HE WAS a high-flying Gold Coaster living on the waterfront, driving luxury cars and splashing the cash: then three years ago everything went horribly wrong.

Every night Brendan Lauritz retires to his Le Chateau Tento. It is not a sprawling French mansion but a tiny tent camouflaged in sand dunes off a Gold Coast beach.

He has been living in a tent for three years, reports the Gold Coast Bulletin.

Mr Lauritz used to frequent fine restaurants but now he eats at soup kitchens. The hot showers he took for granted have been replaced by a daily swim in the ocean to wash himself and his clothes.

He once had all the latest technology, now he doesn't even have electricity.

And relaxing in a comfy bed at the end of a hard day is a distant memory. Now he crawls into his tent, brushing snakes and spiders aside.

Mr Lauritz, now known as Trigger, is one of an emerging breed because of financial strain. People like the average mum, dad, aunt or uncle who couldn't stay afloat when things went wrong.

Gone are the days when a stereotypical homeless person was an unshaven man, wearing rags, sitting on a park bench drinking alcohol from a bottle in a brown paper bag.

Every day, mothers and children are turning up at soup kitchens and spotted living out of their cars and former wealthy executives are finding themselves without a place to call home.

Amazingly, Trigger has not only remained positive, he says the hardship changed his life for the better and he plans to return with a bang. Trigger was dad to two teenage boys, and a wealthy financial planner who never gave a second thought to the homeless.

But some bad investments lost him hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money and that of his family and friends and his life rapidly came crashing down.

"I chased unsubstantiated riches and left a perfectly good job and it failed," he laments. "I completely blame myself."

First his house went and he became a self-described "high-class hobo" living out of his BMW 5 Series worth $130,000.

When that was repossessed, he was left on the streets with two bags - one with some clothes and the other a doona.

On his seventh night sleeping rough he hit rock bottom, crouched under a picnic bench at 2am, sopping wet, trying to escape roaring winds and pelting rain.

"For the next five hours it just belted me," he said.

"I could not get out of it, then I just started laughing because I realised I was at rock bottom and it couldn't get any worse. I was hurting, I was too proud to call for help.

"I had no idea what to do, I was alone, hungry and scared."

Trigger got a tent and set up camp but says he battled depression, paranoia, anxiety and "the heeby jeebies".

Trigger took the Gold Coast Bulletin for a tour of the home he affectionately calls "Le Chateau Tento" this week to see how thousands of homeless are surviving on the Gold Coast.

Le Chateau Tento has a million-dollar view, 50m from the water and 2m off a walking path used by the public who never notice Trigger's cleverly concealed tent.

He survives off Centrelink benefits and has applied for more than 400 jobs with no luck and yet he is still optimistic that he will come back "bigger than ever".

Every day he gets up early, goes for a run on the beach, meditates and then walks 4km to the local library and Rosies soup kitchen where he makes his entrepreneurial plans.

They include developing a network called DotsHQ that, he says, will harness the technology of Google and Facebook to provide social, financial and emotional support people around the world.

He has written a book about his comeback journey called Working Backwards: From Miseree to Destin-ee to Happy-Me, which is available on Amazon.

To learn more go to triggerdot.com