Hello, my name is Shabozz Russell and I’m asking for help to keep my family together. We’ve had an extremely trying past 6 months and are currently homeless, living day to day out of a motel.

Back in October of last year, I got into a small fender bender and had to pay over $1,000 to get my car back out of a tow yard. Then in November, I had to pay over $600 for surgery to save my larger dog Ravyn’s life when she suddenly got sick. Then in December, my girlfriend Linda was admitted into the hospital and had to have her gallbladder taken out. It was around this time that we first started falling behind on rent because these events completely drained my savings.

Then in January, I lost my only source of income due to another car accident, and the income my girlfriend was earning just wasn’t enough to keep us above water. We received an eviction notice in late February but were forced to leave abruptly in early March, resulting in us giving up most of the things we owned. We have been staying in a motel for the past 3 weeks or so but will soon run out of money to pay for our stay and will be forced to live on the street since my car was repossessed because of us falling behind on a title loan I took out to keep us from being evicted.

Neither me nor my girlfriend have any immediate family who are willing to help and are just at our wits' end. The job search has been very difficult and stressful with our lack of transportation and the urgency of our situation. Currently, the only options it seems we have left are to give up our pets, who we see as our children since we basically raised them since birth, and go our separate ways to live in shelters since no shelters in our area will accept men and women.

Me and my girlfriend have been alone for our entire adult lives and don’t want what we have built over the past 6 years to just fall apart like this. I understand that everyone has something they are going through, but anything will help and we just don’t know what else to do.