‘I spent a year living in my car until I shared my story on TikTok’

When you pack up your car to move to the city and start a new life, you probably don’t think you’ll end up living inside it.

But that’s what happened to friends Luke and Jimmy last winter.

“It started off with hope,” says Luke.

“But I’ve been homeless for the majority of 2023.”

The tenancy on 25-year-old Luke and 24-year-old Jimmy’s Essex bedsit was about to expire at the end of 2022, so they eyed up a move to Nottingham.

They figured there would be more jobs there, and they had a friend they could stay with while they looked for their own place.

But with no guarantor, lettings agents weren’t interested, and after a month crashing on their mate’s floor time had run out.

Both got jobs – Jimmy in a cinema and Luke in a pub kitchen – but “just could not for the life of us get a flat”.

“We went from my friend’s into my Renault Clio,” says Luke. “It was two full-grown adults living in a car.”

With that living arrangement, holding down a job was difficult and Luke was let go at the end of his probation.

“It just really wasn’t functional,” he says.

“They said my uniforms aren’t washed, I’m looking tired and scruffy, stuff like that.”

And he was tired – the cold and uncomfortable car made sleeping hard. Meanwhile, Jimmy had moved out, trying his luck in Sheffield where he’d ended up living in a tent.

“The reality is quite rough,” he says. “You’ve got to think about hygiene, you have to improvise a lot. And it gets very cold.”

“The main issue was really the weather,” Jimmy says. “I was in the tent during the big storm and it flooded the park I was in.”

Luke, who stayed in Nottingham, felt “completely lost” and his mental health was suffering.

“I never knew it would go to the depths it went to,” he says. “It got so much worse than what I was expecting.”

Outreach workers would come and check on him wherever he parked up, but he kept his situation quiet from his friends and family.

And when he asked the council for help, he says a lack of local connections meant he didn’t fit the criteria to be added to the housing waiting list.

After hitting barrier after barrier, Jimmy had an idea that changed things for the two friends.

In Sheffield, he’d started sharing videos of his routine and how he was living on TikTok.

“I was documenting my life and over the course of a few weeks I started gaining a huge following,” he says.

He encouraged Luke to do the same.

“I felt a bit silly doing it to start off with,” says Luke. “But from the first video onwards, it just changed everything.”

People commented with advice, sent in donations and, as the views racked up, they were able to monetise their content.

“I actually feel positive for the first time in as long as I can remember,” says Luke.

Youth homelessness charity Centrepoint says there’s been a significant increase in demand for its services this year.

In November, former Home Secretary Suella Braverman was widely criticised when she said some people living in tents like Jimmy saw it as “a lifestyle choice”.

“It’s not a choice,” says Jimmy. “It’s not as easy as just going and getting a house – if you’re homeless there’s a lot of hoops you have to jump through, a lot of waiting lists.”

Centrepoint says accommodation is harder to come by, meaning charities are more likely to provide tents and sleeping bags to people in need.

“Not only are more and more people finding themselves sleeping rough, but councils are increasingly finding they have no means to get them into stable accommodation,” says Alicia Walker from the charity.

“With limited resources and in place of housing or financial support to maintain tenancies, we are instead seeing sleeping bags, tents and other items distributed to keep desperate people alive during the winter months.”

In response, The Home Office said “everyone deserves a safe place to call home” and it was spending £2bn over three years to build homes for rough sleepers, provide financial support for people to find a new home, and prevent evictions.

It said building more homes was “part of the solution” and its plans included a “multibillion-pound programme to build thousands of new affordable homes, with a large number for social rent”.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said it was “determined to prevent homelessness before it occurs” and was giving councils £1bn over three years through the Homelessness Prevention Grant.

It said it had provided up to £3m this year to 56 local councils for young people leaving care, and more than £2m of the Rough Sleeping Initiative would go towards funding youth services in local areas.

Luke and Jimmy have now made enough money from TikTok to buy a caravan, and Luke says he’s feeling more secure “making steps” towards a new life.

“This caravan got us out of homelessness,” he says.

Luke and Jimmy say the friends plan to keep sharing updates on TikTok, documenting their travels.

“This has been one of the biggest things that’s happened in our lives and it’s come at a time when it was at the lowest.

“You never know what’s around the corner.”

If you’ve been affected by the issues raised in this article, help and support is available via BBC Action Line.

All photos by Alex Thorp.

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.