Eviction, Housing Help

Hello name is Wayne Fennell, I am from Cape Cod, and my family and I desperately need some help. It's me my wife and 12 year old daughter.

A little about us, This is our first fundraiser and never was sure about creating a gofund but thought we should at this time. Both my wife and I have worked in the Human Services field for about 18 years and love helping people. I work as an Employment Specialist/Job Coach, my wife works as an Habilitation Specialist for Community Connections. We have been at this residence since 2015. Our daughter attends middle school and this had been hard on her.. Our focus is to keep being as positive as we can. 

As we know 2020 happened (Covid), Covid hit and everything changed, affecting everyone. Our employment opportunities dropped dramatically due to restrictions and made it more difficult to make the payments on time but also having the increase of rent without knowing about it in the beginning of all this made us get really behind and thought that it would be taken care of but that's not the case. We have reached out to some emergency organizations for help but most is pending and we are running out of time since the Court date is February 17th.

More of the situation is the Landlord has stated verbally that we were behind in the middle/late of 2021 and at this time we were unaware of how we got behind and that the rent was increased at some point during this time frame without an official document stating this... The Landlord hadn't given us documentation stating anything about 2021's rent increase till August 2021 in writing as far as we know but unfortunately we got so far behind since he had not previously provided this important info, we finally had him sign a piece of paper stating what he increased it to. We tried to gather official documentation from him after repeated attempts to find out what was happening and why. Also since making  payments we thought was right apparently was not enough which caused us to continuesly become behind. When we did try paying the back rent he wouldn't accept it if we offered him as much as we could. The rent we would pay for the current month, he would take and apply it to back rent and then would cause the current month to be behind so we never understood what caused this to begin with since we hadn't seen it on paper. We are just trying to avoid going to court and if we can at least have some of what is possibly owed there is a chance he could work with us if there was any fault on our side, but either way we just want to make it right, but also be fair on both sides..

After these events and this going on, it obviously hit us hard mentally, emotionally and financially. And being able to pay what the Landlord wants us to pay has made it merely impossible.

Last, we would be so grateful for any help we can get during this difficult time. Anything would help us and also just sharing this would be wonderful. We are a local family trying to make it here.. Thank you so much in advance and also thank you for reading.