Try navigating university and housing without parents to back you up. This is how it goes in Tory Britain

I spent most of my final year working 19 hours a week in a call centre on top of undergraduate study. It wasn’t easy. I felt isolated from my wealthier peers. I felt similarly isolated as a first-year, watching other students move into their rooms with their parents by their side

'I'm not the only one who worked in entry level roles before, during and after university just to get by' (Getty Images/Hero Images)

I’m not your typical graduate. I’ve not had a stable home in the last six years, and I don’t have a functional relationship with my parents.

I got my degree, through a lot of hard work and determination, but the struggle was there before I got into university and it still exists now.

My heart sank when I read that maintenance grants are being scrapped for the poorest students. As a student, I relied on the highest amount of non-repayable maintenance grant to support my degree. I didn’t have supportive parents to rely on for any back-up.

I had enough money to get by, but this money was scrapped in my final year. I ended up having to ask a family member who I was estranged from for financial support, just so I could finish my degree. So that the first two years at university hadn’t been wasted. So that the two years I’d spent living in a temporary short-hold tenancy under a housing association before that, working evening shifts in a fast food restaurant to pay the bills while I got my A Levels, weren’t in vain.

I spent most of my final year working 19 hours a week in a call centre on top of undergraduate study. It wasn’t easy. I felt isolated from my wealthier peers. I felt similarly isolated as a first-year, watching other students move into their rooms with their parents by their side. I didn’t have that. I travelled from Birmingham to Exeter alone, juggling three large suitcases, knowing that by going to university, I was giving up my home.

I graduated with the hope that I could get into work, but spent four months unemployed. I worked at my university for six months, living under a private landlord. I struggled to make ends meet, particularly when my hours were cut due to lack of funding.

Since being forced to move to London as my tenancy ended, my job offer in media fell through, and I ended up with nowhere viable to live. I’ve watched my peers go home to their parents, go into graduate careers, live at home, then move into housing once they’ve found a comfortable option. I don’t have that luxury, and I know a few others in similar situations.

I hate the concept of debt, but the lack of affordable housing in London forced me to take out bank loans to make ends meet.

It’s now possible I could be evicted because I’m unemployed. If my friend hadn’t given me the spare key to his place last week in case I needed it, I would have ended up on the streets. And this isn’t a situation that only applies if you live in London either – now that the Resolution Foundation think tank has reported cities in Yorkshire and the West Midlands feeling the pinch, it’s becoming clear that anyone without a safety net is doomed from the outset.

This is the reward I get for being poor. For not having the support so many people presume students have. We’ve not all come from a cosy middle class background, with unconditional funds from the Bank of Mum and Dad. I’m not the only student I know who had to work before, throughout and after university in entry-level jobs just to feed themselves, unable to find affordable housing, with no prospect of their situation improving. Even when you’ve completed your studies and want to progress, we’re still being told that we should borrow from those mythical wealthy parents.

I’m not your typical graduate. But then again, such a person doesn’t exist. Their existence has been fabricated by a system that disingenuously presumes everyone can receive funding from anywhere but them.

The scrapping of maintenance grants, combined with the escalating housing crisis, means that graduates who do not have the funding from a privileged background face a future filled with debt and unstable housing – the future I’m living right now. It wasn’t the future I thought I was getting myself into when I swallowed the lies about education and opportunity. I hope David Cameron and Theresa May feel proud that they can only quote their misleading statistics about helping graduates and young people because they rely on making people like me invisible.