this catering company for a year and a half, still can't get hired at an actual bar. If i did, it's unlikely i would last, so I'm still applying to lots of desk and work-from-home jobs I'm qualified for with the hope that i will find something sustainable.

Conclusion

Baltimore gets heavy storms, the roof has clearly gotten worse and there are other structural needs (masonry, plumbing, external carpentry.) For years, we've tried to save, tried to get better employment, tried to figure something out, and it hasn't worked. I don't know how long we have til we lose this place we've put so much work into. So i'm back, asking for your help, like i've so frequently done. As always, your help is much appreciated. <3