Man sleeps on newspapers in cluttered S'pore flat filled with trash, volunteers step in, find money

Volunteers from welfare organisation Keeping Hope Alive spent seven hours searching for origami-folded money notes in a public housing flat filled with newspapers and other wastes.

While it would have taken them just two hours if they were to throw everything away, the volunteers patiently spent their time going through the items in search of the money.

By the end of it, they managed to pick out one large bag full of notes and coins.

The organisation had heard about the house owner's situation from his daughter, they said in a Facebook post on Nov. 11.

Keeping Hope Alive is a welfare organisation that aims to provide less privileged Singaporeans with a better quality of life.

"When we spoke to uncle, it was clear he's a very independent person who doesn't like troubling others which explains how things got to this point," they wrote.

House filled with newspaper and insects

When the volunteers stepped into the house, reality hit them hard, they said.

No bed, sofa, or furniture were in sight — only newspapers stacked from the floor in every corner, they wrote.

In one picture they attached, they captioned that the stack of wastes reached 165cm.

They shared that the man had been sleeping on newspapers for over a decade and simply laid fresh ones on top when they got dirty.

As the house was on the ninth floor, they kept the windows closed while working as they had to stand on the thick layers of newspaper with their heads nearly touching the ceiling.

The house was also filled with cockroaches, bedbugs, and lizards, they wrote.

At one point, smell from a "rotting" liquid that spilled in the kitchen forced everyone to rush out for air.

There were also water-soaked newspapers that had turned into "thick, slimy bricks" that they had to break apart with sticks and gloved hands.

Finding origami notes

While the smell and mess were intense, the most challenging part for the team was to find the origami folded notes hidden throughout.

The man had folded money into origami, which made it nearly impossible to tell sometimes, they wrote.

It took them seven hours of careful searching to gather one large bag full of notes and coins.

"If we'd simply thrown everything away, we could have finished in two hours. But going layer by layer, checking each fold - that's what left all our volunteers with aching backs," they said.

By the end of the day, they managed to fill nearly 40 large bins and hundreds of bags.

They also repainted the walls, changed light bulbs, cleaned the floors, installed water heater and fumigated the place to ensure the man had a clean, safe space when he returned from the hospital.

"We didn't know this uncle before his daughter connected us. But we were given the opportunity to be useful, and that's enough," they wrote.

"The work was hot, smelly, and exhausting. But we walked away knowing we did what we could, and uncle now has a liveable space waiting for him."

Top photos from Keeping Hope Alive 让希望活下去/Facebook