Peter's Story

Peter was made homeless when his landlord made his home uninhabitable. When he came to Ace of Clubs and met Rodrigo, a Glass Door Caseworker, he found his pathway out of homelessness. 

I’m Peter, and I’m 73 years old.  

I’m a carpenter, and have been since I was 15 (which was normal back then). I had the most wonderful childhood in Australia, we had a farm in the country, a big house and orchards, about a quarter of a mile from the beach. I’d walk through the vineyards on the way to school and pick the warm grapes.  

I left Australia when I was 19, and came to London, where I got a job as a carpenter and worked for many years. When the Berlin Wall came down I lived in Germany for 10 years. Then I came back to the UK and worked as a carpenter again, this time for a property owner who owned 150 houses.  

He let me rent one of his flats if I fixed it up, and I lived there for 51 years. He died 20 years ago and his son took over the business. His son was a completely different sort of person. He wanted to develop this four storey house, of which I lived on the top floor.  

He had so many houses he never repaired properly. The roof of this one was the original roof from 1860, and it leaked and leaked and got worse over 50 years.

The last 20 years was really bad. It got so bad I had to catch all the water on the top floor in buckets. I moved down to the middle floor which my nephew lived in, which only had two rooms. We just had the kitchen and bathroom on the top floor which we could use but you couldn’t sleep in the rest. This went on for 15 years, until the landlord decided he wanted us out.  

The landlord tried to get us out by completely demolishing and gutting the basement. Then he moved up to the ground floor, took all the back windows out, took the plaster off the walls, took the ceiling down. There was never any central heating in the house; we just had electric heaters. Things got worse, particularly when the cost of electricity went up.  

When we had that big Beast from the East about four years ago, I slipped on ice and broke my hip and leg, I had to have a total hip replacement.  

That used up all the money I had because I couldn’t work for a year. I ran up about £10,000 on credit card bills.

Eventually I said, ‘I can’t take this anymore.’ I said, ‘you want the property so you can develop it, so make us an offer so we can get out; everywhere else wants a deposit’. We went back and forth for two and a half years over a settlement amount. Finally, we settled, and I moved out and used the money to pay off my credit cards and pay back the various people I owed. 

Using what was left I bought a van and a little car, and I lived in that van for a year and a bit. I moved around to different places, Sainsbury’s car parks, lots of places that were really noisy.

Sleep was hard. I had to keep moving, finding discrete parking spaces.  

I had one woman call the police on me. I wasn’t doing anything illegal, but I became very careful after that. I learned how to not leave any trace of where I’d been, never leaving any rubbish, trying to keep invisible wherever I parked.  

I had a friend, David, who kept all my personal possessions in his loft, family photographs and things like that. I think if someone is homeless, giving them a bit of room that they don’t have to pay for to keep the really precious things – that can give them something to build on, a step on the start of building your life back.  

I heard about this place called Ace of Clubs, someone told me there was food on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and I could shower there, which was difficult to do otherwise, what with living in a van. It really helped me.  

At Ace of Clubs I met Caroline, one of the Glass Door caseworkers, and I told her my story, told her I was living in a van and that it was fine, it was nice to come to the day centre. You get into a routine, you know. I told her that I’d got through the last winter, I’m a self-sufficient person, I’m practical. But she said I couldn’t stay living in a van, and suggested I come to the drop-in, which is where I met Rodrigo, another caseworker.  

In the meantime, I’d been chatting with a friend, who had got me speaking to a London council, who had given me a reference number and told me someone would call me back that day. I never received that call. I called them every morning at 9am for two weeks and no one ever rang me back, so I gave up on them.  

Rodrigo took over from there. He started pushing them.

In the end, once Rodrigo was on the case it was only a matter of days to find me somewhere through an estate agent, with help from the council for a deposit.  

The house had a double room, it’s own shower and toilet and cooking facilities. Brand new mattress. Just wonderful. I said ‘I’ll take it’. That was on a Friday. By the following Tuesday I had signed the contract and been given the keys. It’s fantastic, this place. The fact that I can put a picture on the wall is just amazing.  

Glass Door are lifesavers – fantastic. The people are eager, they’ll give you a razor to shave and shampoo, a clean pair of socks and all the things you need. They give you clothes if you come in with absolutely nothing. All the people are just marvellous, so caring. They don’t just hand out things, they talk to people. If it wasn’t for Caroline saying ‘you can’t live in a van’ I would still be living in one. The people that work here are amazing.  
 

I’m just very, very grateful. I am so, so grateful.