On a recent weekday morning as Ashley Fairbanks sat in a salon chair getting her hair done, she put out a call to her 49,000 followers on BlueSky: Twelve families needed their rent paid, urgently.
There was no time for fundraisers or applications for emergency rental assistance; they needed the money now. If anyone had the means to help, she said, they could send money directly to families through Venmo.
Two hours later, those families had their rent paid.
