My name is Patrick Potter and I’m the owner of comic World in Largo Florida.
I am a store owner but I am a stroke survivor and I had the stroke right before the pandemic.
My wife and I were supposed to purchase a house and we had prepaid the first year of rent and I paid the next 5 months of rent and we got government money to help us out for a few months but the landlord instead of wanting to work with our lender which was Republic Bank, claimed she didn’t like our lender and that we were taking too long to purchase the house and the pandemic was no excuse and so she canceled the sales agreement and she canceled our rental agreement and she filed eviction papers and filed papers to defy the CDC eviction moratorium and would not give us enough time to pack everything and move out in an orderly fashion.
I offered to pay her extra money. Literally $200 for four days just to have the time to pack everything and move it into storage. She vindictively brought in her Squad and at our stuff thrown down to the road and thrown on a dumpster truck. This is our personal stuff now. My kids moved a bunch of stuff into storage but they only loaded one truck and a vehicle. We had friends load their vehicles and my wife and I used our car and made multiple trips for 3 days literally spending up to 12 hours a day digging through the mountain of debris that was our life and we retrieved everything we could and brought it to the comic book store and I’m trying to open for business and customers are trying to maneuver around boxes and tables and bookcases that belong in my house.
We’re trying to raise money to help pay bills and at the same time, Duke Energy turned our power off in November and would not take payments. Because of the covid, they said they would take payments but when push came to shove they refused our offer of payments demanding $1,886 in one lump sum. We cannot open the account under another name at this address. We have no power in the store and on a day like today it was 85 degrees in the store and I was practically ready to drop. If I had a house I would be at the house. Tomorrow it’s going to be hot and I’m going to have to go to the library or something because there’s no way I can sit here in this heat and suffer again.
But we’re trying to raise money and sell books and we have fundraisers out there and if we can come up with enough money we can get the power turned back on. Plus we’re looking to get into a house. Hoping that we can put a deposit down and maybe do a buy owner if we can find someone.
We’re looking for a reputable real estate agent and somebody who is knowledgeable who can maneuver all the problems we are experiencing. Don’t know if we need a lawyer because there is an eviction now on the public record and we probably need to get that taken off. So we probably do need a good lawyer. Since you’re a journalist in the comic book industry maybe you can put the word out there and we can Network and something can happen.
If that’s a possibility please let me know.
Thank you.
If you are a real estate agent, attorney or can just generally lend some help you can contact Patrick on Facebook here… Facebook.com/Patrick.Potter
If you can give, you can help out here… Facebook.com/donate and here… GoFundMe.com or for direct support Patrick’s PayPal is apotte5@live.spcollege.edu
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