More importantly, there was a reasonable chance they knew who you were.
They knew the estate. They knew some of the families. They knew which properties had ongoing problems and, quite often, they knew about an issue before it had developed into something much more serious.
Has that relationship started to disappear?
For this week's Property Matters, Gareth Wax and Hamish McLay will be joined by Tiffany Fairbrother to ask whether council housing has gradually lost one of its most important connections: the person who actually knows the tenant.
Tiffany will be able to bring the perspective that really matters to this conversation, that of someone who actually lives in council housing and experiences the system from the tenant's side.
Today, reporting a problem can mean calling a central number, filling in an online form or speaking to a different person every time. A repair might go to one department, antisocial behaviour to another and a complaint somewhere else entirely.
Everyone may have a small piece of the story, yet who has the whole picture?
The figures suggest this is worth talking about.
According to the Regulator of Social Housing's Tenant Satisfaction Measures for 2024/25, overall satisfaction among social housing tenants was 71.8% for the median landlord.
However, satisfaction that landlords listen to tenants and act on their views was lower, at 61.6%.
Perhaps most strikingly, among tenants who had actually made a complaint, median satisfaction with how complaints were handled was just 35.5%.
That tells us something isn't always working.
It would be easy to blame housing officers themselves, although that may be completely unfair.
The modern housing officer can be expected to deal with tenancy management, rent issues, antisocial behaviour, safeguarding, complaints and increasingly complicated individual circumstances. Add a large number of properties and tenants to that workload and we have to ask whether we have created a job that is becoming increasingly difficult to do properly.
Perhaps the question isn't, "Where has the housing officer gone?"
Perhaps it is, "Have we given them the opportunity to be a housing officer anymore?"
This is where Tiffany's experience becomes so important.
Do tenants actually know the name of their housing officer? Have they met them? Can they contact them directly? If they report the same problem several times, do they have to explain everything again from the beginning?
And what difference would it make to have one familiar person who knew the history?
A leaking roof isn't simply a repair reference number if someone has been living with it for months. Antisocial behaviour isn't simply another case on a computer if someone is frightened in their own home.
Sometimes understanding the person behind the problem can completely change how that problem is dealt with.
Interestingly, the direction of regulation suggests that relationships matter too. The Housing Ombudsman has highlighted the importance of relationship management between landlords and residents, while new competence and conduct requirements for social housing are due to come into force from October 2026.
Professional standards matter enormously.
So does being able to pick up the telephone and speak to somebody who knows who you are.
This Tuesday at 1pm on Property Matters, join Gareth Wax, Hamish McLay and Tiffany Fairbrother as we ask whether the traditional housing officer is disappearing and, if so, what council tenants are losing along with them.
Because perhaps the future of social housing doesn't only depend on how many homes we build.
It also depends on how well we look after the people already living in them.
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