In 2023, life was good. I was living in my partner’s flat. We had a beautiful daughter. We were engaged and planning our wedding, and planning to grow our family.
Like all relationships, things weren’t always smooth-sailing. We had our struggles but I thought they were things we’d be able to get through. I was wrong.
Our relationship fell apart, and my partner told me she wanted to split up. I was devastated.
Then another reality hit me: I now had nowhere to go.
Though I’d helped her get her flat and I’d been paying towards the rent and bills, we’d never updated the tenancy agreement to include my name. And as she no longer wanted me living there anymore, I had no choice but to leave.
My parents couldn’t believe it when I told them what had happened and with no other options to keep me off the streets, I was forced to spend a few nights on their sofa.
They were as accommodating and as supportive as they could be but they were also clear with me that I couldn’t stay long term.
From there I turned to friends, spending nights sofa-surfing at their different houses. I didn’t know it then but this made me part of a group known as ‘the hidden homeless’ – these are people with no stable home but are not forced onto the streets.
Going from house to house, empty handed, made me feel like a stray dog. It was humiliating – especially as a lot of them had families and kids.
That’s why I always made sure to leave first thing in the morning and only return late at night when I had to. Sometimes I would just walk around the street, to avoid sitting in their home.
Desperate for a place to live – and to move on from this chapter of my life – I’d scour Rightmove and apply for flat after flat. However finding somewhere that would actually take me seemed impossible.
When I turned up to viewings, there would literally be a queue of people also waiting to see the property. A lot of landlords asked for letters to convince them why I would be a good tenant. I found the whole process so disheartening and my salary only made things harder.
At the time I was working as a chef at a children’s nursery and bringing in less than £900 a month – I tried to get overtime, but it mostly wasn’t available – and that made me unappealing to both estate agents and landlords alike.
My worst moment came about in September 2023 when an agent, who was showing me around a small flat that I liked, immediately cut the tour short the moment I mentioned my salary.
When I got back into the car, I just burst into tears. I wasn’t able to see my daughter while I didn’t have a place of my own; so much in my life was going wrong.
I’ve worked since I was 15. I didn’t want any handouts, but I just couldn’t see anywhere else to go. That’s when I registered with the council as homeless.
I was given directions to a homeless shelter and put on a waiting list for a council house (though nothing ever came through) but as soon as I mentioned that I was sleeping on a friend’s sofa, they lost interest in rehousing me.
I’ll never forget one council worker who told me: ‘You’re a grown man, figure it out’.
Believe me, I tried. On top of that, the homeless shelters were too far from my work, so I had no choice but to keep sofa-surfing.
Finally, the council put me in touch with Beam – an organisation that supports people like me into homes and jobs.
They gave me a caseworker, Ben, who would speak to me every single week about my life, my mental state and things I was looking forward to. Whenever I had a bad week or was feeling disheartened about searching for places, he would push me to keep going.
Ben made himself available on WhatsApp or video call whenever I needed him and it made such a difference having someone to keep me motivated and hopeful.
He also encouraged me to start applying for new jobs to increase my salary.
At first I doubted whether I could do this. I wasn’t hopeful. But fortunately, I got a great new job as a chef at a care home, which almost doubled my monthly salary.
That higher salary allowed me to broaden my house search and Ben helped me write cover letters to landlords and manage all the different viewings.
After a year of sofa-surfing, I finally found a small studio that was perfect.
It had space for me and my daughter and a kitchen – basically everything I needed. But my heart sank when I saw the deposit requirements: my bank account was literally empty.
That’s when Beam pulled through again. They paid my deposit, my first month’s rent and even bought me a bed and a sofa bed. Because of their help and generosity, I was able to start off on a good note and build my independence from there.
Finally having a place of my own meant my daughter could now come to visit. When she does, I give her the bed – it’s the first time I’m happy to sleep on a sofa bed – and it feels like hers as much as mine.
With a bit more security and stability, I could also finally start working towards my lifelong dream of owning a food truck.
It would have been so easy to give up on that idea, especially through all the hardship, but even when I was at my lowest, my friend (who I’d always talked about it with) never let me give up hope. He’d even dragged me to garages to look at food trucks for sale while I was house hunting.
Finally, however, I actually had the means to save every penny I could to achieve that goal and after a year, my friend and I had enough to buy our food truck.
That was the moment my life truly turned a corner. It was almost as if once the first good thing happened, it was a ripple effect. I went from struggling, to surviving, to finally thriving.
We called our truck ‘Mzanti Eats’ – from the Zulu slang word meaning ‘down south’ as we’re based in Hemel Hempstead – and sell a combination of English classics and South African cuisine.
Truly, I’ve never been happier. But I also know there are so many people just like me out there who are ‘hidden homeless’.
No doubt they’ll feel that the cards are stacked against them. That landlords won’t rent to them because their income is too low, but also that the council won’t help because they’re not on the street. It feels like a hopeless position.
They’ll be jumping from sofa to sofa with nowhere secure to rest their head each night, but they won’t look homeless – I know I certainly didn’t, but my situation was killing me.
Had I not found Beam I don’t know what state my life would be in today, but finding them, and simply knowing that someone cares made, and can make, all the difference.
With the right support, the right push to make changes, and the right people, there is a path out of homelessness, you just have to be brave enough to walk it.
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