Support Joe’s Urgent Housing Needs

In the past 2 ½ years Joe has been dealing with a debilitating neurological condition that makes light and sound horrifically painful. Because of his condition he has had to close his business, sell his car, use his life savings and now he needs a place to live. By September 30 he must be moved out of his current living situation for safety reasons. His monthly disability payments don’t come close to covering rent. He is on waiting lists for subsidized housing but otherwise landlords require evidence that monthly rent can be paid. We are trying to raise at least $36,000 to cover monthly rent, utilities and weekly household assistance for cooking and cleaning.

Below is Joe’s story in his own words, including his deep desire to raise enough money to provide permanently stable housing, rather than temporarily solve the crisis at hand (cost: about $175,000)

We greatly appreciate any assistance you can provide!

Hey folks, I’m Joe Martin.

Many of you reading this may know me from my work in the world of chess education, where I served as the CEO and lead coach at my company (Common Sense Chess) for many years, or you may count yourself amongst my blessedly numerous family and friends. For anyone reading this who doesn’t know me, I’m sorry we have to meet this way. If you do know me and have been wondering where I disappeared to, what you are about to read will hopefully help explain why I suddenly fell off the face of the earth.

About two and a half years ago (December, 2021), I was suddenly laid low by a debilitating and fairly mysterious neurological disorder, one that has transformed my life completely. This condition has brought a host of new challenges into my life, including inflicting crippling sensitivities to commonplace lights and sounds, heavily restricting my access to communication technologies such as the phone, email and the internet, and causing intense nausea, amongst myriad other difficulties. It’s very painful, and very frustrating, and makes getting through each day a new and different challenge. Obviously, I've sought medical aid, but unfortunately there's been little that doctors have been able to do to help me, and even the diagnosis for my malady has become a hot-button issue for my medical team. There's a common agreement that this condition must be neurological, but beyond that, seventeen highly trained medical specialists have been unable to reach adiagnostic consensus, much less formulate a cure for what ails me.

However, as anyone who knows me can attest, it’s hard to keep a good man down, and I've striven to rise to the occasion. I’ve spent the last 30+ months learning to try to work around this condition as best I can, testing my new limits and experimenting with increasingly innovative strategies to access my old skill sets. It’s been rough, but it’s been worth it, and I’m hopeful about my long-term chances of finding a path back to some kind of functionality, even if it's fairly restricted.

Unfortunately, this progress has come at a snails pace, with every step forward coming after months of trial and error and numerous failed starts. And, I’m sorry to say, I’m out of time. Due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, I urgently need to depart from my current home in the next few weeks, and I lack the resources to support myself both during and after a move to a new apartment. My new disability income pays significantly less than I made as a chess coach, and needs to stretch to cover problems that only the chronically ill face, such as in-home help for basic tasks like dishes and laundry, or arranging for meals I can no longer prepare for myself. I can’t even take on a roommate to help ease the financial burdens due to the extreme nature of my newfound sensitivities!

I’m currently on several waiting lists for government sponsored housing, but that can take years to go through, and what they offer may not be something I can even accept, given my condition. I have a number of highly specific needs and sensitivities, and anything from a metal sink in my bathroom to the wrong light in a communal hallway could mean I’d have to pass up proferred housing.

As a result of this new time-sensitive crisis, I’ve been forced to put aside my previous ambitions to work my own salvation, and I am now reaching out to you, my community, to help me crowd-fund a new home for myself, a place where I can continue my journey, and where I can spend my limited energy in pursuit of some extremely exciting plans I've developed to try and get back to doing what I love, rather than squandering my energy dealing with housing problems.

Unfortunately, housing has become extremely expensive, and resolving my housing issues even temporarily requires raising a minimum of $35,000. With that money I can pay for an apartment in a quiet neighborhood for one year and hire some in-home help to assist me in maintaining the place and feeding myself. The virtue of this plan is that $35,000 is a fairly achievable number to shoot for, even in a limited time, and with luck I might even be able to stretch it out a bit past the one year mark. If we can raise more money, I'll be able to use the additional funds to stretch out how long I can maintain stable housing, and explore some additional ways to try to get myself back into action.

However, if this community wants to help solve my housing issues permanently, an extraordinary opportunity has recently presented itself just when I needed it most. By sheer happenstance, one of my closest friends is looking at purchasing a home very soon now, and if I can raise $175,000 I can use the bulk of the money raised to stretch their modest budget from a small, one-person dwelling to a multi-family home. This would give me a permanent living space that I can thoroughly customize to meet my sensory and physical needs, with in-home help for me just one floor away at all times. Obviously, this arrangement would be life-changing for me, and would dramatically increase my chances of finding my way back to some kind of functionality, perhaps even a resumption of my career. To be completely candid, if I miss this chance, I'm afraid I may spend the rest of my life trapped in an endless quest for stable, sensory friendly housing, and never really have the opportunity to achieve the stability I'd need to focus on addressing my disabilities and building a better life for myself.

Whatever we raise, I can promise that it will all go to good use, and the more help I get, the better I'll be able to meet this moment and work to rise above my new, limiting circumstances. Thankfully, despite it all, I'm still "me" and still scheming, and if I can just get my feet under me I've got some really exciting plans on ways to carry forward and get back into the swing of things.

Thank you all so much, and thank you for any help you can provide in this time of crisis. Please donate generously and help spread the word, whatever you can do right now means more than I can convey. And please, don’t be a stranger. While I am an admittedly slow correspondent these days, hearing from you all always puts a smile on my face, and I’ve got people watching my inbox and printing out emails for me to look over and write responses whenever I’m up to it next. Until then, take care and be well!