Letter: Time to stop the wealthy living in social housing properties

Add to that the huge numbers of second homes in the county that are hardly ever used by the owners, except for occasional holidays or weekends and that all adds up to possibly thousands of homes which are almost constantly empty.

• Holiday lets causing a housing shortage

A further problem is the resale of right to buy council homes. Certainly in the village where I live there are a number of council homes which were bought and lived in until the owners died, the problems are becoming obvious now the houses are being sold off by the relatives, the only people who can afford to buy them are wealthy professionals who spend a fortune on the property but are hardly ever around.

The village is becoming a commuter hotspot there is absolutely no hope of low paid local people being able to afford these homes.

In some cases the owners of ex-council properties, who were fortunate enough to be able to buy these homes for very low prices subsidised by the taxpayer, have moved out and bought a new property somewhere else and the ex-council house has become a rental property at market rents, again unaffordable for the low paid.

Here's a novel idea, instead of penalising the very low paid with the 'bedroom tax' would it not be more sensible to start means testing social home residents? If the Government were to do that it would free up an awful lot of houses which were always intended for those at the lower end of the earnings scale.

The housing associations could then put regulations in place to ensure that there would be a fair and equal mix of working people, unemployed and pensioners to ensure that we don't end up with 'benefits streets' and ghettoes everywhere.

There are people who own second homes, holiday homes and buy-to-lets living in social housing. There are people who own profitable businesses.

There are wealthy pensioners who spend several months of the year living abroad, often in their own holiday homes, living in social housing.

There are many people today in social housing who should not be, and if the Government just had the courage to impose an earnings upper limit for social housing tenants it might ease the housing crisis.

The only crisis today is not a lack of housing but a lack of available housing.

L C Oliver, Shrewsbury