YOU HAVE YOUR SAY

EVERY week, Money Mail receives hundreds of your letters and emails about our stories. Here are some of the best from our report about the fierce debates within communities on where new homes should be built to fix Britain’s housing crisis . . .

PEOPLE can’t afford to buy homes because anybody with any money has piled into buyto-let, forcing up house prices. If interest rates were at a decent level, so you could get a return on your cash from a bank, there would be more houses for sale. P. V., Maidenhead, Berks.

THE term ‘green belt’ is now meaningless: it is not protected from development. So many previously beautiful places have been concreted over for horrible new-builds. M. D., Shrops.

IT IRRITATES me how NIMBYs [ Not In My Back Yard] are characterised as selfish, with an ‘I’m all right, Jack’ attitude. But NIMBYs are not objecting to development per se. What they object to is development en

masse, with soulless, low-quality, cheap houses crammed into a field with no consideration given to the existing community. A. G., Exeter.

AN AREA such as this should be protected, not decimated. Once it’s gone, it’s lost for ever. S. Q., Manchester.

PEOPLE assume they have a God-given right to own their own home. They want it all — somewhere to live and beautiful views. You can’t have both. S. B., Dundee.

MANY towns have run-down centres, full of charity shops, betting shops and takeaways. We need to be developing these places into affordable housing and think about building up, rather than out. D. D., Chorley, Lancs.

I SUSPECT that if we looked closely at who lives where, we’d find the ‘Yimbys’ [Yes In My Back Yard] don’t actually live adjacent to proposed developments and are thus ‘Yiybys’ (Yes In Your Back Yard). T. L., Winchester, Hants.