Church and State blog: St Mungo's Broadway: Updated complaint to the UN (revised paragraphs 29 and 30)

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

St Mungo's Broadway: Updated complaint to the UN (revised paragraphs 29 and 30)

Part 1: St Mungo’s Broadway: Seeking to illegally break our contract with the Mayor of London's Greater London Authority (GLA) Housing First programme under threat of eviction

Updated complaint to the UN: Revised paragraphs 29 and 30

29. As a direct result of the accommodation blockade through surveillance that the Applicant and his wife experienced in London and in Brighton for the best part of a year previous (see paragraphs 25-28 above), they were forced back into sleeping rough on the streets of the City of London on 14 April 2013 having been evicted from a 'safe house' after months of serious harassment which included the removal of their flat door (see paragraph 24 above). They returned to the same sleeping pitch they had before coming off the streets in July 2009, which they continued to use until it was fenced off in December 2013. Within days of their street homelessness, the homeless charity St Mungo's Broadway, then called Broadway Homelessness and Support, denied them support to access the private rented sector (see paragraph 30 below). This notwithstanding that the Applicant: (a) had been provided with the deposit on a flat and one month's rent up front by a benefactor in America; (b) had a perfect Housing Benefit track record; (c) had an immaculate credit report from the credit reporting agency Experian; (d) had a wholly acceptable reference letter from his previous tenancy stating that the Applicant and his wife "kept the property in very good order, were quiet and paid the rent on time"; and (e) had two personal references of the highest quality, one of which had been written by a retired American physician then living in London (see Annex 22, St Mungo's Broadway: Personal references, pp. 59-60).

30. In March 2013, St Mungo's Broadway CEO Howard Sinclair wrote in The Guardian that there are occasions when the charity accommodates rough sleepers straight from the streets. According to Mr Sinclair in the same article, in addition to the Mayor of London having provided Broadway with £5 million under his No Second Night Out project, the charity had received £10 million from London and Quadrant Housing Trust, alongside the support of three other trusts, to accommodate people in London for whom there had been no other option. Nonetheless, on 29 August 2013 the Applicant was forced to file a claim in the High Court for judicial review against Commissioner of Police for the City of London Adrian Leppard and Home Secretary Theresa May following the decision of the former not to ask Broadway to engage with him and his wife in relation to their welfare and access to the charity's service for supporting clients to find accommodation in the private rented sector (see Annex 24, City of London Police: Reply from Commissioner Adrian Leppard (2013), p. 63). The Applicant argued in court papers that it was unreasonable for the City of London Police to refuse to ask Broadway to help them find private sector accommodation whilst at the same time threatening them with hosings by street cleaners (see Annex 25, City of London Police: Application for Judicial Review, pp. 64-69). On 6 February 2014, Deputy High Court Judge Bidder ruled: "The refusal of the First Defendant to ask the charity 'Broadway' to engage or help the Claimant and his wife with their welfare or accommodation is not arguably unreasonable. It is not its job to intervene in any disagreement between a charity and those seeking that charity's help" (see Annex 26, City of London Police: Order by Deputy High Court Judge Bidding, p. 70). Remarkably, despite this history, St Mungo's Broadway is currently seeking to illegally break the Applicant and his wife's housing contract with the Mayor of London's Greater London Authority (GLA) Housing First programme under threat of eviction (see paragraph 35 below). [emphasis added]

Our flat door is removed by the live-in landlady's builder

This is the court order quoted above that Declan will be using against Howard Sinclair should St Mungo's Broadway attempt to carry out their threat to have us evicted:

Click to enlarge

It seems incredible to us that of all the homeless organisations in London it should be Mr Sinclair's St Mungo's Broadway that we are battling at this point in time. But then again perhaps we shouldn't be surprised... it definitely qualifies as 'radical':

Click to enlarge

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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

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[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.

Church and State blog

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

St Mungo's Broadway: Updated complaint to the UN (revised paragraphs 29 and 30)

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