Surgery all morning. (One blog reader asked if all the surgeries I do mean I’m a doctor. In case you don’t know – I’m not at the operating table, but rather it’s an advice session people come to, so they can talk to me in person, face-to-face about an issue they need help with).

I cannot count the number of people who come with housing misery stories – too many people in one room, appalling conditions, etc – and the points they need to qualify for re-housing always seem to change just as they are about to achieve the required number.

Today was no exception. One couple had been in private accommodation which got flooded so they had to move out to stay with the woman’s mother. Two children later and sleeping all four in one room, they got within six points of being re-housed – when the goalposts moved. Years later they are still there

I asked if they had thought of renting in the private market – but they said it was too expensive and their daughter was at a local school and the mother helped with childcare – all very valid of course.

However, as I said to them, if the Council were to tell you that realistically you are unlikely to get re-housed for another ten years – might you then decide to move further out where it is cheaper, even though you have to change your daughter’s school and lose the easy and convenient help being with your mother brings? Yes – they said. And therein lies a huge problem – people are not able to make informed decisions about what to do as they live in a world of ever-shifting, non-delivered promises.

Of course, some do eventually get there – which leads me to another conclusion about the system we have: the system itself creates problems. For example – you get more points if you have extra criteria that count. One that whisks across my surgery desk regularly is a doctor’s letter confirming depression or asthma or whatever – and the more illnesses and the more severe the more points! Now of course this is right in a way because need increases – but as with all the systems it seems to encourage people to be less able and discourages people from battling for better health.

Conversely, it leaves people who manage through adversity worse off. I saw one woman, a single mother bringing up four children in inappropriate accommodation for 18 years, but with no qualifying ‘extras’ and doing a great job keeping all their heads above water. She will probably never get re-housed because she is determined to cope with it all regardless. Perverse incentives all over the place!