Hey, everyone! I'm Blake! I'm a Trans masc creative currently working as a cook, and up until recently, I was homeless. Between (at-the-time) undiagnosed bipolar disorder and a break up that left me homeless AND evicted in 2017, I've struggled to make ends meet. Unstable living situations make for unstable work conditions, and I had a hard time keeping a job, much less a place. I've been chronically homeless since pretty much my whole adult life until very recently. After living in my car for a time in the winter of 2021/2022, said car broke down and I ended up in a shelter program. For a year and a half, I lived there, and they helped me get my own place for the first time ever two years ago! Yay! The housing program helped me pay rent and for the first time, I could build systems that work with my mental health needs. The relief this has been cannot be overstated -- I'm so grateful to have my own place!

But even that help had a time limit on it. I just met with my case worker yesterday, and found out that not only is May my last month in their housing assistance program, I also have apparently been living without a lease for the last year, paying rent month-to-month, unbeknownst to me. But this isn't terrible news -- the place I'm staying at is a home I'm grateful to have, but it's in Koreatown (which is notorious for having NO parking) so it's not feasible for me to get my own vehicle, which limits my options for more work. It's also on a very busy intersection, which means a lot of noise and I can't really get the quiet to pursue voice acting, the real reason I moved out to LA, and a side hustle I could do to make more money. It is also a century-old building with century-old problems, and management only does so much. At the time I moved in, options were limited between an eviction on my record, a bad credit score, and the expenses of living out of a shelter and storage unit for years and years. Now I'm over 600 on my credit score, but I've been scraping by financially and don't have the income to save up that kind of money in such a short period of time.

This is an opportunity to get a better living situation for myself. I'd like to get a place in North Hollywood so that I'm closer to work and my church community, and also get a studio that has a feasible rent -- my current place is $1595/mo and that's over half my income on a GOOD month, and completely unaffordable during the slow season, because where I work will vary my hours depending on the time of year and how the tourism industry is doing at any given time. A cheaper space would let me live within my limited means and be able to continue to grow.

In the last two years I've been working on my credit score, investing in my business (a quarterly geek and gamer magazine that focuses on broadcasting LGBTQ+/POC voices in tabletop and nerddom), building a home and stability, and learning life skills to maintain an independence that I've been working on since my bipolar diagnosis. I'm very happy with my progress, but I know that paying full rent on this place is simply not sustainable.

This GFM is to raise enough money for a deposit (two months' rent) on a new place, assuming my present landlord won't pay out my deposit, because as I said, it has issues that they've not addressed that I'm sure I'm going to get penalized for. Any extra will go to moving expenses, because we all know that U-hauls are not free.

I thank you for reading this far, and consider donating! Even $10 or $20 adds up, and I'm grateful to anybody who assists!