Today we’re taking a brief break from DWP ballsups to talk about council ones.

Readers of this site may remember a story I posted earlier this year about N.

N is disabled, homeless and a mother to 2 very young children. She’s another domestic violence alumni – domestic violence being a problem that the world probably needs to get round to addressing with something closer to urgency. Bet plenty more more women get smacked over as massive energy bills land. Problems like that inevitably end up being our fault.

On with the story. Several years ago, N’s London council placed her in one of its notoriously bad homelessness hostels and there N has languished. She has one shabby room where she and her kids live (“live” is the romantic word for it), eat and sleep. These single rooms in this hostel are the sort of cramped, airless and often baking hot places that you’d be fined for leaving a dog in, but are entirely acceptable for poor families for years on end.

Still, hanging on even to this hovel has been a challenge for N – an unfair one, needless to say. At the end of last year, the council informed a then-pregnant N that she’d be evicted from the hostel, because she’d turned down a temporary flat the council had offered. N had good reason to turn the flat down – it was a ground floor place with a flimsy front door and an overgrown yard in which a pissed-off ex could lie in wait for the woman who’d dared to get a non-molestation order against him. N was too scared of her ex to tell the council any of this. So, she was still facing eviction when she gave birth. She was also whatsapping me and another housing activist about it from the delivery suite. Seemed a new low to me, but I can be slow to move with the times.

Anyway, we can probably put that unpleasantness behind us, because the council has since moved into a new field – miracle healing. Until now, as a lifelong atheist, I have tended to take the long view of this corner of the action, but maybe this will be the time when things finally take off.

Last week, an officer rang N (who is still languishing in the hostel) to say that N would have to accept a 2nd-storey flat with no lift if nothing else was available – this is even though N can’t climb stairs.

An independent (you bet) medical (ditto) assessor had decided that N could get to a 2nd-floor place with 2 small children and no lift, even though she needs a mobility aids or her baby’s buggy to lean on to support her to move.

There has been much talk (none of it encouraging) about various independent medical assessors – people and/or outfits who assess disabled people for councils and report on how disabled the disabled person is (the answer is often a startling Not Very in my experience).

Councils make decisions about helping people with housing or not on on the basis on these reports. Can’t say I know or care which ungodly assessor this council has used in this instance, but what I can say is that we seem to have arrived at a familiar place with them. Of course – I wouldn’t dream of saying publicly that these independent reports have long seemed to me to favour councils rather than disabled people. Could be worth noting, though, that some of these medical assessors can get intriguingly pissy about criticism of their findings (and existence). I’ve had legal threats from them in the past – doubtless for reasons that had nothing to do with their wanting to win further public contracts and money. Let’s see if I get some more.

In the meantime, we’ll concentrate on the other positives. N has been healed, which is good news. Also, she may very well see a new flat for her family, if only from the bottom of 2 flights of stairs. All she needs now is some grant-a-wish warlock with a decent second line in curing weapons-grade anxiety. Rest assured that there’s someone out there selling that.