Councillor Gabriel Rozenberg is wrong to claim that Barnet Borough Council will build new homes (‘Housing crisis claim is nonsense’, Your Views, February 26). The council itself will give planning permission for developers.

Apart from three new council homes it built recently, the Tory council has been busy allowing private developers to demolish council estates, for example at West Hendon, to replace them with a smaller number of council homes.

New homes built by developers that are not sold or rented at market rates are at an ‘affordable’rent – that is 80 per cent of market rent. In Barnet that means a monthly average rent of £1,200 for a two-bedroom home, which is not affordable for anyone on the living wage of £9.15 per hour.

Now Barnet’s Tory council is consulting on increasing council rents to affordable rents for new lets and possibly all tenants. If carried out, this will be a form of social cleansing, making the borough affordable only to the rich.

The housing crisis, with its extortionate prices and rents in the south-east, is caused by the lack of new council homes, the speculation of buy-to-let and now even buy-to-leave and the lack of security for private tenants. We need an alternative that stops private profit determining everything, and instead puts first the needs of people and the community, including making sure everyone has a roof over their head.

Fred Leplat

Barnet Left Unity