• MY blood boiled when I read James Dunnett’s letter, (Our housing needs could be better met elsewhere, January 26).

Here was the owner of a firm of architects advocating that, to save amenities, the council should move elsewhere households on the 15,000-strong Islington housing waiting list whose income does not allow the purchase of costly private accommodation in the borough.

Do these residents have fewer rights to live in Islington because of their lower income?

John Wilson’s letter (Let’s commit to making London unattractive to the ‘super-rich’, December 22), comes to mind, particularly when the arrival of such people generates impoverishment for others, which is especially the case with housing.

Yes, social amenities are important to us all, Mr Dunnett, but so is the right to housing in the borough for all local people.

If he wanted, Mr Dunnett could complain about plenty of other issues relating to housing:

— The grossly inadequate yearly grant to local government from our Tory central government which strongly promotes private home ownership.

— The need to end the policy of council tenants having the right to buy their homes which contributes to the critical shortage of thousands of council homes in our borough.

— The selling off in the borough of flats for social rent owned by housing associations, such as Peabody.

— The selling off (the GLA is not innocent here) of public land to private developers or housing associations, the latter receiving large grants of public money to purchase it.

Housing associations prefer to use this land to build homes for sale, and therefore profit, rather than desperately-needed homes for social rent to make up the critical shortfall in council properties, as in Peabody’s Holloway prison site development where out of 985 homes, 415 will be for social rent while the rest is to be sold (175 “shared ownership” which requires a minimum household income of £80,000; 395 homes for outright sale).

— Even our council is building private homes in order to finance the construction of new council homes.

Take your pick Mr Dunnett!

JENNY KASSMAN
Islington Homes for All