Alexa from The Dog P0und and her partner Layne, both of whom are trans and disabled, are facing severe financial, medical, and housing instability and seek help covering living expenses in order to stabilize their health, secure housing, and continue community-focused work and pursuing their goals.

My name is Alexa and I am a disabled queer trans woman. My partner Layne is queer, disabled, and genderfluid. I am also supporting my partner's brother who is a senior in high school with help for food needs. Alexa has diabetes, psoriatic arthritis, hypertension, and POTS as well as mental health struggles due to trauma and other diagnosed disabilities. Layne has chronic illness and stomach issues that have resulted in chronic muscle and joint pain, fatigue, and stomach pain that limit his ability to complete activities of daily living and work.

Our goal with this fundraiser is to address our financial issues that have resulted in food, housing, and transportation insecurity and credit issues. We want to stabilize our finances, be able to afford our living and medical expenses so that we can continue to pursue medical treatment for our health issues. Layne aims to get a job and potentially pursue higher education once they are healthy, as well as medically transition. Alexa aims to stabilize her life to the point she can continue dedicating resources to supporting other vulnerable individuals and the community.

I work as a Graduate Assistant at the University of Connecticut and am in progress of completing a Master of Public Policy degree. I run The Dog P0und, a Connecticut-based music venue, booking, and promotions company that focuses on highlighting local QBIPOC artists. Our organization hosts local artists, zines, harm reduction resources, and other activism and political organizations to table at our events, and we also raise money for mutual aid and other charitable causes through hosting benefit shows. Our staff, myself included, do not make money from running The Dog P0und events. For me personally, it has incurred a lot of financial stress and takes up a lot of my time, but I prioritize it due to my commitment to bringing people together in community and helping others.

I do my best to help people: I work to help marginalized people navigate financial insecurities by providing housing, relocation, and logistics assistance; connecting them with resources relating to information such as healthcare, queer community, harm reduction resources, and anything else they might need.

My graduate assistantship income totals around $1800 per month on average, and my expenses (rent, car payment, therapy, medical bills and prescriptions, gas, and utilities) total $1730 on average not including food. On this income, I am also supporting my partner who is disabled and unable to work, as well as his brother who is a senior in high school.

860 rent + 420 car payment + 60 therapy + 120 medical bills and prescriptions + 120 gas + 150 utilities = $1730

In all honesty, I am really struggling. The intersection of my physical and mental health challenges, the financial strains I am under, providing for my partner, work, school, and balancing my desire to continue with community work is a lot. I have been dealing with worsening mental health issues due to stress and fixing the issues underlying these problems would substantially help me.

Further, in September 2025 I was hospitalized for an infection that had spread to multiple organs, and in October I had a surgery to address this issue. I was stuck on a couch for most of October, with very limited mobility and in pain and I had to take some time off of work. My chronic illnesses made the recovery difficult and mentally and physically straining.

In November of this year, my living situation fell through due to conflict and me and my partner were housing insecure and in our car and motels for a little bit before rekindling my relationship with my family, who I had split off from when I was 19. During the late fall and early winter I was still paying rent for my previous situation and at the same time used all of my remaining money to put a deposit on an apartment closer to my job in Storrs and to help get my friend a place to sleep who had been living in his car for a while and was in danger due to the cold. Through January of this year, my psoriatic arthritis was worsening to the point that it was severely affecting my mobility and making it difficult to participate in my leisure, work, school, and other activities.

It has been extremely difficult for me and my partner to make ends meet. In fact, we haven't been able to do so and have been utilizing my credit cards to pay for food and any other expenses I could not afford with the surplus we had after our expenses. Recently, I reached the maximum credit utilization, which means that I can no longer use my credit cards to pay for these things.

This has been substantially stressful for me, on top of my stress from school, my job, the venue, and the stress that I face as an immigrant and a trans person in America. Through this, I am still trying to help the people around me and my community as much as I can.

I have been trying my best to get me and my partner's life back on track. I have been continuing to see my therapist, psychiatrist, and other doctors to pursue leads for addressing my multi-factorial chronic pain, my transition, and my mental health treatment. My partner has seen a doctor for the first time in years and has gotten referrals to pursue transitioning and addressing his chronic pain and stomach issues.

We both want to be able to establish a strong health and home basis for ourselves so that we can self-actualize through education, working, and community involvement and so that we can work towards continuing to help others in our lives and the broader queer community.