Help me afford to live

Hi! My name is Andy Foster, I'm a miniatures sculptor who has run a tiny indie wargames miniatures maker for the last 21 years. Unfortunately, this means I can't afford to buy a home in the UK because our housing market is nuts, and the average starter home costs over 12 times what I make in a good year, so I am only able to rent.

And because the housing market IS so insane, rental property prices are also incredibly high, and I was abruptly told on the 4th of January that the house we have lived in for the last 10 years was having its rent increased by the landlord from £800 a month to £1175, which I absolutely couldn't afford to cover. Thanks to your generous donations on this campaign so far, I was able to move myself and my wife to a smaller house that still costs £795 a month, which we love. It took 4 months to sort out the move from finding a house to dealing with the arguing over the deposit and it cost every penny raised on here. I could literally not have coped without you guys chipping in, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

But thanks to a further 3 months of chaos caused by the panic to find a new place, add to that a massive downturn in sales from my business and I am already struggling to find the money to cover the interest payments and loan repayments, so please help out if you possibly can! Any amount helps, no matter how small - if it buys a box of eggs, we can eat eggs!

Thanks to the generosity of you all, I was able to move myself and my wife to our new home, but it took every penny raised so far to cover the various costs and deposits, so please ignore the total raised to date, it's long since been spent, despute being quite large! I'm no asking for help to cover the day to day costs of living - rent, food bills and the 40% interest rate on my overdraft, not to mention my loan repayments! It's all crushing me into the ground and without regular income I have to ask for your help instead!

Thanks to each and every one of you who help us out,

Andy and Carla

Previous Updates:

UPDATE Feb 21st: Our current landlord is retaining the security deposit, on the suddenly urgent grounds that the carpets he put in 10 years ago are worn down and dirty. He's been round several times a year and never once complained about that until now, but came pre-armed with highlighted copies of the tenancy agreement this morning, on the pretext of measuring for a new bathroom he'll be putting in. The fine print says that the house must be left in an identical condition to the start of the tenancy, which would mean totally repainting it, having the garden gravel removed and relaid to replace perished plastic sheeting, new carpets etc. He indicated that even were we to have professional cleaning done he would not expect the results to be good enough and would argue his case. So we'll just have to leave him an uncleaned house. This leaves us at least £700 down, vital funds indeed.

To that end, I have raised the target to cover the £700 plus the cost of a new vacuum cleaner because ours decided to break last week, of all times, and new ones that can deal with the thick carpeting of the new house, but also the wooden flooring in one room, are stupidly expensive these days. :(

"This is very inconvenient for us, you know," the landlord said, " we normally go on start going on holidays from next month."

Uh-huh.

Please give what you can IF you can. Every penny counts and no donation is too small. I hate being forced to ask, and thank you so, so much for helping me and my wife out. you are all incredible people, you really are.

Much obliged,

Andy