https://paypal.me/SLayman310?country.x=US&locale.x=en_US
I am looking for donations to help me pay my rent that was due at the beginning of March. I have not been able to pay due to being unemployed. I have received a notice from the landlord that they intend to terminate my residency if I do not pay it. I could use some help with getting this resolved. I have lived at my apartment for four years and do not want to lose it now. That would be to say that in the long run I have been paying my rent; but I will give the background story as to how I am broke to pay it now.
The last time I was current on the rent was back in January. I was able to pay it back then because I had a job working at Amazon as a delivery station warehouse associate. I used Flex to pay my rent back then. Flex is a rent paying service that gives you the ability to pay half of it at a time, but they pay the full rent when it is due at the beginning of the month. My apartment community participates in that service. I was already using it for multiple months. When I first applied for it, I got approved for a five hundred dollar credit line. For just a couple of small fees, I can pay rent for half at a time without incurring late fees from the landlord, because Flex is a service that pays rent in full on my behalf. At the beginning of the month, I pay rent except for five hundred dollars through Flex; and then I have until the twenty-fifth of the month to pay back the remaining five hundred dollars to Flex. I habitually like to get that paid earlier to get it done. In January, I had a pay day on the twelfth of the month, so I made my payment to Flex that day to be fully paid on rent for the month of January.
The other source of income I had at the time was donating plasma. It was something that I had been doing for a while, but was looking to take a break from it. That plan changed; unfortunately due to bad news. At the time my days to donate were Thursdays and Saturdays. My hours at the Amazon delivery station were from 1:20 AM to 11:50 AM, Thursday through Sunday. To supplement my income, I would head to the plasma center after my shift is over on Thursdays and Saturdays to donate plasma. On the thirteenth of January, it was a Saturday. While I was donating plasma that day, I received an email from Amazon that reported my season with them is over. I was not aware that was my last day at Amazon. I had only worked with them for two months. What I was told when I first got hired is that seasons normally last three to eleven months, and then the possibility of converting to a permanent employee status to get benefits. What I did after that was show up to the warehouse at start of shift on Sunday to raise this matter to the attention of a manager. What she told me was that it could be true that my season was over unfortunately. She sent me home as the result of that, and was told that I will have to follow up with a human resources specialist when they come in on Monday. So I went back to see one on Monday and they confirmed that’s true the company did intend to terminate my employment. I began my job search right away because of this. I continued to donate plasma since that was my sole source of income until I find a new job, after only taking one week off from it. Then, my new days to donate were Mondays and Wednesdays. That was because while I still had my job at Amazon, I scheduled a tooth extraction to take care of a dental emergency. The extraction occurred on Monday the fifteenth. I could not continue donating plasma the following Thursday or Saturday, because they defer for seven days after getting a dental extraction. That’s why the days that I go and donate changed to Mondays and Wednesdays once I was able to return on Monday the twenty-second. I have been there to donate every Monday and Wednesday since.
During my job search, I have applied for many jobs, and have gone to multiple interviews. It was not until recently that I finally found one. While it was still February, I got selected to be hired by a recruiting agency, TalentBridge. They selected me for a contract-to-hire position I applied for to be a phone customer service representative at Wells Fargo to take calls from Wells Fargo credit cardholders. I began that work on March the twelfth. Although that resolves the issue of employment, I still do not have the means of paying the rent. I only make one hundred and twenty dollars per week from donating plasma.
February rent has been paid to my apartment by using Flex. Although I had money at the beginning of February to make my first payment to them, I did not have the five hundred dollars plus their ten percent payment fee they require by the twenty-fifth. So, currently I am five hundred and five dollars indebted to them. I tried applying for unemployment from the State of Arizona in February to attempt to get help but have yet to be approved for any benefits. It shows on my unemployment portal when I login online to allow four weeks before contacting their call center. Since it’s been that long since I initially applied, I tried calling them the other day but it just gives a recording and hangs up. I kept filing my weekly claims to report my job search activities like they require, but remain clueless as to when I will get paid for a single one of those weekly claims. Therefore, I cannot count on getting the money I need from unemployment timely enough to stop an eviction from occurring due to no word as to what is holding them back from paying any of my claims or to when I would receive any of them.
Sadly, me finding a new job has yet to be enough to put an end to this trouble; and putting an end to this is strongly desired. I would hope that I can get the help I need before the local justice court orders me to vacate; and avoid homelessness. I want to be able to stay in my apartment. Again, I have been in my apartment for four years, so it is affordable in the long run. It’s just an issue of me being unemployed for a while that has caused me to fall behind in my financial needs. If I were to get an order to vacate by the justice court as the result of an eviction lawsuit, even if and when I find a new place to live, I would still be in an unstable situation. My current lease lasts until the end of the year, so I would still have to pay not only the past due rent but also cover every subsequent month through the end of the year. I would not be able to afford to take care of that while also paying the rent at whatever place I’d be going to next. Something that’s characteristic of my apartment is it is one of the cheapest in my city. That’s why I came here in 2020 and each lease expiration, I would end up renewing because I never found an apartment to stay at where the rent would be cheaper.
My necessity to keep a secure place to live, rather than living on the street is stating the obvious. However, I am not the only one that would benefit from getting my rent paid. I do not wish for my problems of unemployment to become my landlord’s. The landlord is waiting on me to pay the rent to them, and they will have to sue me if I can not pay. My inability to pay them rent means an income loss for them. I would rather get the rent paid and fulfill my lease to them then get kicked out and have debt that I could not afford to pay them due to me paying rent at another place instead of to them. If I get evicted, they would have to spend time, energy, and money getting my rental unit advertised for somebody else to take my place. And if I do not have a place to move to right away, that also means I would not have a place to move all my possessions to right away. The landlord would have to hire somebody to pack all my stuff and clean it out of the rental unit, as that would just be another example of how being broke is a disorganized position to be in. An eviction would also hold me back from getting another place to rent at many places making it harder for me to find a new home as well as for other landlords to be able to make rental income off of me.
Given this situation, I am asking to raise $2,000 to resolve this situation. What I would spend that money on is either to pay rent to the landlord, to pay back any debt that I have that pertains to paying rent, or income taxes. The reason I am asking for the liberty to pay income taxes with this money as a secondary priority is for a couple reasons. First, I have yet to go over my 2023 income taxes to determine if I still owe anything and tax day is near, and if I owe anything then me trying to catch up with rent could hold me back from paying them then occur fines for paying late. Second, to also acknowledge the possibility of 2024 income taxes, it is my understanding that funds raised by an online donation site would be taxable income. To prepare for that, I could either send in a check to federal and state tax agencies, or to update my withholdings from my employer and allow your donations to reimburse what would get deducted from my paycheck. To describe my expenses, rent at my apartment is $985 per month. Then there’s also tax, and damage fee waiver after that, which brings it up to $1,022.66 per month. Then there are utilities on top of that too that’s due with the rent to the landlord. I get a statement by email each month to report the utility amount due. For not paying on time, there are late fees, fees for servicing notices, and legal fees if they bring an eviction suit against me. As of 17 March, my rent payment portal reports that I must pay $1,397.40 to be current on the rent and avoid eviction. That will continue to go up each day as the terms of my lease are to charge late fees for each day. So there’s margin in my $2,000 figure for further late fees, depending on when I am able to receive the donations I need. Plus, there is also the possibility of me resolving the $505 I still owe Flex. Naturally, Flex is not allowing me to use their service until I get that paid, as my credit line with them is only $500 and that is used up from paying February rent.
Thank you for your time and consideration, and any and all donations are appreciated as well.
https://paypal.me/SLayman310?country.x=US&locale.x=en_US