Harassment: Gail Savage, 29, from Indianapolis, Indiana, has claimed her landlord asked her to spend the night with him after she told him she couldn’t afford to pay rent after losing her job amid the pandemic
A single mother has revealed that her landlord asked to spend the night with her after she told him she had lost her bartending job amid the coronavirus pandemic and couldn’t afford rent.
Gail Savage, a 29-year-old bartender and burlesque performer who lives in Indianapolis, Indiana, told BuzzFeed News that she has been out of work since the state shutdown occurred on March 16.
But when the mom, who has a two-year-old son, Salem, told her landlord that she was out of work and would be unable to pay her rent until her federal stimulus check arrived, she was stunned when he asked her to ‘stay all night’ with him.
In a screenshot of the text conversation, which Savage shared with Buzzfeed, the landlord can be seen asking her whether she was going to spend the night with him, before further elaborating when Savage questioned his intentions.
‘So…you gonna stay all night?’ he wrote.
Savage initially thought he had sent her the suggestive text message by mistake.
‘What do you mean? I don’t know if you meant to send that to me,’ she responded.
‘I did,’ he replied.
She texted him back to say she didn’t understand what he meant or where he wanted her to stay, prompting him to reiterate.
Crossing the line: A DailyMail.com recreation of Savage’s text exchange with her landlord shows suggestive messages he sent her, but he claims they were a ‘misunderstanding’
‘Stay wit me tonight…get a shot of that,’ he wrote, later adding: ‘U don’t want to…I understand…’
‘I don’t understand. Are you asking me in a sexual way?’ she finally asked.
‘Yes,’ her landlord replied.
Savage ended up fleeing her apartment in fear that night without having any idea where she was going to go.
‘The second I figured out it was happening, it was the craziest thing: I put Salem in his car seat and walked out the door,’ she told BuzzFeed. ‘I was like, I don’t know where I’m going, but I can’t stay. I was scared.’
The mom has been working with Amy Nelson, the executive director of the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana, and she is looking to take legal action against her landlord, though she hasn’t filed anything to date.
Moving on: Savage has since found another apartment in Indianapolis, and she is hoping to pursue legal action (stock image)
Savage said she had to stay in her apartment for nearly a month after she was allegedly harassed because she didn’t have any money to move.
She insisted her landlord was ‘preying’ on her because knew wasn’t working and had few options, but he claims he was texting his ex-wife at the same time and meant to send the messages to her.
He told BuzzFeed News they were a ‘joke’ and ‘a misunderstanding,’ saying that ‘something got confused, that’s all.’
A real estate agent who is friends with Savage helped her find a two-bedroom apartment amid the pandemic that was $300 more a month, but they adjusted the price to match her previous rent.
‘He picked the wrong person because I’m equipped for this,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to allow him to do this to me or anyone else.’
Source: dailymail US
