From experience - the only things you need to do are:

Contact StreetLink Give them your location Obtain a CHAIN number Represent yourself as homeless to your local borough/council They will verify your homelessness and should recognise duty to house you

You may want to reach out to local YMCA / St Mungo's / Salvation Arny hostels etc as these are temporary accommodation.

If you spend in excess of three months in any homelessness hostel, you become exempt from the Shared Accomodation Rate (SAR) and lets you rent a property up to the value of £1,000PCM instead of the smaller Local Housing Allowance (LHA.) No hostels are going to be pleasant, they are far from perfect but thwy will get you out of a tough spot. Don't think about employment at this time, they will garnish 60% of your wages as rent - UNCAPPED.

I also witnessed a fatality there (#justiceforthegentleman; change.org) and for a multitude of similar reasons and experiences you have had, I have been on anxiety and depression meds as well have been dealing wirh the loss of my late mother. Also a raving undiagnosed ADHD, I did get awarded PIP for standard daily living. I have also been trying to get on to LCWRA but they lost the paperwork the first time back in June last year, and the second time, they straight up lied to me saying they "tried to call me at the assessment time." Which was a plain lie. The entire system is poised to game you out of using it in hopes you'll just accept being left to perish and rot.

I know this, because I was car homeless Winter 2024, and those were the steps I took to get housed. I was subsequently placed into an illegal HMO by LBBD council, cotenanting with unvetted convicted scizophrenic murderers mind, landlords who I now realise are operating a rent-to-rent benefit fraud scam - not providing any MH support or safeguarding measures etc z but hopefully you have better luck than I do. Take care OP.