Help me & my girlfriend find a new place to live
Donation protected
Hi folks, I'm Shane Rounce. I'm currently renting in Sheffield (South Yorkshire, United Kingdom), but have recently been told by my landlord that he is selling our flat which leaves me, my girlfriend (and our Dog, Ozzy) with until the end of the year and zero resources to find somewhere to live before we become homeless. This sucks, after years of terrible experiences and paying over £50k rent on our flat over the last 6 years, with little to no consideration towards repairs we've asked for from our landlord. I'm just absolutely destroyed by it all.
We really need to find somewhere that will take us and our dog as he is essential to my mental health and wellbeing. It is very hard to find rentals as a dog owner and being self-employed makes it even more impossible. The rental market at the moment is very difficult to navigate. There are barely any properties available and most listings have 10+ people applying for the same one. I've set this page up because I am self-employed I get asked for several months rent upfront, which I cannot afford.
£3000 would be enough for 3 months upfront and associated expenses. The average cost of a two-bedroom house/flat in Sheffield (with a small garden for our Dog) is around £700-900 pcm. Due to working from home, I require space to set up desks and computers and such, to be able to do my work. We'd be willing to go with a one-bedroom property and use the living room as my home office, but the chances of finding one of those with a garden are probably slim to none.
Here's a breakdown of my life so far, just to give you all some context into key low points that got me where I am today. Because it truly just is consistent waves of meh that got me here.
- 6 years old: Had several traumatic incidents occur late at night which sparked off the start of my sleep disorder, which has gotten worse as I've gotten older - requiring me to be self-employed as I have little to no control over when and how often I sleep (some weeks I only sleep 3 nights a week). These incidents involved a close family member being hospitalised and me spending years of my life visiting them after school but I'd rather not go into more detail than that publicly.
- 7 years old: Lived briefly in a transit van outside my primary school while my Dad has us on a Council waiting list to find a new home.
- 18 years old: I basically broke my back (fell 2 stories onto a metal bike lock pole when parkour training - misplaced my foot and put my weight on the air) and I've been in severe pain with it ever since.
- Also, 18 years old (2 weeks later): My younger brother, Daniel, took his own life. It's hard to put into words how much this affected me, above all else. No matter how many people I have around me, there's forever going to be a sense of loneliness I cannot shake.
- 28 years old: I'd worked my ass off building a project for a client that ran a community center/gym for people of all ages (but mostly younger people). I was severely underpaid for my work and denied payment for additional time on the project. I was obviously gutted that I'd been ripped off but 3 months later I found out why, the dude was undergoing prosecution for a crime that he then was convicted of. Finding out this triggered this series of events and kicked off the last 5 years of my life, which have just been a downhill spiral of misery (other than getting my Dog, Ozzy, and the short stints of time I get to spend with Becky, when she's not working).
- The COVID era: Well, what can I say here. At the start of Covid I'd been essentially living the lockdown lifestyle for 4 years already. Since the stuff mentioned in the previous point had taken so long to recover from, in terms of the mental toll it took on me, I'd really not earned much in recent years. Because self-employed people were only able to make claims based on their previous years' earnings I did not think I was eligible for anything and didn't try to claim for ages. When I eventually did try and claim the last bit of available funds, it went through too late, so I tried to claim Universal Credit but, because Becky had to work so hard to pick up my "slack" and we were required to make the claim together, I wasn't able to claim anything there either. So I've had no financial support beyond the few bits of work I've managed to pull in here and there. This has meant that paying over £700 a month for our flat (plus a lot more to pay bills, council tax, utility debts and so on) has crippled us financially, leading to days on end where we've not even been able to get the gas and electric on (further affecting my health with my damaged spine). Rebekah now works 12hr shifts at The Royal Mail but the money we both bring in isn't anywhere near enough to have saved anything up for situations like this. The business below our flat was also converted to a Wine Bar during lockdown, so we had consistent construction noise below us the entire time and, due to to my sleep disorder, I generally sleep during the daytime. So yeah, I'd just about mentally recovered at the start of Covid and then I was told to continue to stay indoors, at a point when I seriously needed to start getting outside again.
- Meeting our landlord: So yeah, we literally lived here for 6 years and only ever had any communication with the lettings agents. When the Landlord did eventually show up, I thought it was going to be to check out and sort many of the much-needed repairs that this flat needs. It turns out he just wanted to make sure the place was in a fit state to sell to the owner of The Wine Bar below our flat. He showed up, was super nasty to us (to the extent that he said he hopes our Dog dies, despite having permission to have him here). The letting agent was appalled with his language and behaviour and had to personally return a few days later to apologise and give us the bad news about him selling up. This was several months ago and I've tried absolutely everything in my limited power (it's difficult being a hermit) to pull in the work to be able to afford to move us to a new place, all the while our landlord has had no issue just charging us the same amount, leaving us with no ability to actually save anything. It also turns out the owner of the Wine Bar had been badmouthing us to the landlord, to convince him to kick us out and sell up to him instead. This whole situation has led to further depression in recent months and made it even more difficult to focus on my health.
Please if you have any spare change at all consider helping me. I really hate asking for help with money but I don't know where else to turn. I'm desperate and terrified. We have literally until the end of December to somehow work a Christmas miracle, earn enough money and find a new place to somehow move into before the new year.
For those interested, I'm a Website Developer & Designer of 22 years (I took on my first paying client when I was 10) and I'm a well-known photographer (google me) with over 140 million views on a collection of photos that I give away over on my collection at Unsplash, which have been featured in exhibitions and publications all over the world (though I've never really made any money from it because it's difficult for me to get outside with all the other turmoil in my life consistently taking over - though this is something I would like to focus on more when I get my shit together. Website development work was always how I earned a living but with the market being so competitive and services like Shopify and Squarespace making it harder and harder for bespoke website developers like myself to find work, I often have to lowball myself and work well under minimum wage to find any work at all, especially given my odd working hours and inability to meet clients in person.
If you'd like to know more about me and what I do, please check out this thread on Twitter, which contains more info on my services, how to help me if you can't afford to donate, and so on.
If you have any questions about anything here, don't hesitate to drop me a message on any socials. I'm very grateful to everyone that can help in any way, even if you're just sharing some of my work-related posts on Facebook or Twitter from time to time. Without help increasing my exposure I'll never be able to work myself out of this hole I've found myself in. I don't want to be different anymore. I just want a normal comfortable life.
Organizer and beneficiary
Shane Rounce
Organizer
England
Rebekah Hawkins
Beneficiary
