UPDATE on my situation - I'm likely to be homeless - PLEASE help!
Last edited Fri May 1, 2015, 12:00 AM - Edit history (1)
I've been as low as the underbelly of a snake for awhile that's gotten so much worse day by day since I'm playing a rigged beat the clock game with the stinking court. My slumlord/scumlord/landloon/Satan's spawn of a beast got an attorney and filed a Complaint against me in the same county court as my appeal but the Complaint doesn't even mention her eviction in district court or my appeal both of which she new of before the Complaint was filed. Not only that, she blames all the damages here on ME! I'm writing the Answer myself though I'm going to need to get no-cost attorney help since I'm not sure how much I should be saying about everything (including VERY interesting things about the scumlord that a couple of particularly fantastic DUer's ferreted out for me!) in the New Matter part or if I should be doing a New Matter with a Counterclaim. I'm familiar with these Answers since I did tons all those years I worked as a legal secretary and paralegal though I never knew a thing about landlord/tenant legal disputes, and all the ones I did were mostly boilerplate or the attorney would dictate what to write on a dictaphone machine.
I also have to make a ton of copies since there's a HUGE amount of exhibits that go with it, and I've now got VERY little money to my name, and I know I'll need to get both color and black ink for my printer to do this. Yesterday I counted out what was in my change jar and was over the moon that I actually have about $35 whole dollars!!! Duer Texasgal was so great and donated money to my paypal account so I can get a bag of chow for Yoshi since he now only has a few days of food left.
I FINALLY got a case worker and met with her for hours yesterday, so I'm feeling much better about things. Together we still have to come up with $1250 by May 5th (just found out from the court that my last day to pay them is the 5th rather than the 6th that I've been thinking for so long because they count 30 days from the day I filed the appeal with the day that I filed - April 6th - as Day #1 and count down 30 days that way - UGH!) I HAVE to pay the court or the appeal that's been at least keeping a roof over my head, keeping Yoshi, and my stuff and also give HER time to dig up every resource she can find to keep helping me to get the hell out of here before I'd have to pay the court again. So, I'm REALLY scared that no matter what we do together we still won't be able to come up with the amount I have to pay the court or my whole life is just over... I lose a roof over my head with a bathroom, I lose Yoshi, and I lose every damn thing I own that I worked like a dog all my adult life for including all those things like personal papers, sentimental things from as far back as my childhood, my Dad's photographs that are almost all the artwork on my walls (my dad passed away in '98 and he was my hero), and on and on.
The total abandonment of my family has just been a knife in my heart that's been unbearable though one of my brothers has been helping me for weeks as far as getting me hooked up with the social services. We talk all the time through group emails sending each other funny photos or videos, joking about moments from when we were kids, etc.), so it NEVER occurred to me that they'd just totally abandon me like this. I REALLY feel like I just lost my whole family.
Social services SUCK SUCK SUCK sooooooooooooooooo much more than people who haven't had to deal with them especially in a narrow time frame can possibly imagine in their worst nightmares. And I live in PA not like Texas or Florida or some backward conservative state! It's also ridiculous that you're stuck with only what services there are in the county where you happen to live. There's so much more available if I lived in a more poor county than the one I do which is decidedly NOT anything close to poor.
I think my case worker is awesome, and I was soooooooo afraid that it would end up with some git that didn't give a crap. She's a really focused go-getter, black woman whose age I can't tell, but she has to be a lot older than she looks just from some... er... gynecological things that we talked a bit about. I would have thought mid-20's but she just can't be that young. She looks like she could pass for a high school senior though. She also has a truly uncanny ability to read me that is almost scary she's so good at it. She really is everything I always wished I could be. She's truly an incredible confidence builder as well. Before she came over to meet with me yesterday I was about as down and hopeless as a person can get. But once she left it was like I was almost back to my real self again though I'm terrified out of my mind that we won't come up with enough money to pay the court in just a few days. She can get me a little cash with her resources but I'm going to have to come up with the bulk of it and I haven't had any new ideas on that for days and days.
She made me swear I'd do another humiliating begging thread here again today, and OMG, I'm absolutely hating having to do this again. The humiliation especially for someone who's worked almost all their adult life and has been able to take care of themselves is the worst. She did tell me that those are the people that this is hardest for. I absolutely believe it.
So once again, I'm putting out a plea here to help me save my own life. So, here I am keeping my promise to my case worker and begging on my knees pleading for anything anyone here can do to help me get this stinking court paid on the 5th. I'm really really scared about my gofundme account because it takes them 5 to 7 days to get donation money into your bank account, and it's not gofundme that does it. They use a company called WePay that handles the financial end, so I can't even plead with gofundme to try to get the donation money into my bank account faster than normal. Any donation money would have to be in my bank account by the 4th so that on the 5th I can get all of it in cash to bring to the court and pay them, and as early as I can on the 5th since A) this scares the ever loving HELL out of me that I won't be able to do it, and B) there's always a line at the two clerk desks that handle all civil matters (as opposed to criminal matters), and you never know if someone ahead of you needs the clerk's help for an hour or more. When I went in to file my appeal because I was clueless about everything about it it took almost two whole hours! The filing office stops doing everything at like 4 o'clock I think, and whoever has been waiting in line is just screwed. Right from the beginning though they warned me about this and said that if it's your last day to file something or pay them I really have to do it as early in the day as I can so this waiting in line for ages and not getting to the clerk's desk in time can be a disaster for me. And it also makes me just paranoid as hell.
Because of this timing problem with getting any donation money from gofundme can anyone that wants to donate PLEASE donate to my PayPal account? I get that money way faster than gofundme, though it will still be VERY close to the deadline even if all the donations that I can get come today. For anyone that wants to donate but just won't use PayPal, PLEASE still donate to my gofundme page PLEASE do so even though I really don't think there's any possible way I'd get the donation money in my account in time to pay the court since I only have about somewhere around $135 left, and I HAVE to pay the past due amount for my phone to stay on any day now since the last time I paid them I was only able to pay the past due amount, and I got the new bill already nearly a week ago (I SWEAR it really feels like TMobile charges me at least 10 times a month!). The money I have to buy Yoshi's new bag of chow in a couple of days isn't included in that $135 or so... I set that aside as "no touch" money because if nothing else he's going to still eat per usual.
One of my neighbors suggested the pastor at her church as she's known him all her life, and her teenage son has always gone to school there. She said he's helped people out financially before, but I'm really nervous about that because I'm not a parishioner. I'm also really nervous about going begging there today because she's the most flighty person I've ever met (I always thought she had mental issues, and I think she's always been on SSI for it). I'm scared to death that she won't remember she told me this yesterday and also scared to death that her church won't help me.
A quick explanation of what these payments are all about that I have to pay the court. I filed an appeal to the eviction judgment because although the judgment lets me stay here, I had to pay the scumlord $1904 and change or something close to that into her HAND in only about 6 days, which there was no possible way I could do, so my only alternative was to file the appeal as a pauper. Filing it as a pauper waived the $285 and change filing fee and also let me pay 1/3 of the amount of a month's rent at the time of filing the appeal, and the remaining 2/3rds 20 days later (counting the day I filed the appeal as Day #1). I THOUGHT that at THAT point I'd have 30 days where i didn't have to pay anyone, but found out later for certain that the next 30 day countdown to when I had to pay a full month of the amount of the rent to the court started on the day I filed the appeal giving me only like 10 days from paying that 2/3rds amount (which I had JUST enough to do thanks to the wonderful people here that donated for me!). The ONLY reason I filed the appeal was to buy myself some time to get hooked up with any social services or charities or WHATEVER that could help me get the hell out of here and into even a studio apartment or some bitty place with a bathroom even in a bad neighborhood that I could work my way out of and get back to a normal life again. Then I found out that I'd have to come up with a whole $1250 to pay the court in just 10 days after very nearly completely wiping myself out just to pay them that 2/3rds of the money just last Monday (and I only got Monday because Day #20 - my last day to pay the court - fell on a Saturday so I got Sunday as an extra day to try to find a way to come up with more and light a fire under the agency that's helping me to assign me a case worker.
That's when I went into total despair, and cried constantly every time I even thought of losing Yoshi even if I could find a place for him temporarily (I was NOT going to force him to live in my dilapidated car with me). I promised him when I got him (as I promise all my fur babies) that I'll be the best mommy ever and take care of him well for all his life.
I've already exhausted every single resource that their bloody is. I was supposed to be going with a neighbor today that told me yesterday that her paster could probably help me because he has with other people in the past, but those people were parishioners of that church. And she's crapped out on me. She has pretty serious mental issues, and is the most flighty person I've ever met. I love her to death though but now I'm pulling my hair out that it doesn't appear that she can really help me through her church at all, and she forgot all about talking about this with me yesterday. I know she has mental problems though she's a sweetheart and always means well, but whatever is wrong in her head she's just not really able to focus on something, so I was already worried about how this would pan out when she told me about it yesterday. So now it looks like even that one other possibility I had has already fallen flat. OMG, I just can't think of a single thing I can try other than DU to come up with this damn money to pay the court, and if I don't my whole life is over, I lose EVERYTHING including Yoshi, and I'm on the street (even the emergency shelter is full and my case worker says it's a BAAAAAAAD place she's not going to let me go to).
My gofundme page is: http://www.gofundme.com/slumlord-escape
My PayPal is: [email protected]
Oh, I forgot to mention, the donation amount of peoples' gofundme pages doesn't reflect what money has been taken out and used. God, for a second there I thought I had a fairy godmother or something that just put a lot of money into my account! But after reading up on this in the FAQ part or whatever they call it, all that number is is the amount of donations that have been given since the start of someone's campaign - it doesn't reflect any money that has been taken out and used, and yup, I don't have a cent in there that I haven't used to pay this stinking court already, but I wouldn't have been able to do that last Monday without the lovely people at DU that had donated to me before.
There's some more info about how the appeal works in the court that I want to explain, but I need to go out somewhere right now, and the person picking me up just honked for me, so I have to run right now.
Thank you so much for any help I can get here to help me save my life! I promised my case worker I would do this again though I just HATE to have to do it, and it's soooo humiliating!
I'll be back hopefully in a couple of hours though I'm terrified beyond belief to look at this thread again.
Gods, I just have soooooo damn much to DO!
= new reply since forum marked as read
Sent you a little something. Don't give up. 
My little Trixie gets along with every other animal (and person) she's ever been around.. I'd take you in too but I live in an RV and there's no room for another person.
Which brings me to this, I bought the well used and rather old but serviceable RV I'm in five years ago after my divorce. At this time of the year they are still going for good prices but as soon as vacation time comes around they get more expensive. It's not a bad way to live for an older single person with a small pet and I paid total about what you are paying the landlord per month to buy the thing outright. I barter my handyman services for lot rent/electric/water/internet and with the pittance I get from SS it's enough to get me by.
I learned to do this a long time ago when I worked building the early cable TV systems, the cable crew would move from town to town every six months or so as the systems got built and finished, it was just a lot simpler and cheaper to have a camper and hook my van to it and pull my home up the road than to find a short term lease on an apartment I would never have spent much time in anyway and do all the packing/unpacking and so on.
You might want to think about it, considering your plumbing repair I saw a while back I think you may have enough handyman (person) genes to make a go of it in an RV..
Best of luck to you!
I hope we can help. I'll put in what I can 
No shame in needing help, too.
Stay strong, m'dear! DU-ers have HUGE hearts!
I wish I could help you! I am in a similar conundrum--59 years old, and unemployed. I cannot find a job. No one will hire me. I have had to ask for help, and I asked Skinner if I could post my need as you have done, but I haven't heard back from him.
There are so many of us hurting and in need. I try to hold onto my optimism, but it's hard.
If I can proofread or do anything labor wise that could help, please let me know.
I wrote this post to K&R, since that's about all I can do. I hope you get the help you need!
You can post your request as of DU3.
I wish you and TorchTheWitch and others struggling so severely see a light at the end of the tunnel soon.
You should consider creating a post, since you don't have to ask for permission.
Sending more your way.
