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Help a disabled trans woman keep her house and survive

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In short: I'm a disabled trans woman, underemployed most of my life, no college degree but working on it, living in a home I "own" with my polycule but barely managing to keep, multiple leaks in the roof and major cracks in the walls, and a socialist organizer, and I badly need some help. Ok, in long:

I'm a 31-year-old disabled trans woman, severely underemployed, currently in my senior year of a Bachelor's of Science program, living with 2 of my partners. We own our house together and have been struggling to save money in order to make needed repairs -- we have lots of leaks, from a few windows and a few places in our roof. A roofer friend said we'd need to replace the whole roof, and we need a lot of masonry work to fix the window leaks. We bought this house after getting kicked out of the place we'd been renting for nearly 9 years because the owners wanted to renovate it, and because rental prices had gone up so much outside our lease-fixed increase rate, we determined it would be cheaper to buy a house with some problems than to rent anywhere. However, the place we bought ended up having problems that weren't disclosed by the seller, which we didn't discover until the snow season, which we didn't attempt to sue about because we don't have money for that.

While I have over a decade of work experience, mostly in food service and manual labor, I've struggled to find adequate employment for the last two years since quitting being shift supervisor at Starbucks a couple of years ago. I quit because I could no longer handle the physical or sensory demands of that job, which meant I couldn't work in the main industry I'd relied on for all of my adult life.

I suffer from fibromyalgia and possibly developing psoriatic arthritis -- I have psoriasis, treated and generally under control, but I also have widespread chronic pain that often becomes intolerably sharp in different areas at different times, which inhibits my ability for movement. I also suffer from chronic migraines, extreme difficulties with sleep and relaxing in general. This all started getting a lot worse about 4 years ago. I quit drinking at the time and honestly, I think losing that anesthetic worsened my nerve issues, but I'm certainly not going to resume drinking. I'm in constant, brain-fogging pain and have to spend a lot of time lying down, and I have severe sleep issues.

I started college about 4 and a half years ago because of the COVID-19 quarantine shutting down the food and beverage service industry and, eventually, increased funding given in unemployment, enabling me to focus on school for that first semester with sufficient welfare to get by. I returned to work in Spring 2021, getting a shift supervisor job at Starbucks. My migraine and movement control issues exacerbated quickly, I frequently injured myself and dropped things, putting others at risk. So I went on short-term disability, started seeing new specialists, and hoped to figure out a kind of work I could do that would be more accommodating to my disabilities.

I'd been working a temporary, minimum-wage, part-time student assistanceship with my school library at the time, helping build out an Open Education Resources program, helping faculty find and produce Creative Commons-licensed materials to reduce cost for students. After a year of doing that, I started a different temporary, minimum-wage, part-time student assistanceship doing IT at the state comptroller's office. All the while, I used my new resume padding in IT, design, and communications to try to find actual jobs doing those things, as well as applying to jobs in the video game industry, as my school program was a Bachelor's of Science in Simulation and Game Design. Still, it's now been 3 years since I've landed a real job. i mostly apply to work-from-home things but so far no luck. I'm in another minimum-wage, part-time student assistanceship, now for a research library and archive, while working very rarely doing bartending for a wedding catering company, although every shift I've worked with them has been extremely painful, injuring me for days and making me lose attendance at work and school.

I pay $400/month into the mortgage I share with my 2 partners, one of whom makes a decent income as a comms person for a union -- they cover most of the mortgage and aren't able to save or spend much otherwise, but their bosses fucking suck and they are fairly sure they are being pushed into resigning, which is terrifying because we cannot hold onto this house if they lose their income.

Our last power and gas bill (from the fucking evil BGE, which raises prices every year) was over $500. My income is about $800/month; my food stamps cover much of our food, but the rest of my income is spent entirely on utilities and other needs. Because my work is a paid internship tied to my school enrollment, I won't be paid for my work over winter break, meaning I won't be seeing any income until mid-February except what I can make illicitly and via begging.

So yeah, I'm asking for help. The price of the goal is based on the following needs:
  • $400 rent for February - covered!
  • $100 for some bras and thermals - covered!
  • $1000 for a decent bike (i don't have transportation, and Baltimore's transit system is growing but not great, and i badly need exercise to make myself stronger and mitigate pain-induced weakening and sensitization)
  • $10,000 to put toward us having our walls fixed and potentially for a down-payment for a new roof, or at least for getting it patched
  • Anything over this will also go toward us getting our roof replaced, unless my partner loses their job, in which case it will go toward our mortgage

Things have gotten very dire in my personal life and in our political system. I'm very scared of where things are going for trans rights. I've dedicated a lot of my time to political struggle for much of my adult life, especially in fighting for Palestinian and trans rights and for socialism in general these last few years. I've managed to keep this up while applying for jobs, going to school part-time, working very part-time, and seeing as many specialists as possible for trying to get my worsening chronic pain and impairment treated. But I'm hitting a giving-up point, I can't keep up with shit anymore, so while I'm asking for help, I know I need to back off some things. I'm going to apply for SSDI and state short-term disability and probably quit hoping I'll get a new job when I know I wouldn't be able to keep up with it anyway, and I'm going to back off of how much time I put into political work.

Alright, this is a mess, but I greatly appreciate any help anyone can give. Thx for your time.
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Donations 

  • Anonymous
    • $355
    • 9 hrs
  • Diane M Meeker
    • $200
    • 9 hrs
  • Deborah Kenna
    • $200
    • 9 hrs
  • Alexandria Sweeney
    • $20
    • 1 d
  • Anonymous
    • $15
    • 2 d
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Organizer

ida kenna
Organizer
Baltimore, MD

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