The Story: A Fight for Everyone's Right to Fair Shelter

Rocket is our beloved 15-year-old Carolina Dog. For the last three and a half years - about 24 years in dog years - he has been growing more blind. We've done our best to accommodate him by arranging the house and his routines so he could count on a familiar setting.

Dogs don't perceive time like people do, so imagine for 24 years you had been losing your vision but could get around because you knew how things worked and where things were placed.

Then everything changed. He was suddenly thrust into a new environment. Confused and disoriented, he got trapped under a couch, stuck and whimpering for hours before we found and rescued him.

And that wasn't the end of his suffering due to this forced move. He is now losing weight at an alarming rate because he has pain that makes eating painful. Rocket needs dental surgery , which we would have already had performed, but now cannot afford it due to the cost of the move, its impact on Chris' business, and the subsequent swamping of our time due largely to how defense is handling the legal case.

It has been a 4 month nightmare but we aren't quitting. Ever. Because this story is about more than us.

This story is about the human (and Carolina Dog) need for stable shelter - shelter stability that should have protected Rocket, shelter that we should have been able to count on after 5 years of on-time payments, and shelter that we contend was yanked out from under us unexpectedly when we stood up for our rights and asked for needed safety measures, like properly functioning windows.

The Context: A Legacy Betrayed

The property in question at 181 Gordon Street, near the Citadel in downtown Charleston, SC, was built by the late Israel Altman, founder of Altman's Furniture, a beloved Charleston figure whose business motto was legendary: "Do Right by People." It is a cruel irony that his son, Charles S. Altman, is the Registered Agent of the landlord entity (SAC 181, LLC), that is a defendant in a case where we allege that legacy has been abandoned, replaced by an operational model that appears to prioritize extraction over doing right.

There's more - much more.

Stay with me because the story continues from there, since we continue to insist on our rights in this well-documented Charleston, SC housing crisis (42% of renters are cost-burdened and 16,000 affordable units are needed) and won't back down.

We feel that if we can't assert fair treatment around housing, then nobody else can either, so we are doing this also for everyone else who feels mistreated by landlords.

What does that mistreatment look and feel like?

We allege in our lawsuit filings:

We are taking on the machine ourselves, without lawyers, just like many abused tenants would have to, and we have well-documented evidence that we are posting as a public information and housing empowerment campaign called Rocket's Fight , which we created in honor of Rocket's suffering because we aren't just doing this for us.

We are doing this for all of us.

It isn't just about winning our case to affirm our housing rights, it's also about systemic change to make fair housing more accessible to everyone, especially the vulnerable ... like Rocket.

The current "State of the System" seems largely based on tenant exploitation based on outdated beliefs about what "passive investment" means. As a result, people are treated as expendable cogs in the machine. We think our concept of "Conscious Stewardship" is a better model - both more humane and, especially in the long run, more profitable.

And we are also experiencing first-hand why so many tenants might say "yes, I've been abused, I've been treated as expendable, but there's nothing I can do about it."

We want all tenants to realize that you can do something about it. You can assert your rights and beat the system and we want to show you the way.

Our vision is a housing market where "doing right by people" isn't just a slogan from the past, but a profitable, sustainable operational standard. Where tenants are empowered to speak up without fear, and owners and property managers recognize that they are the stewards of shelter where life stories play out.

The Vehicle for Change: McNeil & Poyer v. SAC 181, LLC (Charleston County, SC Court of Common Pleas 2025-CP-10-05095). They have hired multiple corporate law firms to apparently attempt to crush our pro se Plaintiff position. It appears they are counting on "Resource Exhaustion Strategy" using procedural complexity to drain us until we quit. That isn't happening.

We are refusing to play that game. We are meeting their "Big Law" force with Strategic Thought Leadership.

We are using this case to:

Expose the Glitches: We are documenting every irregularity, from disputed postmarks on security deposit claims to the unauthorized syndication of our private family photos.

Empower the Tenant: We are building a roadmap for how tenants can also use systems thinking, strategic positive influence, and documentation to level the playing field against well-funded corporate landlords.

Weaken the Gatekeepers: By standing our ground pro se, we are proving that justice should be accessible to everyone, not just those who can afford multiple expensive attorneys.

The "Triple 24" Investment We are seeking $24,000 - representing $1,000 for every "dog year" Rocket has suffered from growing blindness - to launch Phase 1 of 3 phases of this systemic intervention.

Your investment goes directly to:

Stabilization: Recovering the costs of forced displacement and securing Rocket’s needed medical care, so hopefully the "hero" of this story can survive to see the victory.

Forensic Defense: Funding the depositions and data preservation needed to prove the allegations of evidence tampering.

The Platform: Relaunching the Strategic Thought Leadership Platform as a force for social good: to provide free, open-source tools for tenants and ethical landlords.

We want to turn our legal defense into a public resource for housing justice.

We aren't stopping - no matter what - and we also need support now. Join us and show them that we have supporters who also believe in standing up against power when it is misused.

Your donation helps create more stable housing for everyone.

Thank you,

Chris McNeil and Meaghan Poyer

#RocketsFight #ConsciousStewardship #EmpoweredTenants #FairHousing