I suspect this public servant is just a hapless idiot. It’s obviously not the housing authority’s policy to recommend witchcraft. This person probably had good intentions.
That doesn’t make it “ok”, nor make the system any less broken, it just explains what’s happened.
As an aside, in Australia you can’t evict a tenant if they have no where to go. There isn’t a bailiff in Australia that would put this woman and her son on the street.