Please help our family not go homeless!

Hey it’s Kristen Clearman and Aaron Gass. This is not something we would normally do, but our circumstances are kind of getting desperate.

If the cover photo didn’t relay it, that is our bathroom window that since before us even signing a lease, our landlord knew to fix it’s at ground level. We’re just anyone can walk by and stick their hand through my bathroom window while we’re using the restroom we’ve since done our best to board it up and insulated with what resources we have. It goes without saying something like that has drastically eaten into our utilities, especially considering how hot the summers have been and how frigid we hold the winter has been.

sorry for any grammatical errors I’m literally shaking and trying to keep it together as I typed this out.

That’s just one of mountains of examples of neglect to a criminal degree that our landlord has been. The six months we’ve lived here, four months we went without hot water, and all he had to do was send someone to install the new electric water heaters that he lied about having though his maintenance crew confirmed they had just been sitting in the basement waiting to be installed. It took him almost 2 months to even send someone out to check on why we didn’t have hot water.

we still don’t have a working oven and it’s been about five months since he’s been notified that we needed that by us several times and any communication platform, including his staff, standing in front of me calling him, letting him know that we needed an electrician, a plumber, and a brand new oven and that all of our maintenance request exceeded the realm of expertise that his maintenance crew needed and that we needed professional workers out here ASAP only to be ignored

Our power outlets, smoke and tend to smell like burnt plastic so we can hardly ever use them, and when we do, we have to be careful because any amount of electrical usage in the apartment tends to short circuit of breaker

The apartment building is wired so haphazardly that our power bill is almost $200 a month even though we are the smallest unit, but it is so because each apartment runs off of another and someway to where everyone’s bill reads and accurately because we all use each other‘s electricity and some format. Our landlord has been aware of that and has not sought out ways to correct the issue so that we can all have our power bills reflect only what our individual Apartments usage is

He actively ignores text emails, and though he insists he will respond with phone calls I have not had much success in that realm either so he has simply overlooked most of our please and begging for Maintenance

However, he will show up unannounced for no real reason at all, and try to insist upon coming in He has shown a horrifyingly limited knowledge of his duties and legal protocol as a Landlord.

I feel like I’ve had to regurgitate more of the law to him, and he himself knows as what the legal rights and protocols are for him to do anything

once I’ve told him he needs to give me legal notice. He still has never looked into what that would tail and has texted me a day before attempting to enter my building that he is coming over with a key and gave no other illusion as to what he needed to come in for

The Sunday before Thanksgiving, our entire bathroom started flooding. Our toilet stopped working and any water usage whether it’s washing our hands, taking a shower or trying to wash dishes with the cold water that we had, mind you we haven’t at this point had a hot shower or hot water. And about four months, would result in flooding and back sewage pumping into our shower.

I sent him videos and text messages and tried to call him. He finally responded the next day saying he was sending someone over. It still took him two weeks to even actually do anything about that.

We had to walk to Porta potty used to use the restroom. We couldn’t wash dishes. We couldn’t even use our shower. We’ve been treated less than humane.

All the while rent has never been an issue. The only time he has not received rent is when we were supposed to be credited on our rent for Maintenance neglected

However, he showed up to our apartment just before Christmas, and without giving us any reason told us he was going to evict us still not giving us legal notice or giving us any reason why we asked him if it was because we had asked for too much maintenance and he said nothing in response except when he had us out of here, he would address all the maintenance issues that pre-existing even us moving in that he had been ignoring like cleaning the apartment after the person that lived here before us died in it, making sure our windows weren’t broken or accessible to the public. The things that have gone neglected, though he has been given proper and ample notice and follow up or two numerous to list.

his neglect upon making our apartment move in ready and safe caused us to have the very first eviction we’ve ever had in our lives because we couldn’t move in fully, especially when some of our stuff was vandalized in the process of us, trying to move in what we could while we gave him time to fix the safety issues in the apartment

And he knew we were on a deadline to move out and still drug his feet and still has not fixed anything that we needed prior to us even signing a lease

we were on a time crunch and couldn’t afford to move anywhere else at the time. This was supposed to be our cheaper solution to save some money to move to a better spot later and even with the neglect on his part, we still felt confident it was a good move for our family and temporary time we’ve had to with our own money and means do repairs that should’ve been apartment

he asked me how long of a lease I wanted to sign and I told him I didn’t know for sure. I just knew I needed to make it through Christmas and he encouraged me to sign a six month lease and assured me that once that was fulfilled, I could just go month-to-month like everyone in the building was already doing when he showed up shortly before Christmas to tell us he didn’t want us to be tenants anymore, mind you with no reason, I told him he and I had a verbal agreement that we could go months to month like everyone else in the building is already doing and he lied and said he did not remember saying that

now our car is broken down it has inhibited us from maintaining regular jobs. We had a friend who has always been reliable to work on our car in the past, take our money we had to try to source his roommates to get the part that we had paid for that he picked up for us brought over to us. We are doing our best to try to fix the car on our own, but we aren’t mechanics.

every day, I don’t have a working vehicle, it makes it harder and harder for both of us to maintain regular jobs and get back into the art circuit, which was also another steady source of income and a big part of our hearts and souls that we wanted to get back into once we had gotten back on our feet

so we’ve been stolen from our homes been vandalized not made safe we’re freezing and now our Landlord is trying to kick us out and we’re doing our best to try to find ways to make money and without a car right now it has not been easy and we really don’t want to go homeless

we have filed a suit against our landlord, but we still haven’t received any type of notice on a court date or if he’s actually been served and there’s still no guarantee that we will reap any benefit from that suit and right now. I’m just worried about me, my domestic partner, and our fur babies, which are the only children we can have having a home

I know this is a link fee, but life and I could fill a small book on all the many many issues we’ve encountered from this person who chose to be a landlord, but doesn’t want to Maintenance his tenants. All we can deduce is he is tired of us complaining about maintenance and since we’re a basement unit, he can lock this unit up once we’re moved out and most likely ignore it and not lease it out to anyone even though a lot of the issues may eventually affect the entire building being as we are on the basement level of the apartment

I’m completely embarrassed to even ask for money. We know on some level everyone is hurting. We’ve had to do a lot of biting of our pride and humbling ourselves but as much as I can be, I’m on my knees right now asking for help empathy and assistance so we can get our car up and running and so we can have some money to move which now that we have had an eviction on our rental history from him dragging his heels on getting the apartment ready for us to move into and he is surely trying to evict us now it’s going to make it that much harder to find a decent place to live and that’s another added stress on top of everything else we didn’t need

We have been cussed out, neglected , DEHUMANIZED and called names by this man, even though we’ve never raised our voices or use a word of disrespect though we definitely expressed our outrage and distress on his negligence and retaliation to a simply asking for even the most bare minimum of landlord ship from him

Plus if anyone has any doubt as to the validity of anything I’m saying, I have most everything recorded on my home security down to him, cussing us out and lying about Maintenance and I’ve done my best to keep archived text and emails that I could get response from him and even the ones where I have followed up reminding him he has not acknowledged our maintenance issues

i’m 36 now I’ve never been in this sort of place before, but I don’t wanna have to go homeless. I don’t want to have to get rid of our babies. I want our vehicle reliable, up and running so that we can find stable work and be reliable employees, and start making our own money again and get back on our feet so we’re not in this position again this has been close to one of the worst years of our lives and our hope is wearing thin on seeing a light at the end of the tunnel

We don’t know what to do. Please help.