A couple of years ago, I was coming away from visiting some Shelter clients in the East End.  It was dark, and as I left the dingy flats where they lived, a bloke stepped out of the shadows and thrust something in my direction.  When he’d gone and I’d stopped screaming, I realised that what I was now holding was a recruiting leaflet for the BNP. 
 
What was interesting was not the question of why they might have thought that some tall, white bloke with a No 1 haircut (OK - no hair) could be sympathetic to their cause, but how they were now selling in the same old racist message.  It wasn’t the usual “they are coming over here taking your jobs and your women” stuff.  Housing was now the recruiting-cry.
 
And so I wasn’t surprised by the BNP’s showing in the Barking and Dagenham local elections last year, and I am not surprised if the local MP’s expression of concern about the situation have caused a huge row.  But we should not confuse the – very real – question about how we balance need with time on the waiting list in allocating housing with the – largely fallacious – issue about whether immigrants are getting priority access to social housing.  By all means let us debate the first question.  But to pretend that newly-arrived economic migrants really are being housed at the expense of everybody else only adds credence to the lies of those who are trying to use housing shortages for their own racist ends.

Three phone calls in four hours complaining about Shelter campaigns.  A local authority housing official upset by our Wall of Shame, an installation inviting passers-by to sign a brick calling for more homes.  A civil servant who believes that our new viral e-mail about overcrowding is not in the spirit of partnership with Government.  And a politician who doesn’t think we are giving their party sufficient credit for what they are trying to do.
 
We take such complaints seriously – of course we do.  There is always tempting for campaigners to go over the top.  Outrage leads to coverage.  And it is difficult to remember the importance of staying on the right side of those in power when you are faced with the day-to-day misery of the lives of those we work for.
 
But for every complaint about us going in too hard there is another complaint about Shelter having lost its edge.  A couple of years ago, we took over all the advertising space at Earl’s Court tube station during the week of the Ideal Home exhibition and filled it with images of mouldy walls and rotten windows.  That week, I got three pieces of feedback: one complaint from one of the exhibitors; one from someone asking why Shelter was no longer as radical as it used to be; and a call from Des Wilson, who as our first Director inspired a generation of campaigners, congratulating Shelter on being back to its edgy best.

Back to work after a weekend spent celebrating a friend’s birthday in Salford. Sharing a platform with Yvette Cooper yesterday was an ironic counterpoint to the previous couple of days. Sure – this is a time for optimism: when you have Yvette repeating Gordon Brown’s recent pledge to lift a million children out of poor housing by 2016, how can you not be optimistic? The incoming administration’s commitment to our issues seems very real.

But two days in Salford is enough to show how huge the task is. Of course progress has been made: the centre of Manchester has been transformed; midnight queuing at Piccadilly bus station is no longer the nerve-racking experience it once was. But beyond the centre, the old problems remain. The first image that greeted us when we turned into my mate’s street was a dog licking vomit off a rubbish-strewn pavement. These are the areas which politicians and policy-makers rarely get to visit.

Nor was there any sense among those I talked to that things were going to get better. The centre-piece of the weekend was a family gathering at a club in Audenshaw, with a coach picking us all up from estates across the city (I know, cities – Salford is a city in its own right) and returning us at the end of the do. These were not the new, thrusting and high-tech incomers on whom the future of Manchester is being built. They were representatives of a swathe of the existing population, many low- or un-skilled, some unemployed and a few in and out of prison. The renovations of which politicians are so proud scarcely reach them.

And that is the issue. There is no doubt that the Pathfinder initiatives are well intentioned and are doing great work. But they are all built around the same aim: to attract into economically struggling areas people with high skills and high incomes. In that process, there is a danger that the needs and aspirations of the people who are less economically important and politically attractive may simply be ignored.

Just had a quick blimp at Brown’s opening gambit as PM-in-waiting. And - guess what? - the media trails of the past few days were real. Housing gets a mention, not once but twice. And not throwaway mentions either - both times it comes at the top of the list of issues the Govenment has to address, above health, education, the environment and crime.

Which is great, but scary. For years we have been arguing that there is a growing crisis and clamouring for Government to respond. Now, at last, they are listening. That means that we have to move from highlighting the problem to helping point out the solutions.

Which is not so easy. Charles Clarke said the other night that the reason Government has not responded before was because housing was in the “important but too hard” box. Gordon Brown has signalled his willingness to take the issue on. But the answers to the problem are neither quick, cheap nor easy. Nevertheless, this is the opportunity we have been waiting for. We cannot lose it.