After his mother died, Chris made what he called the “most costly mistake that I ever made in my life”.

He had lost his job and decided to rent out the apartment left to him by his mother and move into a smaller place in order to have a little income.

The tenants, he said, did not pay and he was left both jobless and homeless, living in his car and getting up at 5am to avoid people as he used public facilities at John Smith’s Bay and waited outside supermarkets late at night to get food.

For most of his working life Chris, 60, who suffers from cancer, was in the tourism industry, serving top-tier guests who, he said, were generous with their tips.

But it all stopped when the Fairmont Southampton closed and he lost his job.

“I was looking after my mother and when she died, she left me an apartment. So looking at my finances, and how things were going, I decided to put my apartment up for rent,” he said.

He found a small place to live at about $600 a month and rented his own apartment for $2,500, but, he claimed, the tenants failed to pay, or paid intermittently, meaning he had next to no income. He is taking the tenants to court, but cannot afford a lawyer.

“It was the most costly mistake that I ever made in my life,” said Chris, who has been living for the past four months at Black Circle, an initiative helping the homelessrun by the charity Home (see panel).

“I was actually living in my car. I had to go to John Smith’s Bay and use the facilities there.”

Chris’s ex-wife left Bermuda to go to Britain with her son, who had lost a leg, to try and give him a better life. Chris wants to do his part as well.

“I’m trying to help him because he will inherit the apartment, which my mother had put in place. With him not having a leg because of a crash, his life is going to be hard, it’s going to be really hard. So I was trying to put money aside for him.”

Chris, who has worked since the age of 16, admits to “always being used to having things good”, adding that he would go out with hundreds of dollars in cash to help the homeless at Christmas.

On what is next for him, Chris said he was working on getting his tenants out. “I just want to go home and just live in my apartment, my beautiful apartment.”

He added: “Once I get myself stable in an apartment, I was going to look for a job.

“You know, I had so many plans. I had so many plans that just came to an end when I put these people in my house. I want to rent again but I want to rent a room in the apartment this time.”

Chris, who also suffers from bad eczema, added: “I’ve done a lot of spending, I travelled to a lot of places, I’ve done a lot of things.

“Now I’m homeless. I mentioned this to a friend. We were sitting and talking. It was like, it happened so quick on me as like, yesterday, everything was good.”

Read the original article at The Royal Gazette