Parting the Red Sea

This one is going to be a wild ride…so get ready.

The following story isn’t meant to bash any establishment or person, but to showcase my personal struggle and how God was able to come through for me during a difficult time.

It was a time when I felt I had been purposefully led somewhere and then abandoned. Stuck. No way to escape. And through this story, I’ve learned that it’s in these moments when God shows up the most.

So without further ado, here’s my Red Sea story.

Before Erik and I moved and bought our first house together, we lived in an apartment. Landlords aren’t always the most amazing people, but as a result, they sometimes provide the best stories.

Now I’d lived in 2 other apartments before this one, so I knew what I was doing… or so I thought. Poor Erik, who had never rented an apartment in his life, just trusted I knew what was up. And for the most part I did, but I hadn’t ever dealt with malicious property managers who rarely acted fairly.

If any of this sounds dramatic, I promise I’m not exaggerating.

Erik and I moved into CityWalk in April of 2021 (although he didn’t join me until after our wedding in September). The interior was very nice and modern, and it was just enough room for us as newlyweds with no kids and our one cat. 

We had no idea of the drama that would ensue.

As a precursor, I met another resident in the disorganized mailroom one day, and she asked me if I was in the facebook group. I told her I wasn’t. She said I’d join soon enough, and then she said:

“They’re awful. They won’t let me leave. I’m stuck here, and there’s nothing I can do – they never let you leave!”

To say I thought this lady was exaggerating greatly would be an understatement. What did she mean? Apartments can’t just hold you prisoner… I told Erik about this woman later, laughing at how dramatic she had sounded.

It wasn’t long until I understood what she actually meant.

We didn’t really have any major issues until November of 2021… which is where the saga really begins.

The property manager at the time (let’s call her “Amanda”), rapped on our door. When I answered, she introduced herself as the new property manager and informed me that our lease was up in 6 months. Therefore, we should sign a renewal now for another year-long lease term. I asked her if we could do a 6 month term, and she said no. Throughout the whole conversation, she was incredibly nice. Just very pushy. Long story short, she pressured us into signing for another year. Now we were theoretically locked in until April 2023. 

Fast forward to February of 2022, when we started casually house-hunting. We went into the leasing office and asked what we could do in the event we needed to break our lease. 

Amanda told us they had no buy-out option – so no way at all to break our lease. However, she told us if we found someone to take over our lease, they’d take over whatever time we had left on our lease at the price we had locked in. Sounded like it would be easy enough to do and Amanda even said she’d help us when the time came. So, reassured, we continued house hunting.

(We never got a signed copy of our renewal. At this meeting with Amanda, we asked about it and she then went and printed it off of Docusign and gave it to us. It became incredibly important later.)

In April of 2022, we found and moved forward on the house we live in now! It was a great feeling, but we still needed to get out of our lease. I contacted the leasing office and let them know we bought a house, and that we’d be finding someone to take over our lease as soon as possible.

Another woman (I’ll call her Jane), responded and informed me that Amanda no longer worked for CityWalk and she was the new property manager. She told me that it wasn’t possible to get someone to take over our lease. I was frustrated since Amanda had told me I could, and that’s the main reason we felt safe to start house hunting. Jane then told me that if we found someone to rent our specific unit at the market price for a year (so, not our discounted rate and shorter term at that point), she would let us break our lease.

Basically, if we did her job for her and found entirely new renters to replace us, we could leave. It was an annoying situation, but we didn’t really have a choice. I posted our apartment on Facebook marketplace, and we even offered to gift $2,400 to whomever rented our apartment, effectively knocking down the monthly price by $200.

After several weeks to a month, I had a few people who were interested. They applied, and they were all rejected by CityWalk for various, nit-picky reasons. It was incredibly frustrating. It was almost like CityWalk was determined to keep us trapped…

It was time for another meeting with Jane. 

Jane sat and stared at us like she literally despised us (I wish I was joking) while we tried to explain our situation to her and gain her sympathy. I asked if we could put up signs at the leasing office to advertise. She said no. I asked if people were looking for 1 bed 1 bath apartments. She said yes. I then asked if she could help us out by mentioning our offer to people who came in and were looking for apartment floor plans like ours. And she said no.

I still remember how angry I felt when she looked me in the eyes and said,

“You guys are guaranteed rent. Why would I try and rent out your unit to anyone new who comes in?”

It was then abundantly clear that we were going to get literally zero help from these people… in fact, it appeared they were intent on opposing us as much as possible. 

We bent over backwards, trying to do anything we could do in our power to fix the situation. All the while feeling cheated and lied to by our landlords. But that was the issue. We were doing everything in OUR power. We definitely prayed a lot, but if I’m being honest, I was trusting more in what I thought I could control myself.

For hours, we scoured our lease for any possible loophole… there were none to be found. If we didn’t get out of this lease, we’d lose roughly $15,000. 

By the end of June, it was looking like things were never going to work out. Every applicant we found was rejected, and the CityWalk kept changing the game on us.

I was incredibly dejected. I knew God had told us to move to the new house, and that buying it was what He wanted for us. It very much reminded me of when God rescued the Israelites from Egypt, and led them right to the Red Sea. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Pharaoh decided he wanted them back and gathered an army to chase them down. I’m sure they were all thinking like I was.

“God you TOLD US to go here, and now we’re stuck with nowhere to go! Why in the WORLD would you lead us here and then leave us in this terrible spot?”

The Israelites were stuck. Trapped. If they went forward, there was the Red Sea. If they turned back, there was Pharaoh’s army, chasing them down. There was nothing they could do. 

I felt like God had led us into this, but I clung to the story from Exodus, knowing that if God had led us to the edge of the Red Sea with seemingly nowhere to run, that surely He would find a way to part it – just like He did for the Israelites so long before. I prayed He would part our Red Sea, too.

Giving credit where credit is due, my mom finally gave us this thought. The money we were going to lose wasn’t really OUR money. All of our money belongs to God. So we made a decision. 

If we got out of this lease, we’d give away the $15k. All of it. To whatever charity (or charities) we felt led to give to. It was God’s money. He could choose where He wanted it to go – to CityWalk, or somewhere else. In the end, the money wasn’t ours either way.

The incredible peace that fell over me after we made that decision was overwhelming. I felt like we’d truly given everything over to God, and for the first time since we had started this endeavor, I felt like I actually trusted Him with the whole situation.

So finally, as a last-ditch effort, I decided to contact HOMELINE – a tenant hotline. By some fluke, I couldn’t find our printed copy of our renewal, so I found it on Docusign and sent that PDF over to HOMELINE. They called me back and told me that the renewal I signed had no end date and was therefore a month-to-month contract. Therefore, we could break it at any time we pleased.

“But the physical copy they have, and the one they gave to me, has an end date on it” I protested, too skeptical to believe it was this easy.

“Yes, but the renewal you signed, which has the same Docusign ID, doesn’t. That means they added it after the fact. And that’s illegal. That’s fraud.”

I was stunned. I guess it really could be that easy. The digital copy also didn’t have Erik’s signature on it, but the physical one did… However, the page with his signature had a different Docusign ID, and I realized his signature page had come from a voided document. This was another act of fraud.

With our evidence in hand, we emailed the office and informed them that although we could sue them, what we really wanted to do was just peacefully leave at the end of August. They quickly said we could leave whenever we wanted, and we celebrated the victory.

We have since forgiven the CityWalk employees for their behavior in our hearts, but trust is another thing. After a lot of research and from talking to many others in situations like ours, it appears that CityWalk is a pretty corrupt business and their main goal often seems to be financial gain at all costs – even if it’s illegal. The parent company is called The Connor Group, and Erik and I highly recommend you steer clear of any apartment properties owned by these groups.

In the end, we got to move when we wanted to, and only made a house payment and rental payment in the same month once (which was ideal for moving everything). We got 100% of our deposit back too.

And most importantly, in all of this, I was reminded that my God does fight for me. I’m often too busy trying to take control or fix everything on my own to notice. But when God calls you to the promise land and brings you to a Red Sea, He’ll always part it. In His own timing.

 

Until Next Time,
Hope Anderson

 

Photo by Sandro Gautier on Unsplash