#blog ref

Gaz:

@ diibsister

GIR:

@ doomdoomdoomdoomdoomdoomdoomdoom

Zim:

my fiance and i are living with family right now, and we are very lucky not to have to pay rent, so, again, it's not urgent. we are okay where we're at, but we do need to move soon-ish, and we just don't have the money to do that.

edit (March 11): my fiance got a job in Oregon, so replace most instances of "Little Rock" in the below with "Portland" and know that actually rent might be feasible now but we are still in need of some financial assistance for the move in the short term, and, since we will be paying rent in Portland, we won't be able to save up as much as we have been, which is a big deal since his new job is a small enough business that they can get away with not offering him health insurance and we are both disabled, so the reason for the need has changed since i originally wrote this, but the need for housing/health assistance is still there, tho i will admit i am a lot less anxious about it right now

previous version of post:

rent is not feasible* in the region we live in (hence why we're living with family), so we need to buy a house instead. my partner is making enough at his job that we can afford the monthly payment on a small home loan, but we don't have enough money saved up for a down payment.

home prices in Little Rock are about $140-190k for a small place (there are places selling for less than that, but by and large they are either condos that aren't eligible for FHA loans [and thus, even if we bought one we would still need more money for the down payment], or they are being sold landlord to landlord and are currently tenant occupied [and i'm not going to evict someone just so i can move. that's just patently immoral]), so, we need somewhere between $5k and $35k more than we have saved up right now (depending on if the place we try to buy qualifies for an FHA loan [i would prefer a condo because dense urban living means i'll know my neighbors, which will make me safer, but again, they don't qualify for fha loans and also hoa fees are expensive, so i will take what i can get]). i'm going to update my website soon to reflect how much money we've received in gifts/donations, so you know how close we are to either of those goals, and can make a decision accordingly

if we had a different government right now this would probably be fine; we would just live here long enough to save up for a down payment (and we are saving just about every penny. the pennies just take time to add up), but under the current administration the part of the metro we live in right now is just not safe for queer people (even though the family we're living with are very supportive). our neighbors wave trump flags (one neighbor has a mural of Donald Trump giving a big thumbs up painted on the side of his house) and we pass a plethora of billboards with phrases such as "Save Arkansas from the WOKE gender ideology" on our way to work and school and the grocery store.

i do not feel safe walking around my neighborhood, and i very much want to move to one of the neighborhoods in Little Rock where, for instance, i could not turn a single corner without seeing a pride flag last June and where i still can't go further than 3 blocks without seeing one even tho it's February.

i don't really know how to classify my employment (my fiance has a job making a little more than minimum wage. again, enough to pay the monthly mortgage if we had the down payment). i'm a college student, and i have a job at school, but it's been four months and they haven't assigned me any work yet so i'm not making money, and i can't get a second job while still making time to go to class. i have a graduate assistantship lined up for next fall, and that will pay ~$4,000 a semester (so $8,000 a year), but that's 6 months away and still only $4,000.

*Arkansas has extremely minimal renter protections. in Arkansas a tenant is entitled to a roof, walls on every side of the building, running water (hot and cold), electricity, and, provided it was there and working when the lease was signed, a working HVAC unit.

that's it. there are no further renter protections, and Arkansas law prevents cities from imposing any protections further than that. in particular, prices are insane (if you don't live here they might seem extremely reasonable compared to yours, but not when you consider our low wages and lack of social services) and it's illegal to regulate rent prices in Arkansas (except for federally regulated section 8 housing, which we make about $100/year too much to qualify for)