PALESTINE WILL BE FREE

Longtime followers may know my current apartment comes with great perks such as collapsing ceilings, flooding appliances, electrical fires in other units sending shockwaves throughout the building, and unresponsive slumlord management, so my current roommate and I were more than happy to get out and get a 3-bedroom with our friend whose lease ended on July 31st. After much hustling, grinding, rejection and ghosting, we found a place that accepted us. Signed lease paperwork, paid security deposit (and extra app fees, and overnight shipping on notarized documents, etc.), made arrangements to move in on 7/31-8/2...but at the last possible second one of our guarantors dropped out. We told her this might make us homeless and she didn't care.

The broker led us to believe that we were still going to get the keys if we sent a bunch more documents, which we did, and kept telling us management was hard to reach but things were still looking up. We found the landlord's office address via JustFix and went in 3 times, but the new tenant team was half out of town so we never really got anywhere. Finally, 10 days after we sent the last set of documents over and a full 15 days after we signed the initial lease paperwork and paid them, we were told...actually they're going with someone else. And because one guy was out of town they decided to lead us on for 2 weeks and not even hint at the fact that we were being reconsidered to us or the broker. For comparison, the usual turnaround for similar apartments in NYC is often just a few days, especially once you've paid them and signed the lease. It's not rare for a unit to go on the market and get rented out in less than a week.

In the meantime, expenses have been adding up. Once we signed paperwork and gave them money, we had pretty good reason to believe we were going to move in. We booked movers (I for one an disabled and cannot move my bed/belongings from one 5th floor walkup to another; this is also a standard and generally affordable one-time expense in NYC), called the utility companies to transfer service, and finalized packing our belongings. We rescheduled our movers a couple times each, but once it became clear things weren't resolving any time soon, we all had to eat cancellation fees, which are pretty hefty with our friend who's had to put most of his belongings with his moving company's proprietary storage and now has to pay for clearing out his room, storing his stuff, and an entirely new move whenever we do find a new place.

Our friend/rooommate is now crashing with us in our rundown shoebox, but the situation isn't exactly stable here either. We gave notice that we'd be out by August 1st, and while 311 told me legally it looks like we can't be kicked out yet, our current landlord is still pressuring us to leave. We've been working this whole time too, but when one-time planned expenses become unexpected prolonged issues, things can get bad financially really fast.

(We're also still waiting on getting our security deposit back from the place that rejected us, but that's not included on the gfm, nor is the ~$200 each we've paid in application fees that's about to go up as we keep applying for apartments.)

Hopefully this gives you an idea of the bind we're in and the expenses that are incurring; it's been especially bankrupting to our friend who's been essentially homeless and couch surfing for 2 weeks, and tbh I'm not all that far behind. The gfm link has a more thorough breakdown of expenses; it's set at $1,800 right now as a more attainable goal, but the overall expenses are expected to top $4k and we'd like to make as big a dent as possible in that.

Thank you to anyone who's read this far about our story. With the bad economy and everything else going on I know there are many in more need than I, so please do not feel obligated to give. For anyone who does have the desire and means to help right now, or even just to share in hopes of reaching a kind stranger who does, we deeply appreciate it and thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Wishing you all peace on your journeys.