Queer couple needs help with vehicle repairs

Serelle and Em, a queer couple in Providence, just suffered a massive front-end failure on their pickup truck, and need at least $2300 to be able to cover the repairs, plus $700 to cover the costs of escaping from their current living situation before they become homeless in May.

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Hello, friends. We are Serelle and Em, a pair of disabled trans people, and we desperately need help.

The apartment we are currently living in is too expensive for us to afford anymore, and we have been pulling from our savings to be able to continue to pay rent until we find a place.

We have been looking for months and haven't found anything yet. We're both on the waitlist for subsidized housing, but we have no idea if or when we'll ever actually get it.

So, we decided to fix up an old camper trailer and move into it as a way to save money until we can find a place. We found a busted-up trailer for next to nothing, and have been working to strip it down, get rid of the rot and rust, and make it livable.

However, a few days ago there was a loud bang from the front of our pickup truck, and the car started violently shaking.

We managed to get it to a mechanic before an accident happened, but it was a close call because the bang was a wheel bearing disintegrating, which could have caused the wheel to fall off.

The axle scraped and warped the entire wheel assembly, and the extra stress bent the tie rods and the wheel bearing on the other side of the truck.

We need a full new set of brakes (rotors, calipers, and pads, as well as a brake system flush), new tie rods, new upper and lower ball joints, new sway bars, new shocks, and, most distressing, a new driver's side axle spindle (or 'knuckle').

Altogether, parts and labor are going to cost $2300, and the truck is completely out of commission until it's fixed. The cost is as low as we could get it, both by getting discounts on the labor because we're friends with the mechanic, and by buying the parts online instead of going through a supplier. Even so, it's more than we can afford. Our savings are completely gone now, and we haven't finished getting the supplies to fix the camper.

Before the truck broke down, we negotiated with our landlord that we would be out of the house by May 1st, so if we can't finish the camper, we'll be homeless.

Any money we raise will go immediately towards repairs and camper materials, with any excess helping to rebuild our savings. If by some miracle we exceed our goal, we will be putting the rest of the money into making the camper better than just habitable, but that feels very far away, so we're not going to talk about it unless we manage to get there.

Please help, however you can, even if it's just sharing this around. Once we get back on our feet, we're going to make the truck and camper as queer and oddball as we possibly can, and anyone who donates $10 or more will get their name (or any other word of their choice that isn't a slur or something similar) painted or engraved into the side of the camper or truck as a permanent memorial to their kindness. The more you give, the bigger the engraving will be.

Thank you so much for giving us your time, and we hope you have a beautiful day.