Hi everyone. I just received some bad news last night that I've really been dreading for quite a while. Our landlord messaged me and said that he needs to raise our rent by a huge amount and that he has several other people interested in our house; and at least one that is willing to pay $900/ month more than what we currently pay! >__< We have been renting this house since 2020 and have been ideal tenants. I've done lots of home improvement work and spend a lot of time every day doing things to keep the house clean and looking nice. Originally we payed $2200/ month which included all utilities, internet, lawn care, landscaping, and snow plowing in winter. After paying that for close to two years we let our landlords know that it was really too much for us. They said they were open to negotiating and shockingly ended up dropping our rent to $1600/ month! They said that we could negotiate again in about a year but that never happened and they kept it at $1600 ever since.

I have been greatly struggling to support myself for quite a while now and have been barely getting by on occasional eBay sales, odd jobs for friends and some art commissions. Unfortunately I've never really been able to capitalize on my art since I've always been a perfectionist and have always undercharged for the amount of time I spend on each piece. Our rent has been split almost equally with me and my roommate of 8 years paying $500/ month and my boyfriend paying $600/ month. I have always wanted to find one more person to move in with us so we could split the rent 4-ways but I haven't had any luck with that.

Our landlord and his wife are coming over tomorrow to see if we can negotiate a price that works for both of us; otherwise they will be giving us 90-day eviction papers. I really have no idea what to do and I haven't been able to find any other houses that would be comparable. Any listings I see require either a single tenant or married couple to have an income of at least twice the rent amount and none of us would qualify. The other big issue is that most rentals I've found don't allow pets, and if they do, they charge an absurd amount to be able to have one. A listing I looked at today said that the tenant could have a single small dog for a $500 non-refundable deposit PLUS AN EXTRA $200 PER MONTH!! What the actual fuck?!? We have two very well behaved indoor cats and our current landlords specifically said that we could have cats or dogs when we moved in since they are also animal lovers. There was no additional fee.

If anyone has any helpful insight, it would be extremely helpful. We've never had a written lease which I've been told is actually in our favor since we've lived here for 5 years and have kept the house in excellent condition. I completely understand that raising the rent is a normal thing and is certainly justifiable with the high tax increases thanks to our glorious leader. But it's incredibly sad that the prospect of more money cancels out the rapport I thought I had built with our landlords over the 5 years we've lived here.

If I could still find another roommate who would fit in with our group and could pitch in an equal amount towards rent, that would be awesome! Ideally someone who likes board games, art, anime, music and nature and is willing to pitch in a bit with housework or at least always pick up after themselves. Being a good cook would also be a HUGE bonus since I currently make all of our dinners.

I do have a job lined up that I'll be starting soon so I'll at least have some good income but it would still be a lot nicer to have someone else to pitch in. We have a large 5 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom house with an excellent layout for multiple people so I've worked very hard to hold onto it.

Lastly, to the people I still owe art to, I will make things right with you as soon as I'm able. With all of the stress I've been under and constantly having to do things for other people, I just haven't been in the right headspace to be able to accomplish much drawing. I really hope that things will start to get better but everything feels very uncertain right now.

If anyone would like to make a contribution to our housing fund, it can be done here through my Ko-Fi page -> https://ko-fi.com/jamthecat

Thanks for reading and thanks for everyone's support! <3