A HOMELESS toolmaker who lost everything overnight revealed he would go back to work next week if he could.
The unidentified man appeared on YouTuber Joe Fish’s channel sharing his story of how he ended up living on the streets of the English Riviera.
The skilled engineer’s life fell apart almost overnight after the pandemic struck in 2020 which prevented him from working.
He’s been eager to get back to his trade ever since.
The homeless man told Joe: “I would go back to work next week if I could have a roof over my head.”
He had previously been a self-employed toolmaker for around three months before the first lockdown.
Unfortunately, this meant he wasn’t eligible for the furlough scheme and hadn’t been self-employed long enough to qualify for a grant.
The man added: ” I went from earning that sort of money to the government giving me about £300 a month.”
Since then, he’s spent nearly four years sleeping rough along the coastline as he tries to “make the best of a bad situation”.
There’s not really any light at the end of the tunnel
Unidentified homeless man
Securing a permanent roof has been challenging for him as you need a local connection to apply for social housing.
Instead, the toolmaker has been forced to find property in the private sector where hundreds of people are also looking for a home.
The unidentified man added that landlords were more likely to house a working couple than a jobless man with his dog and poor credit rating.
The toolmaker is not optimistic about his prospects and doesn’t know when his situation will change.
“There’s not really any light at the end of the tunnel,” he added.
The video went viral on YouTube amassing over 270,000 views in three days.
Thousands of users left comments sharing their sympathy for the homeless people living in Torquay.
It comes after a mum-of-three found herself homeless two years ago and revealed how she and her kids are still living out of suitcases.
Katie Collins, 36, says she and her youngsters haven’t been able to settle in their temporary accommodation – and she can’t cope anymore.
The young family were ‘temporarily’ put into emergency accommodation – a three-bedroom house.
But now, almost two years on, Katie and her youngsters are still waiting for a place to call their own – that they can comfortably fit in.
The mum says they’re living out of bags and suitcases and worry that when they unpack they’ll have to uproot their lives quickly all over again.
She told MEN: “It’s affecting my life so much, it’s really difficult hearing the kids say they hate living here, it’s so stressful to me as a mum not being able to give them stability.
“Every parent wants to spoil their kids at Christmas, I have to explain to mine that they won’t get much at Christmas because we just don’t have the space.”
Katie said she’s holding off getting the operation until the family is settled in an actual home, but that’s again up in the air.
She said she has to carry her daughter up and down the temporary house’s stairs, but due to her own health woes has to “bum shuffle”.
The 36-year-old labelled it “degrading”.
But for now, Katie says she just has to wait.
Unlike Katie, this man said he’s tired of waiting after becoming homeless and being forced to work until he dies.
And a homeless couple are so desperate for a home they have been living in a bus stop.
