If you're a journalist, after reading the below blog, I am sure, like me, these are the questions you'll want to get answers to:
1. Why hadn't James Breed (or anyone at WCC) attempted to get accommodation for me until just a couple of weeks ago, having had 2 years to do so?
2. Why are there absolutely no consequences for him utterly failing to do the only job he's paid to do?
3. Why did it take him a month (when first asked what the contingency would be if they hadn't found more permanent accommodation on the eviction of 1st March 2022 which was extended on that day to the 14th March 2022) to book a cab and a hotel room and why did he wait to tell everybody at 3:10pm last Friday afternoon when it was too late for anybody to sort anything out?
4. Why is James Breed still in a job?
The contact details of those concerned are
James Breed,
(and yes this really is his title, I didn't make it up for comic relief, as unbelievable as that sounds)
Homelessness Prevention Strategy Manager & NSAP PRS Project Lead
Westminster Council – Housing, Division for Housing Needs, Support and Safety jbreed@westminster.gov.uk
Susan Scott,
Mental Health Supported Housing Commissioning (not making this one up either),
sscott@westminster.gov.uk
Katie Taylor
North Complex Manager
Adult Social Service
ktaylor@westminster.gov.uk
Westminster Council Press Office
Telephone: 0207 641 2259
email: mediateam@westminster.gov.uk.
Switchboard Number:
020 7641 6000
I have to keep asking, as probably the highest profile person in Britain experiencing homelessness why isn't this failure headline news yet?
If nobody cares what happens to me as someone in the public eye, what of the 100,000s who aren't?
I'm writing this on Saturday 12th March 2022. I'm exhausted and indeed the very process of writing this piece I know is going to take all day, with regular breaks and many tears, but it is essential that it exists, that people know what has really happened.
I genuinely don't think I'll make it through to Monday 14th March 2022 alive, as that is the day that once more I get turfed back to the streets.
Even though Westminster City Council (WCC) have had two years to assist me to finding more permanent accommodation fit for my needs, they have chosen to do absolutely nothing whatsoever to work with me in all that time and have now been forced by circumstances, into a position where they needed to have something to offer me and don't.
Those two years began on the 1st April 2020 when I was brought inside as part of Everyone In the housing of those street homeless during the Covid lockdown (the only thing Boris Johnson got right in his entire premiership) and was in essence guaranteed three months of safety inside, in what was basically an AirBnB apartment just off Edgware Road. In July 2020 the financial assistance stopped and things started going downhill fast, as I could no longer afford to eat properly. I was there until May 2021 when I was moved to Tyburnia which in essence was a studio with no workable kitchen and not accessible to my Wheelchair when I needed it, where I have been ever since.
Since October 2020 WCC have had me under the constant threat of eviction every four weeks. Only telling me they were extending my stay on the day I was actually due out. In normal life that is straight up torture. It was totally unnecessary and yes, it was evil.
Six weeks ago, Anthony the Hotel Manager who has been nothing but a stalwart and protector of me during this entire process, whilst treating me to dinner, informed me that the Landlord of the accommodation I am currently in, requires his property back on the 1st March 2022 and sadly he has no other accomodation to offer me and that he had informed the council of such.
WCC didn't notify me though!
Not even after I chased them incessantly by email to find out what was going on or indeed when other organisations like the Museum of Homelessness or Citizen State joined in the pursuit to find out what Jame Breed was going to do to resolve the problem, not one of us got a response.
In fact James Breed's contact number on his email was cited as Westminster Council's Switchboard number, but when people reached out on my behalf by telephone, they discovered nobody on the switchboard had ever heard of him and he couldn't be tracked down anywhere in the institution.
Was James Breed even a person? Is this some elaborate staging of AI (artificial intelligence)?
Well a quick Google search can only find a single record of him anywhere. Nothing on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or Linkedin. I mean, seriously what are the odds he isn't in some public document of Westminster Council's if he does exist, I would suggest, none!.
I found one mention of him in a Crisis report associated with the other well known harbinger of doom for those experiencing homelessness, Jeremy Swain, former CEO of the despised Thames Reach (those experiencing homelessness at Heathrow where I was, all immediately refused to engage with the people who initially reached out to get us into hotel rooms, when they discovered that they were attached to the organisation), but James had no title, no organisation, no nothing attached to his name in that report and this is the only mention I can find of him anywhere on the internet.
https://lmgtfy.app/?q=%22James+Breed%22+%22homeless%22+%22UK%22
What makes the situation even stranger, is that I have an alleged Adult Social Worker by the name of Katie Taylor, who has been copied into every single piece of correspondence after she was appointed in March 2021, with anyone I correspond with at WCC. She was meant to assist with finding carers for me, to assist with dealing with my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (MECFS) but failed at every turn, hence the term alleged.
This failure of hers almost resulted in my death in August 2021 when I was trapped in bed with an MECFS crash and couldn't get to water for four whole days and as I'd lost my vision couldn't email for assistance and as I didn't have a working phone couldn't call for help. I just lay there wondering when exactly it is that you die of dehydration?
It's sheer luck that I'm here today.
Even though there were supposedly at least six people on five figure salaries at the Local Authority involved in my case, I was dehydrating to death, in the fifth richest economy on the planet, with what was once considered the best welfare system in the world.
Yet even she had made no mention of James Breed's existence either. Has she met or spoken to him, or like me, has she only communicated with him through email? Is, as I suspected, James Breed a Bot?
What we do know about him, is his "intelligence" was only prompted into action, when he'd gone on his fourth break of the year and an email found its way to a colleague of his Susan Scott and we did finally get a response, with they were going to start looking for a place for me to stay. This was nearly two years and masses of communications.
But I said, what about the fact that I have barely any money coming in from the disability benefits that I'm entitled to from the DWP. They can't possibly expect to put me into a tenancy, can they? Knowing I wouldn't be able to buy food, pay for Council Tax, Water, Gas, Electricity, Television Licence, Wifi, they wouldn't do that surely? Well yes, that's exactly what they were going to do.
A guaranteed failure that a four year old could spot.
There was, for a second, talk of placing me in Brent. Even though everyone involved knows I am an Emerging Writer at The London Library on St, James Square which is just off Piccadilly, a Fellow at the RSA (The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Commerce and Manufacture) on John Adam Street just behind Strand, both of which I use regularly to base myself to work when I'm able and all my support networks are based in Zone 1 Central London, where I've lived for the past 22 years.
Now here's the real kicker. I have a Public Relations career in my past and I learnt pretty damn quick in my life, if you want anything to change in this country you have to do it though the press.
So since becoming homeless that's all I've done.
Time and time again it's the press's involvement that has assisted me in getting state organisations to do what they should have been doing in the first place. It didn't matter that I had DWP regulations, Justice and the law on my side the last time the DWP incorrectly stopped all my benefits, nope, none of that mattered, it was only when Heather Mill's covered my story in Private Eye Magazine, did they finally admit their error and put it right (sort of).
And be under no illusion, the only reason I managed to remain inside currently, was that my story had been covered in The Guardian, The Metro, The BBC, The Pavement, The Big Issue Magazine, MyLondon, Times Radio, Greatest News Radio, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, The Guilty Feminist Podcast, even some Spanish publications.
In the last few months, just like Jack Monroe (whom I crossed paths with at Channel 5's Big Benefit Row when the evil Edwina Currie attacked her Father's name and made her cry) I've been submitting to Government Departments, with Expert Link, been advising the DWP on form changes and advocacy services.
When you start counting up the numbers who have known about my plight since this all happened you'd think it would be in the tens of thousands. Yet not one person could assist? Think about that for a minute. Not One Person Could Assist.
I'm the guy that since being homeless performed for 23 minutes in the opening of the closing ceremony for the London 2012 Olympic Games. Put together a £Million film through in kind production against the misogyny of women in advertising. Became the only person to premiere a short film in the Leicester Square Odeon Cinema thanks to the manager Chris Hilton, In two weeks time a play that was part inspired by my story, that I was commissioned to write a workshop play and workshopped with Reaction Theatre Makers which is having a one night performance in The London Vaults Theatre, 27th March 2022.
Yet I can't get a Local Authority Officail to do the job they are paid to do?
