Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 1)

[Jansen]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/today-i-find-out-if-when-im-gonna-be-homeless.1062594/

I don't know why I'm writing this but I guess just to calm my nerves by getting it out. So here's my story. I work a dead end retail job, as I've said on this forum many times. The pay is absolutely garbage. I'd love to have a better job but there's a few things that stop me from doing that. One of which is that for the last few years I've shared my car with a family member who also lives in the same place as me. Basically, they have the car for work during the day, I have it for work at night. Between the two of us we barely clear $1000 a week income. We're in debt, they have a credit card that has like close to $20,000 of debt on it, which is a close to $700 bill monthly. Beyond that, bills are split up between us. I get the gas and electricity. We split groceries and internet. They get rent and their credit card. Which is a system that just barely works. They cannot afford a car payment, mostly because of that credit card bill, which is why I'm still sharing my car with them and one of the reasons why it's harder to find a better job for myself (the other reasons are I never finished college, I have no skills, etc.)

As you can imagine, the last few years have been rough. With everything getting more expensive we can barely afford groceries. And before anyone thinks "well this is a video game forum, you can afford video games". Yeah, it's my one hobby and the one thing I spent money on. I don't go anywhere, I don't do anything else. Even then, I can only afford the few video games I do buy via pre-ordering at the one store that lets you pay them off over time. So like $5 down a month until it's paid off. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't be able to afford them. I know that's not relevant but just in case anyone was thinking it, I'm not out here dropping $70 on a whim.

Anyway so this is where the housing situation comes in. In a lot of ways, we've been lucky. I live in the same place I've lived for most of my life, been here over 20 years. Now lets talk about my landlord. In a lot of ways he's been cool over the years. In other ways not so much, but I'll get there. So where I live is a house, split down the middle into two halves of the house and he rents out both halves. When we fist moved in here (I was a child at the time), they lived in the other half. But a few years in they moved to something bigger and rented out the other half too. Now as a landlord he was very hands off. This had it's pros and cons. He never really kept up with any kind of repairs and have always just ignored our requests until they were mandatory to fix. To be blunt for a long time this place was a leaky moldly shithole. The roof leaked, the basement flooded, the mold could never really be fully killed. We put up with a lot of stuff. Our oven didn't work for a few years and he didn't replace it until we had a gas leak and had to have officials come. The roof leaked and would pour water down into the kitchen that we'd have to capture in buckets. That he finally fixed earlier this year because a new law in my state required him to pass an inspection over paint (which he also never did in the past 20 years). I remember us telling him about a leak once (not the one in the kitchen, another one) and he basically told us he expected us to do those kinds of repairs. "Well, it's all about the quality of life you want to live", he told us. As if as renters we could afford to do repairs. There are other problems too but I won't list them all out.

That all sounds pretty bad. So what were the pros and why didn't we move? Well, we didn't move because we couldn't afford anything else. And the pros is that he was generally pretty cool about the money. He didn't mind if we were late with rent, so long as we did pay it eventually and he always trusted that we would (and we did). And as rent prices in my state raised dramatically, he didn't screw us over right away. A few years back he said that he was going to start raising our rent by $50 every year. A tough situation for us but also understandable, everything is getting more expensive and that includes for him. That kind of slow increase would give us time to figure things out. I felt lucky. Until August 2023. So, our lease renews in January of every year, our neighbors in the other half renewed in August. So last August they were told that they were being given one year and that in August 2024 their lease would not be renewed. They weren't given a reason but they suspected that it was because they were on a goverment assistancee program that prevented him from raising their rent past a certain point. They struggled to find a new place, just barely getting one secured through that government program apparently. They needed one more week to get their stuff packed and moved on. He didn't give it to them, he was in there putting their stuff to the curb the next day.

And that's when we found out why. His intention is to redo the entire house, gut it and put new stuff in there, and get new tenants that he can charge way more money from. He knows that nobody will pay the prices he wants from the house in the condition it is in now and the work is too long and intensive to do while a tenant lives there, so from his perspective his only option was to kick them out. You can probably see where this is going. So six months ago after kicking them out he took us aside and suggested he might do the same thing with us. Basically, he needs more money coming out of this place. So he wanted to know if we would be able to move out too. I was honest with him, we can't afford that. I explained our financial issues and asked if there was any way we could work together to find a solution for both of us. I also mentioned that this is the only home I've known most my life and I don't want to move. But also that because of the shared car (and other reasons) the time I can work is limited so it's hard for me to find a better job (not that I could find one even with more access to my car but whatever). He told us he basically wants DOUBLE what we are currently paying. We can't afford that either. I mentioned the $50 increase every year we were doing and suggested maybe we could increase that amount so he's still getting more money and we still have more time to figure something out. He said "yeah, maybe, I'll have to figure it out"... and that was it.

After that he got to work on their side and it's been six months. Every day he's been over there, ripping up walls, drilling, redoing the roof, he put in a second bathroom despite it being a tiny half of a house with only two tiny bedrooms but I guess he can charge more if there's a second little mini-bathroom. I dunno. But every month when we hand him the rent he's made some comments like "yeah we're going to do this on the other side too" and whatnot, so he's made it clear he's not letting us escape this and just a further increase every year isn't enough. But he also never followed up after that first talk so I've been getting by on the hopes that for now he'll just accept increasing the rent a few hundred or something.

Until today, we got the text message "Hey I need to talk to you about the lease today".

I can think of three possibilities.
1. He's kicking us out next month.
2. He's giving us the one year to get out he gave our neighbors.
3. He's going to offer us the other side for double the rent while he works on this side.

We can't afford any of those options. We can barely afford what we're paying now. Hell, we CAN'T afford what we're paying now. We don't have the government assistance that our neighbor did. And the only thing that got them was a small one bedroom apartment they had to shove four people into. I don't know what we're going to do, we just can't afford any of it. I suppose there is always the chance he's going to just accept raising our rent a few hudred dollars but I don't see why he'd do that. The things he's said makes it clear he wants to do more. But we're screwed either way. I'm out here hoping for the least bad outcome but they're all devastating.

I don't know why I'm posting this here. I'm depressed and anxious and may very well be homeless soon. Guess I just don't have anyone to talk to about it.
Also like he couldn't wait until after Christmas? He couldn't give us the holiday? ffs
Well, I'll find out what's happening in a few hours, I guess. Gotta wait for everyone to be here.

Been living at the same place for 20 years taking advantage of the owners kindness. Shocked that after 20 years things change and now they face possible homelessness. What did they do for 20 years that they couldn't improve their financial/housing situation? Still working a dead-end retail job 20 years later?

So they have known for at least half a year that this was going to happen but he did fuck all about it