Please help my friend Lashea avoid being evicted.

Hi I’m Heather. I’ve never created a GoFundMe before so please bear with me. I’d like to tell you a story, and if it speaks to your heart, I hope you’ll give a little to help out my dear friend.

It’s a pretty dire situation. My friend is Lashea. She works two jobs, which equals every single day of the week. In what little time she has left, she helps to care for her grandmother, her Auntie, and her sister’s two children (their mom is currently incarcerated).

Lashea is just an all around wonderful human being. In fact, before a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t even know that this was happening in her life. She holds herself together so well, just keeps praying for help and answers, and waiting on her higher power. But…I can tell when something is wrong…and I’m good at asking questions. So eventually I got it out of her.

Lashea lives at a local property in Athens. Many of you know that Athens real estate has skyrocketed in the last 3-4 years. And most eviction protections have expired. It all started when Lashea faced the extra expenses associated with caring for her sisters children at the same time as having to make major car repairs. So she began paying for her rent in 2 payments. Her unscrupulous property manager (who has since been fired for fraudulent activity) charged her all sorts of “fees” in the hundreds of dollars per month, only putting her further behind.

Meanwhile, Lashea kept putting her strong face on. Despite the death of her little brother from a brain tumor, her mom had gone ten years before, her father passing a few months before her little brother, I’m surprised she was able to function at all.

Professionally I help people with their grief. I honestly don’t know how she is holding up under the weight of it all. Our family helps us out in hard times, right? Well, they can’t if they’ve already gone home to Heaven.

I really hope, for my dear friend Lashea - who is still raising her youngest son, a 17 year old high school senior, that the power of a stranger’s love can bridge the gap today. I know times are tough for everyone, but if you have just a few dollars to spare, it will mean the world to her. She can finally pay her back rent and avoid being evicted. Fortunately the new property manager has found a way to actually lower the rate of her rent, but she must give him all the back rent owed to avoid eviction. That total is $3693.

I am a novice with this platform but I am not a novice in going through hard times. Most of my adulthood to the age of 40 was paycheck to paycheck. But I have privilege. First, I am white. (Black women get evicted twice as much as white renters.) Second, I was able to go to college without incurring debt, and even though I have always worked hard too, there were moments in my history that I was close to the edge of losing my home. Perseverance, grit, determination…Lashea has all these. She is still going to work - at BOTH of her jobs, being a parent to her two sons, and a parent to her sister’s children (who are not receiving aid from any state source).

Can we please help her out? I can’t tell you where she works, but I can tell you that I adore her, that she is the real deal, and she has exhausted every available resource she has because it’s only her. There’s no one else.

Except us. C’mon guys. It’s only $4000, and I know we can do this. She’s been praying hard every day for a reason, and I think this is it.