HELP GHOST FAMILY HOUSE RECOVER FROM A SQUATTER

HELP GHOST FAMILY HOUSE RECOVER FROM A SQUATTER

Ghost Family House is a new art residency and community performance space where ancestors welcome you from the trees. Rest and safety in a family house is not a privilege all creatives have access to. After 10 years of working to save the family home in which one of the founders was raised, we re-claim the home for the queer, bipoc and ally chosen family we want to create. We support artists from marginalized populations in Richmond, Va.

UPDATE:

WE WON OUR PERMIT APPEAL! This means we are reducing the amount we need to raise, since we no longer are required to put up a fence! Instead of raising $10,000 we are raising $4,000. That means we are more than half way there!

We Need Your Help

In Summer 2023 Ghost Family House and the Airbandb that supports it, was approved for a conditional use permit to host guests. This permit was granted an extension for one year because the owner is a low-income educator, so that funds from the airbandb over the course of the year could pay for the privacy fence the county was requiring. The airbandb and fence are essential to making Ghost Family House, an art residency and art community a reality. We need the fence, a more than $7,000 expense, for our permit. Unfortunately, we suffered an attack of a squatter that misused the tenant laws intended to support historically marginalized communities instead damaged our ability to cover the costs we had budgeted to support our community by occupying our source of income. Further, this added additional legal and repair fees that set us even farther behind our goals. Please support the future of our project with your donation! We only have till August 26, 2024 to erect the fence!

Ways to support us all available through this link:

-Share this page

-Donate,

-Come to one of our summer fundraising events

-Volunteer

-Stay at our airbandb

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The Whole Story:

In Early September 2023, we received a message from an online Facebook group that supported queer housing in Richmond. It was a response to an ad for a one month sublet. This was a scam. The stranger from the internet, upon meeting one of our community members to be shown the room arrived with a Uhaul and the intention to move on site immediately knowing that the homeowner was out of town. They manipulated our community, using lies and pulling at heart strings so as to be given a key and “safe shelter” with the intention of living there far longer than a month. Clearly, we care about the populations we support and our mission is providing safe space, we were not however aware that this occupant was an expert at VA landlord tenate law and their stories had been practiced. They knew (and we didn’t) that if they could get on the property without a lease AND refuse to sign one once presented, that they could argue in court for their continued occupancy. The homeowner was not even aware they were moving onto the property, so they couldn’t be given a lease when they occupied. They wielded the tenate protections that were initially written to protect low income renters in our community to take advantage of a low income home-owner trying to build a community that would support historically marginalized populations.

This went on for 6 months. The Ghost Family House community had to hire a lawyer and file multiple unlawful detainers to try to evict the occupant. The airbandb was occupied by a squatter, and the income that would be applied to the fence was lost. Additionally, we incurred loss of more than a $1,300 in lawyer and court fees. Finally, they have gone, but the ramifications to our project and livelihoods are immense. We live and work in Ghost Family House and the stress of having a squatter in our home, damaged more than just our financial sustainability.

Please consider helping us recover lost funds and get our community project back on track by donating today.

Upcoming Events and Other Ways to Support