Mike took part in an online course run by St Mungo’s to give him a sense of stability (Picture: Mike/St Mungo’s/Metro.co.uk)

Within a few days, Mike, 59, a former caretaker at a private apartment complex in a west London suburb, felt like he lost everything.

His adopted son was killed by a group of three people on December 19, 2019, in Teddington.

He had only just lost his job, which he had worked since March 2014, after throwing his back out.

‘He was a lover, not a fighter,’ Mike says of his son, whom he never names during his interview with Metro.co.uk. ‘He was a beautiful person with a beautiful smile.

‘There’s an empty chair at the table at Christmas now.’

Mike, who asked to withhold his last name, was handed an eviction notice on top of the pink slip. ‘I had to be out by December 24,’ he says. His son’s killers were caught only two days later on Boxing Day.

‘Everything just went, it was all chucked at me in that moment.’

The holidays are something Mike hasn’t celebrated since – yet he’s still a stickler for everything the time of year celebrates. He doesn’t mean the turkey and the plastic evergreens, though.

Mike wrote a festive song, The Christmas Message, which he hopes will become number one in the future (Picture: Mike/St Mungo’s)

‘Grief takes us all to all sorts of places but at the end of the day, it’s about reaching out to people and making amends,’ he says.

‘Christmas is a healing time. You know, the light came into the world on Christmas, and that’s why we have Christmas.’

Mike wrote a song last year called The Christmas Message, which came together as he and other people experiencing homelessness took part in an online songwriting group and music production course during the pandemic.

The track celebrates togetherness and sharing, with four other clients using St Mungo, a homelessness charity, bringing Mike’s lyrics to life through song.

‘A time for peace, a time for joy,’ one lyric goes, ‘that’s the message that Christmas sends.’

The song, like many of the poetry books he’s also written over the years, became a way for Mike to make sense of an unfamiliar world that no longer included his son.

He tries his best to be ‘positive’, he says, and uses his art to encourage forgiveness and making amends and help people have ‘healthy and happy futures’.

‘I’m writing songs so I can make a difference later on in life. I’ve got nine grandchildren – all boys and they all lost their uncle,’ Mike says.

‘I hope that one day, The Christmas Message gets released by a major record label and reaches Christmas number one.’

Mike did what he could to get by. He moved from a two-bed into a ‘s**thole’ of a studio apartment, a form of emergency housing, only a couple of days before his eviction date.

‘The whole plug socket fell out the wall at one point,’ he says, ‘but at the end of the day, I was grateful.’

For months, Mike slept on an unmade bed surrounded by dust-covered, unopened cardboard boxes containing his – and his son’s – belongings.

‘He’d just been murdered. I couldn’t get anything together,’ Mike says, adding: ‘The amount of trauma I saw on the streets. I had PTSD.’

Mike’s son was buried in February, and the funeral parlour he used for it being opposite his emergency accommodation was a daily reminder of his loss.

‘We managed to have a funeral before Covid-19,’ he says, adding that he was ‘grateful’ to do so given countless people were unable to say goodbye to their loved ones because of the pandemic and the restrictions on human contact that came with it.

Mike said he was thankful to have had his son’s funeral before Covid-19 restricted them (Picture: Getty Images)

St Mungo’s, which supports people sleeping rough, living in emergency accommodations such as hostels, or on the brink of becoming homeless, quickly became a lifeline for Mike.

Between bereavement, a lack of steady income, shelter and other necessities, and debilitating injuries, he sought out the charity as well as from Victim Support, that props up people who have experieinced crimes and traumatic incidents.

‘It was very bleak and if it wasn’t for St Mungos I wouldn’t be here and that’s the truth,’ he says. ‘They saved my life.’

Mike began to pop into one of St Mungo’s group meetings in Shepards Bush where hearing the stories of others in his position reminded him he was not alone.

As the cost of living crisis and the rising rate of poverty bite the poorest, the number of people experiencing homelessness in Britain has risen for years.

The number of homeless households in England rose by 175% between 2010 and 2022, from 26,280 to 72,320.

On a single night in autumn last year, the number of people sleeping rough – those without or unable to use shelter so instead sleep outside or in vehicles – was 3,069, government figures say.

Homelessness charities say the number of people without shelter has been increasing for years (Picture: Rasid Necati Aslim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Nearly half of the rough sleepers were in the South East and London, a capital city that prides itself as the hub of the sixth largest economy in the world.

This figure is far more likely to be higher now than it was last year. According to new data from Shelter, some 167,000 people, including 82,000 children, are expected to spend Christmas without a home in London.

Nine in 10 people rough sleeping have experienced violence or abuse, while nearly eight in 10 have had their possessions stolen, often by passers-by, according to research by the charity Crisis.

There are many types of homeless alongside rough sleeping.

Statutory homelessness includes those who have approached local officials for assistance when they find themselves without or unable to stay in a secure place. Some stay quiet and don’t seek out aid in what is often called hidden homelessness.

People fall into homelessness for many reasons. Those experiencing it can be born into it, or be there because they have lost their jobs and fallen short on rent. Others experience mental health troubles or are too distant from or lost friends and family who may have been able to lend them a hand.

But all of them, Mike says, have a common thread. A sense of isolation.

‘Togetherness is a valuable thing, the kind people couldn’t even dream of on the streets,’ he says.

For Mike, the common thread of people experiencing homelessness is a sense of isolation (Picture: Getty Images)

‘Maybe all your belongings are somewhere else, in someone’s house, or a storage unit. You’re sleeping on the streets or someone’s couch. People’s needs are very diverse and complex. You’re traumatised.

‘I was okay, I looked after myself. I used humour with people – I could get myself out of hairy situations. There’s a lot of extreme violence on the streets.’

A St Mungo’s spokesperson told Metro.co.uk: ‘For many people, rough sleeping can become a relentless cycle that’s incredibly difficult to escape. Without urgent help, it can even kill.

‘St Mungo’s is one of the only organisations to go out every night, finding people sleeping rough, and bringing them in from the cold.

‘We’re working hard to make sure that tonight is the last night on the streets for as many people as possible.’

Through the organisation’s Recovery College, which offers online and in-person educational programmes, Mike did courses in songwriting, music production, art, drama and happiness and wellbeing.

‘That gave me a lot of encouragement to stick with it,’ he says of St Mungo’s also featuring his artwork in its quarterly magazine in the Spring of 2021. ‘To stick with music. To stick with life, because I wasn’t feeling very well at the time.

‘When your family is murdered, that’s a different ballgame.’

More: Trending

Feeling present in the moment was something Mike struggled with while he lacked permanent housing. Sometimes spacey and forgetful, all while his trauma forced his mind into overdrive as it tried to block out his recent past.

As he did an online course on neurodiversity and digital inclusion, Mike began to see a bit of himself in the slides of the presentation – with the help of St Mungo’s, he was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

‘They helped me understand myself, the trauma uncovered a lot. I felt that I couldn’t think straight, that I couldn’t get my words out,’ he says.

‘I had two strokes as well.’

Throughout it all, the weight of his son’s death gnawed at him, exacerbated by the court proceedings that followed.

‘It was difficult in that first year, going through the trial, it didn’t happen for two years,’ he says, adding that his son’s three killers would all be sentenced to more than 90 years between them.

Some 167,000 people are expected to spend Christmas without a home this year (Picture: EPA)

Around March 2021, Mike partially and temporarily lost his eyesight due to glaucoma, one of the world’s leading causes of blindness.

For Mike, the fluid in the front of his eyes was draining too slowly, if at all, backing up like a clogged sink. This raised the pressure in his eyes and stressed out his optic nerves and had to have surgery to restore them.

In his growing list of woes, he experienced a nervous breakdown during the trial, which proved too much and he was unable to go back to his flat. He was moved to sheltered housing in Hampton, a quiet suburb on a bend of the River Thames, in June 2021.

‘I’ve got a flat now which I’m very grateful for,’ Mike says.

Writing music such as The Christmas Message has helped Mike understand what’s going on within himself, ironically, beyond words. He writes poetry on his iPhone note-taking app, many about how his faith has seen him through the years.

What he writes about the most is what he’s grateful for. He’s grateful to have a roof over his head, for the people of St Mungo’s and to have this month finished his eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, which saw Mike recall his past trauma while interacting with images, sounds or sensations.

Mike says he’s more hopeful than ever before about the future ahead (Picture: Mike/St Mungo’s)

His nine grandchildren too – though, not so much the lengthy Christmas shopping list, something he’s not too used to.

‘My son wasn’t the easiest to buy a gift for,’ Mike recalls.

Kindness, however, is what Mike is most grateful for in life.

‘When I lost my sight and went to the hospital, the nurse said she was going to give me an injection and I just spewed right into my lap,’ he says.

‘She says I’ve had nothing to eat, so she got me a sandwich. I was so grateful. I asked for a drink of water and she held the cup to me.

‘I’m grateful for every person that’s ever been kind to me.’

You can donate to St Mungo’s here.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].

For more stories like this, check our news page.

‘I’m writing songs so I can make a difference later on in life.’