This is hosted on behalf of of https://beige.party/@LibertyForward1/115094039887051286, see also Hotel Complaint 2
Imagine you're a single mother with a teenage daughter and limited income, living in an extended-stay style hotel for two years. Then the new hotel manager (landlord essentially) raises your rent nearly $400/month overnight. It's too expensive to stay, too expensive to go. It’s all perfectly legal, of course..
You have to increase income fast to absorb the sudden cost. Coincidentally, the manager can hire you to work the graveyard shift to cover that -- and make you his round-the-clock emotional punching bag.
You and your daughter deal with chronic health issues and rely on food stamps and medicaid.
The sudden added income causes you to lose your public benefits.
Now you’re paying more money for your room than you earn – accumulating arrears of almost half a month’s rent. You’re paying more rent than income. Your epileptic daughter has no insurance. You’re dealing with car troubles.
You’re trapped.
This is the real-life nightmare of Crystal Whittle, one of my fellow guests at our motel, and I’m going to be fundraising to help free her from the grip of a nasty, greedy, petty, incompetent, frumpy little tyrant who relishes in being cruel to already vulnerable, marginalized people.
Speaking of said tyrant, did I mention that his boss, and his boss’s boss will be visiting the motel in the afternoon today?
Later this morning, I’m going to be releasing the contact information for this hotel, its corporate parents and franchise (if I can find anything about them, it’s a very generic acronym), and this incredibly #toxic manager who really isn’t fit to manage a garbage can let alone a three-story hotel.
Mr. manager is going to be quite busy, what with entire sections of ceiling in the lobby missing due to a plumbing disaster this weekend caused by this incompetent, walking Napoleon complex.
But I’m sure as a hospitality expert, he’ll welcome inquiries about the hotel and its amenities. If you’ve donated anything to me in the last two months, perhaps reach out and let him know how you feel that you’ve literally had to donate hundreds of dollars more in order to keep us housed, so that he can inflict the most severe #CPTSD reaction in my partner in almost nine months over the pettiest infraction; and maybe you could express your concerns about entrapping (or is it extorting?) an innocent mother and daughter.
You could even ask to speak with the manager’s boss, or that manager’s boss. You might not be able to reach them, but if you do get in touch with them, as hospitality professionals I’m sure they’d be happy to speak with potential guests. If you have friends or relatives, they could inquire.
All I ask is that you be gracious to any employees you might speak with (besides the manager and his bosses) because they’re also victims in this tragic twist of events.
This man hurt Crystal. He hurt my partner. He’s hurt so many people in this hotel in just a couple of months’ time. He’s robbed people who can’t afford it, just because he can.
We’re tired of being bullied.
My partner and I have been hemming and hawing for a few years now on starting a podcast called “Mutual Misfits Variety Hour”, a silly compilation with the primary aim of raising enough funds by producing the podcast to allow us to not need to constantly begpost.
Perhaps we’ve been waiting for the right moment.
A moment such as now, because I want to interview Crystal for our first episode. She may even join us as a regular contributor or even a third host. What could be better for the pilot episode of a podcast about mutual aid than telling Crystal’s story as well as ours?
I’m hoping the momentum from such a podcast could raise enough money to get Crystal Whittle into a safe, sane housing environment, and also get my partner and me into safe, sane housing as well.
This afternoon, we’re checking out of the motel we’ve called home for more than nine months. For most of that time, it was some of the most peaceful and rejuvenating time my partner and I have ever had.
I may not get any sleep tonight (this morning at this point) between trying to create the biggest social media blitz of my life in order to bring attention to this fight, on top of getting us moved out, and the spare donut tire replaced (so that we can make the couple of trips to get everything there).
I’m going to need some heavy lifting on this later this morning, folks. I know this is typically verboten on the Mastodon/The Fediverse, but I could really use some cross-platform exposure, even the horrible corporate ones (except for X, because eww). Facebook, Instagram, Threads, hell.. Maybe even Myspace.
Help me metaphorically kick this villain in the nuts, and keep two families off the street.