Story

Hello, my name is LaJuanda M, and I would greatly appreciate being considered as a candidate for a Begslist donation.I am a single mother of 3 beautiful daughters; my older 2 are grown and out of the house but my youngest, who just turned 16 on Thanksgiving lives with me at an extended-stay hotel. I ended up here in April 2024 after I lost my Section 8 housing in November 2023 due to an eviction. My lease was renewed, and my rent went up but my full-time employment income remained unchanged. So I put everything we could salvage into storage, placed my daughter with her father; just temporarily until I could secure housing for us again and I moved in with my mother. Well, those arrangements didn’t work out so well at all. My ex had her late to school, picked her up from school late every day, didn’t feed her properly and to top it off, told her she was a mistake and that she had to find somewhere else to go after accusing her of stealing $20.00 and his earbuds. (later it was found out that his roommate stole his items and no apology was given either). This all happened within 72 hours, so I left work early, went to my ex’s apartment, gathered all my daughter’s belongings except her bed, and brought her to my mom’s house with me. Meanwhile, living at my mom’s house, she made me feel so unwelcomed by reminding me daily that I wasn’t on her rental lease and she wasn’t going to lose her home because of us. Mind you, I paid her $500/month, bought all the groceries, and cooked quite frequently during our stay there. We slept on an air bed in her living room. She has a 2-bedroom house, but her other room was made into her home office that she was not willing to convert into a temporary room for us to sleep in during our stay. We didn’t get much sleep and no privacy. Every time she left the house, it was through the living room and noisy, so we had to deflate the bed and just sit at the dining room table a lot. The constant stress from our living situation started taking a huge toll on our mental health. My daughter’s grades had slipped and my work productivity had slowed down. I knew we could last much longer living there. I couldn’t take being picked on, ridiculed, and criticized by my mother as she would do this in front of my daughter. So I started researching rentals for us, but with a fresh eviction on my record, no one would approve me. Next, I started looking into extended-stay hotels and found a nice one. The rate was a little high at $435/ weekly ($1740/monthly) but I was determined to make this work for us, just to get a breather and regroup. By this time, I had obtained a better paying job so I thought we would be ok until I was able to get my money up and give my housing record a little time before applying again. While all this was going on, I used my income tax refund from this year (2024) to purchase a little hooptie for cash at an auction. I needed transportation to get back and forth to this new job that was 25 miles one way from the hotel. Before I obtained wheels, I was taking 1 train, 1 bus, and a rideshare each way every day, 5 days a week. Well at the end of April, I had just had it, my daughter crying a lot, depressed and I was just making it day by day decided to take a leap of faith and move into the hotel. I was paying $870.00/bi-weekly on my paydays and what was left over went for food, gas, and other necessities. We were doing great for a few weeks until the accident. The accident happened on May 13th and turned my world upside down in a blink of an eye. I’ll never forget, it was the day after Mother’s Day when I loaned my middle daughter, my little car to use for door dashing to make extra money. We had been sharing my little car to help each other through this rough patch. My daughter was sitting at a red light waiting for it to change when a Dodge Charger came speeding up from behind, lost control, and plowed into my car; pushing her into the intersection and thus totaling my car. It was no longer drivable. The impact alone pushed my hatchback (trunk) into my backseat and shattered my back windows. My muffler and undercarriage parts were broken off in the street. By the grace of God my daughter wasn’t seriously injured; just a stiff neck and back and a few bruises. Thank God she was wearing her seatbelt and the airbags deployed. After she and the other driver were sent to the hospital by ambulance, the police didn’t tow my car but instead moved it out of the street onto a privately owned lot where it was subsequently stripped down by neighborhood thugs and then stolen off the lot for scrap. I tell you, I can’t make this up. I have to laugh sometimes to keep from crying. So now I’m back car-less and again, I work 25 miles one way away from the hotel; it is back to train, bus, and rideshares, and many times the buses are canceled last minute so I am forced to rideshare all the way to work ($$$$). For the next 6 months, while enduring DMV backlogs, titling issues, and brick walls with the other driver’s insurance carrier, I finally was offered $5700 in September; $3000 lower than what was first offered because I had no vehicle to turn over to them. That’s not my fault though, it was wrecked, stripped, and then scrapped. In the meantime, while going back and forth with work, insurance delays, and everything else coming up, I started to fall behind on my room rent because I had to decide on getting to and from work or having a place to stay. I would put what I had leftover from payday on the room but it’s steadily going back up with each nightly rate. I went ahead and took the offer of $5700, and used $2500 as a down payment on a more reliable vehicle cause I do work far. The finance company wouldn’t take anything less. I paid a few bills off and paid back people that I had borrowed money from with the rest. There was a lot at all left to put towards my room rent and by this time I was several thousand dollars in arrears. Like I don’t know how it got this high so fast. So I started reaching out to housing agencies in my area for assistance-none available, taking out a loan-denied, and also I just financed a vehicle; the debt ratio was high. I couldn’t keep borrowing from family and friends cause I gotta pay them back.

As of today, February 25th, 2025, I owe Mainstay Suites $9500. Right now, we are hotel-hopping again because we were evicted from the hotel on January 8th. The front office called me to come meet with the General Manager before going to work. When I got in-office, the police were waiting for me to escort my daughter and I off the premesis.This is a business and not a shelter, so I can’t be mad that I was evicted from there. My older daughters can’t accommodate us, my only aunt lives about 15 more miles past my job and other family members have passed away or live in other states. It’s just we have nowhere else to go but a shelter, living in my car or another hotel. None of which are safe and that has me extremely worried. I work the afternoon shift so I can’t leave my 16-year-old daughter alone with those strange men in a hotel or a shelter (human trafficking) nor can I leave her outside in my car while I’m inside working. I can’t do that to her, she’s already lost her bedroom, her bed, comfort, stability, and privacy. Living with her father did NOT work out, going back to my mom’s is NOT an option. So I sit here in our hotel room on the couch nightly, while my daughter sleeps, praying, crying, and asking for guidance, a solution, a blessing…financial help to get me outta this situation and our lives back on track.

My wish is to pay off this hotel bill because they have a pending court case for 3/31/25. Also, I would appreciate alil extra for security deposit and 1st month’s rent on a new home. I see a light at the end of the tunnel hopefully sooner than later in finally securing a home for us… a permanent home. I know other families are going through worse situations than myself, however,I would graciously ask that my daughter and I be considered for the donation and I thank you for reading my story and God Bless you all for thinking of us.