I Won $50,000 From a Scratch-Off Lottery Ticket and Bought a House
The New York Times Our downstairs neighbors had been trying to get us evicted.
It was September 2021. I was 22 and working as a paraprofessional at an elementary school in Boise, Idaho, earning $9 an hour. My wages didnt go very far there, so I found a roommate to split the $1,900 monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment just outside the city. We had met one night when her dog, a Rottweiler mix, ran up to play with my dog, Gaspard, a Labrador husky. We were both students I was pursuing a bachelors degree in finance while she was studying medicine.
Things started out fine, but they quickly deteriorated in the way that commonly happens among 20-somethings who find themselves living with incompatible roommates.
Our neighbors initially had minor noise complaints, but things escalated when my roommate started having her friends over. They would get drunk, play rowdy games of Ping-Pong and blast music late into the night. My roommate would also leave her dog in a kennel for more than eight hours at a time, and the dog would howl for someone to let her out. Our neighbors were fed up with the situation and filed formal complaints with our management company to have us evicted.
