I AM grateful to Helen Marshall (April 16) of CPRE Oxfordshire for clarification on her and her CPRE colleagues’ sympathy and compassion for residents of Oxfordshire whose lives are being severely blighted by the corrosion of restrictive and overpriced, substandard housing.
For what it’s worth, my family and I do not subscribe “to building over the Green Belt”.
Meanwhile, however, Oxford and Oxfordshire housing prices, rental and to buy, are inflated beyond reason; in towns and in villages local people on low wages frequently cannot afford to live in the communities in which they grew up; in Oxford, low-earning families and individuals suffer the stress and distress of insecure tenure and ruthless landlords, made worse by the Coalition Government’s assault on housing benefits.
Of course, the Green Belt is a vital ‘green lung’. No one wants rapacious developers stripping bare rural Oxfordshire and, at an urban level, the Westgate redevelopment is an environmental and economic nonsense which should be ditched in favour of co-housing schemes.
Far too many children and adults are being sold short of humane living conditions in one of the most affluent regions and in one of the most affluent countries in the world.
Compassion from those of us who are securely and comfortably housed for those who are not is of course meaningless and self-indulgent. The future for housing in Oxfordshire is worse than bleak. So ...?
Bruce Ross-Smith, Bowness Avenue, Headington, Oxford
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