A tight-knit community is rallying around an elderly husband after he left a heartbreaking handwritten note on a main street asking for help.
Robert ‘Bobby’ Aitken is facing homelessness as his wife Gail prepares to move into a nursing home after a series of falls at their home in Noosa, Queensland.
Mr Aitken has lived in Noosa since 1962 and has worked more than 100 jobs in the town over the years, including at the Beach House Guesthouse, Tingirana Motel, the Woods Caravan Park and Munna Point Campground.
He also shaped surfboards and has even driven the local school bus.
But his pension, in addition to a part-time job mowing lawns, won’t cover the rent, prompting Mr Aitken to join a waitlist for community housing.
In the handwritten note, the pensioner asked if anyone was interested in trading a van he could sleep in, in exchange for his Subaru.
‘I cannot afford to rent on my single pension so I need to have some type of accommodation till I can possibly get a commission flat,’ he wrote.
‘Noosa has been my home for 62 years.’
Robert Aitken is facing homelessness because he can’t afford to rent his townhouse
The note Robert left on Noosa’s main street has captured the hearts of locals
The note has since gone viral, and with the help of support worker Fiona, locals are now chipping in to help Mr Aitken buy a campervan.
‘He has been involved in competitive surfing and board-riding clubs and is a devoted long-boarder,’ Fiona wrote on a GoFundMe page.
‘For a number of years, he was involved with the Noosa Coastguard.
‘Over a period of 60 years, Bobby has made friends with and met a wide range of local characters. He has been involved in youthful high jinks, suffered tragic events, and witnessed some unexplainable phenomena.’
The GoFundMe has raised nearly $19,000 of its $26,000 target, with Aussies also offering the pensioner a place to stay on social media.
‘I have a pop up clean, registered and insured. I’ll swap,’ one person said.
‘Well I live in Beenleigh if he need a place to stay he is more then welcome to come and stay for free,’ another offered.
‘Where do they live, if he is in Townsville I have a room for him,’ a third said.
Robert’s wife Gail has been forced to move into a nursing home as her eyesight diminishes
His story comes as three million Australians are currently at risk of homelessness, including a growing number who are pensioners struggling to make ends meet.
Daily Mail reported on an elderly couple who were told they were no longer a priority for government housing and would have to sleep in their car.
Despite applying for more than 50 properties, pensioners Viv, 79, and Ted Lockhart, 80, claimed they did not receive a single response from government agencies.
‘Half the places we have looked at were not even fit for dogs,’ Mr Lockhart told Daily Mail. ‘But there was still 20 or more people applying for each one of them.
‘I don’t know why we don’t get a look-in, we have always paid on time and have good references but maybe they just think we are too old and don’t have much time left.’
