I’ve read various attempts to improve the lot of the homeless. 

The term ‘affordable housing’ is raised by James Young who attempts to solve the problem in his letter “Creative thinking” of June 20.

He doesn’t appear to understand the alarming reasons why this country is in such a state regarding housing despite my spelling it out some time ago. 

James said, “What we need is homes that are affordable not affordable homes”. He needs to define ‘affordable’. 

To the well-off, most property is ‘affordable’; but to the relatively poor and homeless,who incidentally may be fully employed, it’s all ‘unaffordable’ to purchase since they they can’t even raise a deposit. To them, rents are ‘unaffordable’ too.

The housing ‘market’ is a ‘bubble’ waiting to burst. Our governments have ‘wooed’ huge numbers of mainly Russian oligarchs and other sources of ready cash into London whose prime instinct has been to invest their ill-gotten gains in property. This has become another principle tradeable ‘currency’. One ‘think-tank’ estimates that this alone has raised prices by over 20 per cent. 

Not to be left out of the ‘trough’ of opportunity, UK’s “executives enjoying rocketing pay of 183 times an average worker’s” have ‘tucked in’ as well. 

Now, everyone with spare cash buys houses as an investment. 

All around the country there are towns with 50 per cent unoccupied houses whose owners either use them at weekends or let them to the homeless whose rents we all subsidise via ‘housing benefits’.

I once suggested to WDDC that their planning for future housing developments was erroneously based on past demand for houses. 

This is rather absurd since for many years, people have been selling up in London and moving down here. This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the real need caused by organic growth of our community.

And so it goes on; more sales, more empty houses for holidaying and weekending, higher rents to be subsidised by us. It’s like a mathematical ‘loop’ system; a microphone with too much ‘gain’ feeds on its own output until the speakers screech in torment like the homeless.

James Young is quite wrong to suggest the Labour Party’s plans to build loads of council houses won’t solve the problem. 

Actually, it’s the only common sense way to tackle the crisis.

Unfortunately, there are too many of the current government’s supporters who are builders, landowners, banks or the generally rich to risk its conception. 

Don’t start me on Theresa May’s ‘post-Grenfell housing performance’.

Mike Joslin
Dorchester