COUNCILLORS Andrew Gant and Jean Fooks’ call for Oxford City Council to prioritise more affordable private properties over the need to build social housing, fails to recognise the root causes of the housing crisis which is resulting in massive hardship and distress, particularly in Oxford.

Decades of the Right to Buy, unregulated private-sector rents and big developers’ land-banking and building mainly high-priced properties have driven up housing costs and led to the present state of affairs where even those on good incomes cannot afford to buy or rent.

Their letter also ignores the relationship between high house prices and rents, which are part of the same commercial market.

Certainly self-build, co-operatives and community initiatives will help. However, unless councils like Oxford can find suitable land, with the cooperation of other Oxfordshire Local Authorities and be allowed to build social housing for rent on a large enough scale so that the many hundreds of families on waiting lists who will never be able to afford to buy in the ‘market’ will not be left behind, the overall situation will not change.

Councils up and down the country are being hampered in their efforts to tackle the crisis by the negative housing policies of present and previous Governments, including the Conservative/Lib Dem Coalition.

In Oxford, the many people who work in our public services, hospitals and schools need good quality, decent, low-cost and sustainably-built homes close to where they work together with good transport infrastructure.

The Oxford Housing Crisis group thinks that the best providers of such homes will be the councils and Housing Associations.

Carol Stavris, Oxford Housing Crisis