The director of All Home, an agency set up to combat homeless has been suspended after booking a trans woman stripper for the agency’s annual conference.

According to one conference attendee, dancer Beyoncé Black St James wore a sheer bodysuit for her performance, took off her top to reveal “large breasts covered only with silver pasties” gave lap dances and kissed delegates while collecting dollar bills from the crowd.

While a number of people who were at the event described Ms St James’s performance as “fun and fabulous” many others complain that it was “too sexual” and that they felt intimidated by being made to participate in the “sexualised” performance without their consent.

(Image: Instagram)

Besides fundraisers and public employees, the audience included representatives from several religious groups engaged in charity outreach for the homeless.

Now Kira Zylstra, organiser of the conference at South Seattle College, has been placed on leave, according to the chief of staff for the King County Department of Community and Human Services, Denise Rothleutner.

All Home King County’s stated mission is to make homelessness “rare and brief and one-time".

The theme of the conference was ‘decolonisation.’

Ms Rothleutner declined to comment in detail but said in an email: “The department is aware of an event that occurred during the All Home annual conference on December 9, 2019. We have placed the director of All Home on administrative leave pending the results of an investigation into the event and the leadership of All Home."

(Image: YouTube)

“Because there is an active investigation underway, I am unable to respond to specific questions about the event.”

Dori Monson, commenting for local radio station Kiro Radio, asked: “How do you think the religiously-affiliated groups that were there, like Catholic Community Services, felt having a drag queen give lap dances at a meeting that should have been about helping those in need?”

(Image: Instagram)

He went on: “What is it with our government’s obsession with drag shows? Why does the King County Library System host Drag Queen Story Time? Why does a homelessness conference bring out a drag queen?”

Zylstra has been in the job since early 2018, on a salary of $123,000 (around £92,000).