Record numbers of UK renters crowdfunding to cover bills

A record number of people in the UK are turning to crowdfunding to cover rent and household bills, with GoFundMe reporting more rent-related fundraisers were created in April than in any month on record.The platform said donations towards rent support had risen by 60% since 2022, with more than 100,000 people a month contributing to help others meet their housing costs.“We have seen a remarkable surge in people turning to GoFundMe for help keeping a roof over their heads,” a spokesperson said. “Every donation is a sign that when someone finds the courage to ask for help, their community shows up for them.”Andrew Foster, 51, turned to GoFundMe after his landlord in Derby raised his rent by 50%, – an increase he was unable to afford and which forced him to move.Foster makes and sells miniature figurines, but his income fell by 40% after Brexit curtailed his ability to sell abroad. He is also a full-time carer for his wife, who has complex mental health conditions, and had to give up work.“The only way I could find the funds to cover the move was to turn to GoFundMe, although I had to take out a loan as well,” he said. “I just felt I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t borrow the amount of money that I needed from friends or family.“It was very much throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. I didn’t really expect anything to come of it.”Andrew Foster: ‘I just felt I didn’t have a choice.’He said the fundraiser was “phenomenally successful” and he had been blown away by the donations he received, with the largest single sum being £300. Foster has since continued fundraising page sporadically to help cover large one-off costs, including car maintenance or loan repayments.“Sometimes it’s been the difference between going over the overdraft and not going over overdraft,” he said. “It’s depressing and humiliating – the first thing you have to swallow is your pride and just get out there and ask.“I’d much rather be in a position where I was on GoFundMe to give other people money. If I won the lottery I’d track down some of these people and give them their money back.”The number of children living in homeless temporary accommodation in England has reached a record high, while rough sleeping has also soared. Housing charities have said an increasing number of people are struggling to pay their rent.Data obtained through a freedom of information request showed that more than 300,000 families a year in England and Wales formally applied to their local council for discretionary housing payments – emergency grants to help with rent and deposits – between 2021-22 and 2023-24.The number of application refusals has risen 40% in three years, from about 96,000 in 2021-22 to more than 134,000 in 2023-24.Nick Jardine, 56, turned to GoFundMe after he, his mother and brother were served a section 21 “no fault” eviction notice on their home in Cornwall last year, not long after Jardine became disabled after a tumour on his spine.With a shortage of council housing in the area, it looked as though Jardine’s mother would be placed in temporary accommodation and Jardine in a care facility, owing to his physical disabilities, unless they could come up with the money for private rented accommodation.“It was a final-straw situation. I’ve funded other people on GoFundMe, from helping local pubs to stay open to small children being flown, so I just thought let’s give it a go and see what happens,” he said.“It was an honest enough campaign. I’m not working, so I can’t earn money; then we’re being evicted and it was just snowballing. It was really a last-gasp effort.”The family raised more than £5,500, which they will use for a rental deposit and to repay debts after their eviction notice has made its way through the courts.Jardine said: “It was unbelievable. Some of the donations came from people we didn’t know at all, so that was quite overwhelming. But it’s not really how it should be, because what you’re ending up with is society having to pay for itself. It makes you think: what are the government actually doing to help us?”Tayla Hopkins, 33, has used GoFundMe to help pay the service charge on their shared-ownership Birmingham flat, which soared from £800 to £4,600 a year, while struggling with their physical and mental health.Tayla Hopkins: ‘I’ve never found it easy to ask for help.’ In just a few weeks, they raised £2,421, and have been inundated with messages from friends and strangers offering support.“I was questioning myself and whether I should be asking for help, whether it was valid. I have a lot of shame around the debt that I’m in,” they said. “I’ve never found it easy to ask for help. I don’t think we live in a world where it’s the done thing.“But going through that process of having to swallow your pride and ask for help and then realising how loved and supported you are, is very overwhelming.”Hopkins hoped the fundraising would also raise awareness of the problems facing people trapped in shared ownership schemes, where rising costs have left many people facing financial difficulties.“It was only really by going through this process that I was able to fully appreciate that, hang on, I bought this place under a government affordable housing scheme and the joke of it to now be in this position,” they said.