Andy Horvat is halfway through a 13-hour working day as he scrapes together as much as he can to pay his soaring bills. The barber from Armenia began his shift on a busy Merthyr Tydfil shopping street at 9am. He’ll finish at 6pm, and then head out in his car to deliver takeaways.
“My rent went up at the same time as everything else, so I had no choice,” said Andy, who sends as much money back to his family in Armenia as he can. He endures these mammoth shifts daily. “I’m not sure it’s sustainable, I’m thinking I might need to move out of Merthyr to find somewhere cheaper.”
Merthyr Tydfil was last year the second most affordable area in the whole of Wales, behind Blaenau Gwent, according to multiple property websites including Zoopla and Rightmove. The painful truth for Andy is that he couldn’t be living more stringently than he is now, and yet it isn’t enough.
