Another day, another interview.  Not complaining – I remember my impatience when I started in Shelter about the fact that it was close on six months before we got any mainstream media coverage.  And with the repossessions crisis gathering pace and house prices taking a nose-dive, it would be a worry if we were not getting our share of air-time.

But it does feel all a little bit irrelevant to the real issues out there.  I spent last Friday in a school hall in Penzance at a meeting of local young people grappling with the reality of the fact that few of them had immediate prospect of being able to afford to buy or rent a home in the local area.  For them, arcane debates about how to avoid losing your home or when was the right time for a first-time buyer to enter the housing market were simply irrelevant.  Even if prices tumble by the predicted 25-35%, on the wages they are likely to be able to command in Cornwall, where the average annual pay is just some £16,000 and house prices are inflated by the influx of retirees, home ownership will still be well out of reach.  And the rental market was warped by the annual influx of holidaymakers looking for one week or two week lets.

Which is why, despite my sympathy for the position of people at risk of repossessions, our priority has to be on maintaining supply.  At a speaking event last week, I was venting my concern that housing starts may fall well below 100,000 this year, almost half of the intended figure, when my pessimism was gazundered by someone from the housing industry, who predicted that starts next year would struggle to top 60,000.

Even with reduced divorce rates and inward migration which are the natural results of recessions, demand for new houses will still be somewhere in the region of 240,000.  And I can’t get out of my head the question about how old those young people I met will be when they eventually get access to an affordable home.

So, we now have a nationalised banking system.  Ok - a partially nationalised system.  But the same question arises.  Will the system continue to be motivated by profit or will the new entrenched public interest change banking behaviour?

We will quickly be able to judge by the way the banks’ now handle mortgage repossessions.   If Government decides to treat its multi-billion pound bail-out simply as an investment which must be re-paid, and even turn a profit, there is every danger the number of repossessions will go on rising.

Having sat in meetings over the past three months, and listening to Ministers lecturing lenders about their duty to act responsibly to struggling homeowners, I have no doubt that Brown and his team recognise the political dangers.  It would not take many stories about ‘hard-working families’, unfortunate pensioners or returning Iraqi servicemen being made homeless by HBOS or RBS to raise the political temperature.

Despite this, there is every indication banking practice will remain unchanged.  Northern Rock has been state-owned for some six months.  So far there have been no obvious signs that its treatment of borrowers in default has changed.  Indeed, it has gained a reputation as one of the most aggressive of re-possessors.   The drive to replace debt with liquid cash and repay its dues to the Treasury means it has been less, not more, sympathetic to those behind with their mortgages.

The social cost of carrying on as normal will be high.  Don’t forget this is a crisis founded on mortgage default.  It was the systematic mis-selling of mortgages in the USA and the subsequent housing crash which created the mountain of toxic debt and acted as the genesis of the credit crunch.  Although the lending and default problems are smaller in the UK, it’s a fact that one in every 1,500 British households is now three months or more in arrears. And that before the inevitable rise in unemployment the impending recession is likely to bring.  The Council for Mortgage Lenders’ prediction of 45,000 repossessions in 2008 looks set to be a conservative estimate. Next year’s figure is likely to be far higher.

But the choice between politics and profit may not be as stark as it might at first appear.  If there is one thing the banks learned from the housing crash of the early 1990s - and precious little else appears to have been learned - then it is that dumping thousands of repossessed homes on an already depressed housing market is far less financially sustainable than finding ways of keeping owners in their homes until they, or the market, have staggered back onto their feet.  With Government currently investing millions of pounds in obscure and technically complex mortgage rescue schemes, its takeover of the banks may have accidentally put it into a position where it could demonstrate that it is as committed to solving the problems of borrowers as it is to bailing out the lenders.