Support Emilia and Kelli's Urgent Move From Unsafe Rental

Help Emilia and Kelli (and their two cats) move out of their unsafe, foreclosed rental unit.

In the spring of 2024, myself (Emilia) and my best friend Kelli moved into a duplex in North End. During our first 6 months we reported many maintenance complaints including: rotting wood beams in the basement, dryer/washer constantly not working, pests like mice, and a dying tree that would break off chunks in our backyard anytime there was wind and all of these issues took multiple days to weeks to hear back about or deal with. Along with these, we also had many electrical issues (flickering lights if anyone was using the washer/dryer, if we used the microwave provided in the home it would always blow the fuse), our bathroom sink and shower drains smelled disgusting even with proper cleaning and snaking on our end, pieces of the kitchen floor tile crumbling with no reason, constant wet puddles/leakages in the basement, etc.

In late January 2025 we received a notice of foreclosure on our upstairs' neighbors front door, stating that the home we lived in was going up for auction on February 13th 2025. We weren’t notified about the pending foreclosure and auction until we had a notice taped to our door, not even from the landlord or company themselves. The last two months before the foreclosure notice there was no ability to contact any of the staff the rental company about any repairs that I had requested in the tenant portal and directly via email, resulting in Kelli and I to go without hot water in our shower during late December-January and an unusable oven (door and handle came off and wouldn’t close without something propped against it). I never heard back from the office manager or the regular maintenance man we were in contact with, we had to directly contact the landlord to send someone by after weeks of our requests going ignored.

Since the auction on February 13th we've experienced various realtors and our landlord trying to take advantage of our situation by trying to get us to sign a new lease for our poorly maintained housing, realtors making claims about our house/lease without proper legal paperwork, and MORE physical issues with our unit.

The evening of March 2nd 2025, our electricity and heat were malfunctioning and a burning smell was coming from our basement resulting in us packing up our cats and waiting in our cars while our upstairs neighbor calling the fire department to ensure we weren't going to have an electrical fire. The fire department came and said everything looked okay besides a water break in the basement. Throughout the night, we heard our furnace struggling to heat and failing, along with our appliances turning on and off due to the problems with our electricity, and our gas stovetops not working. Because of the water break, there's also now a giant puddle of water in our basement, but thankfully it didn't damage any of our belongings. We reached out to the landlord who came by to look at the issue, and he claimed that he "didn't have to do anything about it" because of the foreclosure, but still said he would "send someone to look at it".

So now, Kelli and I are looking to leave this unsafe, unstable rental unit as soon as possible to ensure not only our safety but the safety of our two cats. Our lease is finished at the end of April but we are looking to move out before so that we can live somewhere with proper electricity, heat, and to relieve a huge amount of stress we've been going through.

The donated funds will assist both of us in:

Any help would be greatly appreciated as we're navigating this immensely stressful time.