Help Imani's Family Stay Housed for Baby's Arrival

My name is Imani and my boyfriend and I will be first time parents as we are expecting a baby girl at the very end of December. Originally, we were excited about this and we moved into our first apartment back in May in order to prepare for babygirl’s arrival. My boyfriend was working for a local golf course and I had just accepted a new job offer at a local fast food chain that had opened a new location in Glen Allen.

Unfortunately, my boyfriend ended up losing his job at the golf course (The Crossing’s Golf Course) due to the owner deciding he wanted to retire and sell the business/company in August. Around this time, I was working at my new job and had just hit 5 months pregnant so I was getting about 12-15 hours a week. (I was paid weekly.) We don’t own a car so when my boyfriend lost his job, all financial obligations fell solely to me while he searched for a new job. I made $17 an hour and at 12-15 hours a week, I was bringing home around $180-$200 a paycheck which really isn’t much, especially when I was paying for expensive ubers back and forth to work, as well as rides for my boyfriend to get to interviews. Whatever I was making I was spending to uber to work which left me with basically no income. I’m also in school to secure a medical certification/degree so that in a few years I’ll be able to make a better income to give my baby a better life and my family a stable home.

Thankfully my income is low enough that I qualify for WIC, SNAP, and Medicaid so I’ve been able to take care of food expenses and prenatal appointments/doctors visits which has saved us some money, and my boyfriend was able to find employment with Brightview (a landscaping company) however we fell behind in rent for the 2-3 months it took him to get an employment offer.

We are looking for assistance with the balance we owe our apartment complex. They issued a writ of eviction for September 30th in the amount of $1337.18 and we were able to pay it off and get it cancelled, but the property manager decided to go ahead with another one just a few weeks later and we finally got the notice on the door today, October 16. We would like to be able to pay to total we owe (pictured above) to give us time to focus on the arrival our daugther and to give me some time to heal after giving birth for the first time. My job doesn’t offer paid maternity leave since I haven’t been employed with them for a full year so we will be relying on my boyfriend’s income for about 6 weeks after I give birth. I’m hoping to receive enough donations to stop the current eviction and pay the owed balance so we can focus on our little family.

We have tried to ask family for assistance but they are dealing with similar situations/the aftermath of the hurricanes so they aren’t in a position to offer us any help and I’ve reached out to my school’s program for student’s facing homelessness but their funding is depleted as are most of the resources they’ve offered as alternatives to being able to assist financially. The one’s that aren’t fully depleted would only offer us assistance if we had a living child under 6 years old, and we don’t qualify for that because i’m currently 7 months pregnant so we technically don’t have a child yet.

We are grateful for any leads on eviction assistance, financial guidance, and any other helpful info you can offer young first time parents in our position as well as donations if you feel it in your heart to do so. Thank you for taking time out of your day to read all of this and for any help or kind words offered, anything truly helps.