Church and State blog: Phone call to the Minister for Housing and Planning

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Phone call to the Minister for Housing and Planning

I got a sore throat yesterday evening and spent all night sweating in my sleeping bag. I wanted to take off my coat, but feared I would fall asleep and get a chill. So the only luxury I gave myself was to put my left arm outside the sleeping bag, which felt much better.

It doesn't help that the food we eat is really unhealthy. There is no fruit or vegetables – just saturated fats. In the Whitechapel Mission, you pay 45p for a made-up breakfast of baked beans, two sausages, two fried eggs and two slices of toasted white bread; there's also any amount of coffee or tea for free (a big plus). I wasn't shocked to learn that the life expectancy of a homeless person is 44 years.

Food from the Dellow Centre is far worse. Their staple diet these days is a plastic cup of cheap orange juice, some cereal (cornflakes, wheatabix or maybe porridge), a cup of soup (if we're lucky), up to four slices of toasted white bread, and a maximum of two cups of coffee or tea; there's also a white bread cheese sandwich "for later". Three weeks ago there was some variety - maybe a bowl of fruit, some tomatoes, a Marks and Spencers treat, a chicken sandwich, or whatever - but not any longer.

To save money I was keeping my sandwich and Declan's sandwich for my dinner, together with a banana or other fruit that Declan would buy in Sainsburys. I'm not hungry by lunchtime, so all I would have mid-afternoon is a banana and a couple of donuts (they're cheap at 12p each). I'm getting so sick of the cheese sandwiches that a couple of nights ago it took me 45 minutes to eat one - all the way from the library to where we bed down at night. Last night Declan insisted that I throw the sandwiches in a bin and eat half of his dinner (a large roll with cheap sardines), which I gladly did because I was so hungry.

This morning in the Dellow I didn't bother with their takeaway cheese sandwich. I can't even eat their white bread toasted anymore. While I was in the queue for breakfast, the guy in front of me was given two pieces of chicken. When I asked for some chicken too, I was told he had gotten the last piece. The Dellow is hardly worth the effort - sometimes queuing for over twenty minutes to get in at 9am - when we could be in the Whitechapel Mission until 11.00am and then cross the road and walk straight into the library.

Declan and I used to spend a couple of hours in Crisis, a non-religious organisation for the homeless. We would have access to a computer, the internet for one hour, and free prints. Declan printed our blog there but since the printer stopped functioning (at least, that is what we were told) and we discovered that they are all rapt up in the Dellow Centre, we don't bother going there anymore. We now spend all our time in the library, from 12.30pm to 8.30pm. I love to read when I'm not on a computer, so I'm quite happy with this new arrangement. We also use the library to work on my blog. I need Declan to correct my English because I'm Spanish (from Madrid) and my written English leaves a lot to be desired.

Today in the Whitechapel Mission Declan was given a plastic bag with some clothes for me – two pairs of jeans, a belt and a pair of gloves. I had to return both pairs of jeans because neither fitted. Declan is tired of this cat and mouse game and has given me money to buy a second-hand pair of jeans in a charity shop. Hopefully, there's one within walking distance for us.

Personally, I think it's outrageous that I have to spend money we don't have on a pair of jeans when the Whitechapel Mission boasts on their website that they "offer the largest clothing store in London available to the homeless". It's not like I'm looking for a perfect fit!

St Mungo's Contact and Assessment Team (CAT) hasn't visited us at night either; and this despite the fact that Declan has spoken to the PA to St Mungo's CEO Charles Fraser. According to their annual review, St Mungo's had a turnover of £37.2m last year. The Sisters of Mercy-run Dellow Centre doesn't publish financial information on their website; but, with a patron like the Duke of Norfolk and well-known donors such as L'Oreal, Marks and Spencers and Lush, no doubt they have quite a healthy turnover too. Surely they could offer us homeless better food.

More important from our point of view is St Mungo's and its statutory partners, one of which is the Department for Work and Pensions. It was the DWP that made us homeless. They also name the Metropolitan Police as a statutory partner. It's no wonder we can't get this charity to give us the referral we need to get into a night shelter.

This morning Declan phoned the Department for Communities and Local Government to complain about St Mungo's. Initially, he was told that he needed to deal with Tower Hamlets Council. However, he spoke with Angela Grazette, Private Secretary to Tower Hamlets Council Leader Cllr Denise Jones. This afternoon Grazette phoned Declan back to inform him that his complaint against St Mungo's does not fall within the remit of the Council, and that he should direct the complaint back to the Department for Communities and Local Government, and the office of the Minister for Housing and Planning in particular. Declan then spoke to Christine Adeyoola, Assistant Private Secretary to Minister for Housing and Planning Yvette Cooper.

Adeyoola told him to put his complaint in writing to the Minister.

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

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Thursday, November 23, 2006

Phone call to the Minister for Housing and Planning

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