Still fielding e-mails and calls from mortgage rescue scheme providers anxious to reassure us that, despite the horror stories we have been highlighting through the media in recent days, they are nice, responsible operators. They also argue that, by offering a way in which people in trouble with their mortgages can sell their houses but still stay in them as tenants, they are offering an important service.

There is nothing wrong in theory with the principle of sale and rent-back. And of course some providers may well be decent and well-meaning. But I still can’t forget the testimony I have been hearing over recent weeks from people who are now homeless and devastated by their experience. When you spend the morning with a little old lady (literally – no exaggeration) who is in tears pretty continually for three hours about what has happened to her, you lose a little sympathy for those on the other side.

And, bluntly, the apologies and claims of integrity ring hollow when you listen to the detail. When you hear that some of the schemes promise that sellers can use the buyer’s solicitor and discourage them from seeking independent advice; when you hear of refusals to give receipts for payments and tenancy agreements which are never signed; when you learn that houses bought for a knockdown price are sold on the same day at a massive profit – then you realise how crooked some of these practices are.

The responsible businesses have nothing to fear from us. As I say, we are not against the principle. All we want to see is proper regulation. If the people who have been contacting me are serious, they should support what we are trying to achieve. But there are crooks out there and they need to be stopped.

A long discussion about an event I am due to be speaking at on Sunday.  I get a lot of invitations to speak and, in truth, the yes/no decisions are somewhat hit and miss.  Consequently, I frequently make mistakes, passing up opportunities I should accept and ending up, as in this case, committing myself to things which I really didn’t need to on weekend afternoons when I should really be spending time with my kids.
 
What makes this one even more questionable is that it is something being organised by an outfit called the Institute of Ideas, which appears to be one of the myriad offshoots of the old Living Marxism activist grouping.  Which prompts some debate internally: given that people such as George Monbiot and Jon Snow have raised serious doubts about their methods and intentions, what are the risks and benefits of sharing a platform with them?  Am I about to be ambushed?  By agreeing to appear, are we giving them an aura of respectability?
 
These are real dangers, of course.  It is interesting, for example, that the background material they have circulated involves correspondence rather bemusingly attempting to create a debate about whether bad housing really does impact on children’s health and well-being as we claim.  But it is scarcely in tune with Shelter’s values to cut and run at the first sign of controversy.  Nor should we be afraid of exposing ourselves to criticism: if we dish it out to others, we should be open to taking it too. 
 
And the important thing is that we should be seeking to spread our message out beyond the usual sympathetic suspects to reach different audiences.  It is all too easy just to speak to people who agree with you and spending time with them neither changes minds or exposes our policy positions to healthy challenge.  Sure I may be feeling very differently about things on Sunday night.  But I have nothing to lose but my dignity and, as those who know me will testify, there’s not much of that to lose.
 

Got home last night to find that we had no water.  Not for once because I’d not paid the bill (although that may have been why the phone and internet also had been cut off).  The problem was clearly wider: the whole square was out, and continued out until the next morning.
 
It was, not to put to finer point on it, a complete bleedin’ nightmare.  No water to cook with.  Nowhere to wash the kids’ hands and faces or clean their teeth.  Toilets which rapidly became a health hazard (not sure you really needed to know that bit, but there it is).  And all without warning or time for preparation.
 
In my case, it only lasted overnight.  But it was a salutary reminder of how fragile are the props on which we depend.  It doesn’t take much – a broken water main, a mislaid Housing Benefit form, a rise in the interest rate – to throw your life completely upside down.  And suddenly you’re struggling, stressed, rowing with your nearest and dearest, eating out of tins, stinking and grubby.
 
I don’t know how many of you have seen the documentary Evicted, Brian Woods’ Bafta-winning study of three homeless families which was shown on the BBC late last year.  What the film does is to concentrate on the little things: children packing and repacking their suitcases, toys left behind in a repossessed house, tins of beans left on the radiator in the morning to heat through ready for supper.  It is those, as much of images of parents – literally – tearing out their hair, which really makes it real. 
 
The documentary will be repeated again soon.  Watch it.
 

An appallingly early start for one of my increasingly regular stints on the sofa on GMTV.  Not the main part of the programme, you understand – I know my place – but the news hour between 6 and 7am.  Smaller audience but easier to get onto and with the space to do more than just give the 10-second soundbite reply.
 
Yet again, the issue was mortgage difficulties, increasingly our route onto the TV screens over the past few months.  Which raises an issue.  There is no doubt that there is a possible repossessions crisis looming, one which will create huge need for our services and one which requires a sustained effort to impel Government to take seriously.  But is it Shelter’s job to be pressing so hard on this?  Are people in trouble with their mortgages really a key priority group for us?  In short, whom should we be concentrating on helping?
 
The urgency behind the question is not just driven by our need to decide on how we should respond to the increased risk of repossessions.  There is also the fact that we are now just starting out on a three-year strategic review (our current strategy runs out in 18 months and we need to start the process of updating it in the next few weeks).  As part of that, I am keen to build on our attempts last time to consult stakeholders, particularly our end users, about what they think we should prioritise in the next phase of our work.
 
But whom should we consult?  The last time we did it, we held independently-run sessions with some of the users of our services, which was fine as a mechanism for getting feedback on what we were doing well and badly, but less good as a way of generating ideas about how we should extend the reach of our services.  Using other organisations to help us access users also skewed our responses far too much towards the rough-sleeping end of the spectrum; while they are an important group, rough sleepers represent just a fraction of all those in housing need and there is a huge number of charities devoted to offering services to them.
 
And what happens when you do consult people?  One of the challenges of the modern charity sector is the extent to which user feedback truly does shape your strategy.  We are not, much as though some might wish it, fully democratic entities; it would be almost impossible to remain challenging, imaginative and quick to respond if we were.  Equally, however, we need to ensure that everything we say and do is rooted in the experience of our stakeholders, particularly those who struggle to get their voices heard elsewhere.  Making sure that the way we go about consulting people in the best way possible over the next year or so is not a simple process.

I think I may be becoming a cyclist.  Well, put it this way, I have splashed out £45 on a beaten-up bicycle and taken to riding into work rather than traipsing through the not-exactly-inspiring streets of North London on foot.  And, as an added advantage, I have discovered what you lot have known for years: that it is a damn sight quicker (and cheaper) to beetle between meetings in town by bike than on the tube or in taxis.  20 minutes from Old Street to Parliament is a breeze.
 
And so last night found me haring off from a meeting in Finsbury Park back down to the centre of London for a dinner.  Trying desperately to avoid the prospect of battling with cars and lorries down the Holloway Road (I haven’t got round to getting a helmet; anyway I like to feel the wind ruffling my bald patch), I cut through the back streets and found myself in the middle of the new Arsenal Stadium/Ashburton Grove development.
 
Where I stopped and had a wander.  The stadium, from the outside at least (I’ve not got my hands on a ticket yet) is undeniably impressive.  The homes which surround it are also well-designed (they’re expensive, after all).  Indeed, the whole thing looks an object-lesson in good modern regeneration.
 
Then I rode across the Holloway Road to the other half of the development.  There, the flats were denser and the road darker.  These were low-cost ownership dwellings.  Further down the road, further away from the stadium, I passed social housing.  Then, where I’d been hoping to find a cut-through to the Caledonian Road, I found the municipal recycling facility.
 
It was a slightly more reflective Adam who retraced his wheel-tracks back to the main road.  Even now, with all our theoretical commitment to mixed communities, we are building signature developments which seem to enshrine social segregation.  Richer people near the stadium; poorer people next to the dump.  If this is the case with such high-profile projects as this one, it only shows how far we have to go to make our aspirations to sustainable and equitable communities a reality.