Turns out, I'm being sued by an old landlord.

What's going on:

Well. The title is fairly accurate. I have a real tough time asking for help but here we go. I'm getting sued by an ex-landlord for non-payment of rent. The kicker? The unpaid rent began accruing three years after both the lease expired and I moved out. The place however had tenants throughout that time and around the time COVID started kickin' people in the teeth, they stopped paying rent on the place.

Since this was y'know, absurd. I called the landlord six months ago when he first started to make some noise and we discussed the issue personally. I told him that I have a copy of the one year lease (Two-thousand sixteen to two-thousand seven), no vast stores of personal wealth to draw on to pay for the rent he was trying to squeeze from me, and zero ability to inhabit the bodies of the current tenants and make decisions on their behalf. I said that more politely than I'm saying now, but you get the jist.

This staved him off for about half a year and I thought we reached an understanding. Lo and behold, yesterday I gave a call to a lawyer and he did some searching. It turns out I have a court date scheduled for July 23rd.

What are the stakes:

The stakes are fairly high. I am currently unemployed and going to school to snag the education I need to pursue my dreams with what little money I get from unemployment and my triple digit Savings account.

My first class of the summer starts literally tomorrow. If this goes sour, it's probably setting my life plans back for years. As in, I will likely have to move out of NYC, push my dreams back another five years, and just try to rebuild.

What I'm doing about it:

I'm aiming for Himmelstein, McConnell, Gribben, Donoghue & Joseph LLP to represent me in court. (For those curious: https://www.hmgdjlaw.com/ ) The stakes are high, I'm going for the best I can find. They keep popping up as the go-to. Their retainer for this case is $5,000 dollars. By all indications, they're worth it, but in general with retainers there's a chance they might not even use it all, they're merely making sure they don't end up doing work I can't pay them for.

Now here's big if's, and's, or but's.

• If they don't use the whole retainer and they kick me back part of the money, I'm going to refund everyone beginning with the oldest donation.
• If when I call 311 tomorrow, and I find a free lawyer or a lower cost lawyer. I'm closing this up and refunding everyone beginning with the oldest donation.
• If for any reason the court case does not come to pass and I receive any monies here intended for the retainer, I'm closing this up and refunding everyone beginning with the oldest donation.

Those are the barebones that I can make public.

How can I help?

I'm doing this fairly quick so if anyone has any questions, feel free to shoot them to me privately, but for now the best way I can be helped is via donations, references to quality lawyers who might charge a lower retainer, and other legal resources.

Otherwise, I really just could use some moral support. This is coming at a pretty not-great time (not that any time is ideal to be sued), it's moving pretty fast and it's hittin' me preeeetty hard.

With love,

Matthew

Update:

I spoke with my 401k folks and they gave me the low down on how to make an early withdrawal on some funds. Because the penalty is incredibly severe, I'm basically going to take out just a portion of it. The total is lowering as a result.

To everyone who have donated so far, this means the world to me and I appreciate it more than words can express.