‘£500 hike forced me out and my daughter suffers’

Working father Sergio Lopez Figueroa said soaring rents left him homeless.

The video marketing producer, 46, who has a young daughter, now pays £950 a month excluding bills for an Acton bedsit after a rent increase at short notice forced him to leave his West Norwood home.

High rent, rogue landlords and lack of support for single working parents and entrepreneurs make living in London “almost impossible”, he said. He was forced out of his one-bedroom flat in October after his rent increased by £500 per month to £1,200 with only two months’ notice.

He said: “I was trying to find a way to pay the extra money when we discovered the building was full of dry rot. Half of the tenants had to be evacuated.

“I was forced to declare myself homeless. My partner and I had split up and I just had nowhere to go. I slept on my friends’ couches and then in a hostel. But I was still working, and there is obviously a stigma attached to finding yourself in that situation. I wanted to make a cheap documentary and get the funding, but without housing and a base everything else becomes a struggle. I don’t want to be treated as an underclass citizen when I have so much to offer.”

Spanish-born Mr Lopez Figueroa, who was commissioned by Tate Modern to produce the music for a silent film for the Dali exhibition, and has worked on numerous international projects, said his eight-year-old daughter, Tayra, has “suffered a huge amount” as a result of the difficulty he faced finding affordable housing.

He added: “Tayra lives with me every other week. But she is becoming a lot more aggressive as time goes on. The situation is stressful for her. I first came to London in 1994, and I have never known the situation this bad.”