Tom felt like “everything in the world just stopped” when he was made homeless and lost his job just days before Christmas last year.
The 22 year old, from Birmingham, had been living above a pub with his partner at the time while working on the bar downstairs. But a problem meant he was forced to leave immediately.
“My ex-partner at the time started to steal from the pub. I got involved in some stuff I probably shouldn’t have done, and that caused me to be homeless,” Tom told Big Issue.
“My manager at the time would be in touch with me. She basically told me that me and my partner had to get our stuff out and find somewhere else to live and I started sofa surfing.
“I felt like everything in the world just stopped. It made me feel like I’d lost everything that I was trying to do for myself.”
The blow meant that Tom had to walk away from an NVQ level 2 qualification and shelve dreams to one day run a pub himself.
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But he had a more immediate problem: he and his partner had nowhere to live and it was 10 days before Christmas.
“On the first night I was thinking to myself: “I’m going to have to sleep at a train station or something.” I had nowhere to go,” he said.
Like many others with a support network in that situation, they called on family and friends when facing homelessness.
That involved staying with one of his partner’s friends. That experience of sofa surfing did not go well.
Tom has managed to turn his life around after losing his job and falling into homelessness just days before Christmas. Image: Supplied
“I felt like a burden [when I was sleeping on the sofa] I’ll be honest. I felt like I’m sleeping on my missus’ pal’s sofa and I’m not doing anything to contribute to the house,” said Tom. “It made me feel a little crap and then my partner broke up with me while we were sofa surfing. I was engaged to her and everything. It’s literally like my whole world just stopped.
“I didn’t want to get in the way of how they lived, and they didn’t want to get in the way of how I lived. Plus her friend had a baby as well. The baby was probably three, four, so it was like a manic household. Plus with us there too, it added to their stress as well. That’s what I mean: I felt like a burden.
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“After her friend told us that we had to go, we went and stopped with her mum for a bit. So then we got moved from one place to another. That’s when I reached out to my mum and said: “Mum, you need to come and get me. I’ve had enough. I can’t do it anymore.”
Another turning point came on Christmas Day. Tom was also battling drug addiction at the time and it took his mum’s intervention to give him “the smack in the mouth he needed”.
“I’d also say drugs and alcohol isn’t the answer. I was heavily addicted to cocaine to the point where I was putting maybe £200-£300 a week up my nose. I was heavily into it. It was to escape reality,” he said.
“My relationship with my ex wasn’t really the healthiest of relationships so it was like a coping strategy. It wasn’t until I got out of the relationship that I saw how much it hurt my mum. If it wasn’t for my mum and my stepdad, I’d probably still be in it.
“She literally just looked at me. She was like: ‘Right, if you go back to it, I’m walking away from you.’ I thought I’ve already hurt her once, I can’t do it again. Hearing my stepdad telling me that he listens to my mum cry herself to sleep every night worrying about me. I can’t have that. I can’t do that to my mom. It gave me that smack in the mouth that I needed.”
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That has given Tom a platform to turn his life around. He was given a place to live and the chance to train and get work at a coach station in Birmingham where he works in customer service.
Now he dreams of settling down with his new partner.
“St Basils have been amazing for me. When I first moved in, I thought: ‘Oh shit, I’m going to be living in a hostel.’ I’ve heard what hostels can be like. It’s going to be absolutely awful. I’ve moved in and I can’t fault the place,” said Tom.
“It’s really good. I’ve got a room. I’ve got a kitchen. The only thing is a shared toilet and shower. I’ve got all the stuff I need in my room anyway. They’ve helped me get work. I’ve done employability and development, I’ve done workshops. I love it. One door’s closed but another’s opened for me.
“I got a week’s work experience at the coach station and had a guaranteed interview at the end of it, so that’s what my job is now. It’s customer service, helping with the ticket machines, working on the platforms, telling people where to go, what time, how long they’ve got. I love the interactions with people, meeting all the different people and hearing all the different stories from customers. I got plenty of that in the pub.”
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Like many people experiencing hidden homelessness, it took Tom to reach a point where his living situation became unsustainable and for someone else to intervene to get help.
The lesson he learned was to reach out sooner.
“I’d definitely say reach out and talk to people. I never ask for help but it’s mad how so much help is available and young people don’t know it,” said Tom.
“You could walk into your mate’s house and say: I’m homeless. And they might say: have you seen this place? Or you could walk into a library or somewhere and there could be a sign there saying: ‘struggling with homelessness?’. It’s everywhere. It’s staring you in the face. If you feel you’re going to be homeless, get the help.”
