IREAD with interest the largely correct analysis of Burnley's housing problems as outlined in your feature (LET, July 3) -- but I do also note the call from council leader Stuart Caddy and others for people in crisis-ridden parts of Burnley like Daneshouse and Burnley Wood to wait their turn.

Meanwhile, the Stoops estate falls back despite £20-million investment in the mid-1990s and improved housing which people in other parts of Burnley ought to benefit from is again getting a bad reputation.

What must be addressed first is the institutional racism of council officers in the past with regard to council house allocations. This is now in danger of being perpetuated by the Burnley and Padiham Community Housing Association and means that Asian families rarely get invited to move on to the Stoops, Rosehill or Brunshaw estates.

At the same time, people landed with property that can't be sold or that they don't want the responsibility of letting -- in areas like Burnley Wood and, soon, Cog Lane -- are threatened with imprisonment for non-payment of dead council tax.

Conscientious householders are given a raw deal in the compulsory purchase system in Burnley Wood compared with landlords and tenants, some of whom are regarded as the villains of the piece and go in for letting to manage the council tax question.

For the young white homeless, faced with soaring utility prices and card meters, the appalling Alice-through-the-looking-glass bureaucracy associated with council tax and benefits and the terribly low priority given to mental health and drug rehabilitation in Burnley means that lives collapse and neighbours suffer as criminals leech on to their chaotic lives.

Meanwhile in Stoneyholme, Brougham Street and another row are sandblasted and given carriage lamps, while the back streets remain broken down and squalid.

There are no grants available in Daneshouse and Stoneyholme for households with the energy and commitment to do up their own homes.

All this has created fertile ground for the British National Party to put down deep roots in Burnley.

The Chancellor, Gordon Brown, is sitting on a huge war chest. Our MP, Peter Pike, must get £150million from the Government for Burnley. Then, let the council start by organising sensible council tax exemptions, proper compulsory purchase compensation to owners, home improvement grants for people wanting to continue living in 100-year-old terraces and compensation for small businesses whose income has collapsed as a result of the last two weeks events, and anti-racist training for housing and community groups.

This is a crisis, not just a problem or a 'challenge' and these are measures which will unite, not divide us.

MARGARET SMITH (Lancashire Socialist Alliance), St James' Street, Burnley.