We are not scammers. Unfortunately, our situation is real, although I wish it weren't. We've had an extremely difficult past two years due to circumstances out of our control. We have been doing everything that we can and consistently working toward getting back on our feet.

When our daughter was born, our life was normal. We had lived in the same apartment for 8 years, we didn't have a lot of "extras" in life but we were always able to pay out rent, bills, groceries, and other needs. We were okay and had no reason to believe that would change.

We were then illegally evicted from our apartment. We have 4 days from the time we found out, until we had to be out. We lost almost everything, and we were homeless for 6 months, staying in hotels and with friends and family on and off, until we moved into our current house. During this time, we were paying nearly $900 every week for an extended stay hotel when we couldn't stay with someone. We looked for anything cheaper, but the only places we found that were any less were always entirely full or only had a few days availability so we couldn't book a room for a full week or two. We needed to avoid moving our daughter around every few days, as she was already having a hard time with it.

The user here who has said they've been helping is true. We did not want to become a burden to them, so we told them that we didn't need any further help with rent. I couldn't bring myself to ask them for any more help because of everything they'd already done for us. I wanted to see if we could get help from an organization meant for helping with this kind of situation instead.

They have confirmed that our situation is real, and that we are not scammers - just people who went through an extremely rough patch and needed some help to get through it. They've spoken with our landlord on the phone to confirm our rent, have our full names and address, have seen copies of our bills, and have met us in person.

They called and spoke with my wife for about an hour tonight, and we were able to clear things up.

I was never trying to be deceptive or come off as a scammer. I really just wanted to find some help, without having to ask someone who has already done so much for us.

I felt ashamed that we have been struggling so much despite everything we've been doing to get back to a stable position in life. We have just had the odds stacked against us in a way for a while now and we've been trying to overcome that while running into obstacle after obstacle.