Help us find a new home after $300 rent hike

Hi, we're Kevin and Angela. We've been living in the same townhouse for over 7 years, and we've been good tenants. Never late on rent, no complaints filed against us, taken good care of our home, haven't asked for much from our landlord. Our property management company has changed at least 4 times in the time we've been in this home, and in January, the most recent company to acquire control of our property had not contacted us, nor had the previous company, regarding this change in management. In December, we made the hardest but most humane choice to say goodbye to our senior cat, which was an expense we hadn't accounted for during Christmas, and were contacting our management company to ask if we could pay rent on the 3rd of January rather than the 1st due to this extenuating and heartbreaking circumstance. This was when we learnt that we were contacting the wrong company. We spent two weeks trying to get ahold of the new company in order to pay our rent (which we had in full but had no idea where to send it), being told that the person managing our property would return our calls when she was available. On January 15th, we received an eviction notice on our front door along with a letter saying that there had been a change in management, and to contact them within 2 weeks or we would be evicted. After another series of phone calls, we finally managed to get our rent situation figured out.

Last month, we were told that as of July 1st, our rent is going up by over $300/month. We've been renting our townhouse for $1355/month, which includes a $55/month pet fee for our three cats. Now they want to change our lease to $75/month for the three cats alongside a price hike from $1300 to $1645, which means our rent would be $1720. Add to that our utility bills, which are exhorbitantly high thanks to Alberta's lack of oversight on utility prices and the removal of price caps, and our monthly expenditures simply to survive would be over $3300 a month. We can't survive on that with our incomes, let alone begin to have any semblance of a life.

So we've begun looking for another home. And we may have found one that we can move into for July 1st that we would be able to actually afford. We would lose some space, but overall, it's a sacrifice we have to make in order to not become destitute.

It hurts our pride to have to ask for any kind of help, but Alberta is swiftly becoming one of the most expensive provinces to live in, and this is sadly becoming a common story here. We know that times are tough and money is tight for everyone, but if you have anything to spare, we would be eternally grateful. If you don't have anything to spare, we ask that you share our GoFundMe so we can get more eyes on this and hopefully be in our new home before July. Anything that is donated will be put towards our moving expenses, paying for our final rent at our current home, and helping us put down first month's rent, the deposit, and what we hope will be the one-time pet fee at our new home.