THERE is a dire shortage of social housing brought about by governments who have failed, or deliberately refused to address the problem that has got progressively worse over the last 30 years.

Now this Tory-led coalition has the audacity to put the blame on tenants, those living in properties they consider to be under-occupied. The solution is the “bedroom tax”, a cruel and calculated way of persuading these tenants to downsize.

However, the shortage of social housing isn’t confined to family-size homes. One-bedroomed properties are also very hard to come by.

Even if there were enough one-bed properties to downsize tenants into, many simply do not want to be uprooted.

Some have spent most of their lives, or a considerable part of it, in the house they live in, many spending considerable amounts of money and effort, over the years, making it their home.

These long-term tenants are the very core of these estates. If the problem that faces the Government that there are thousands of families in towns and cities all over the country, waiting to be housed, then surely the answer is to urgently build family-size houses, not one-bed properties to rehouse tenants who do not want to be rehoused.

Brian Derbyshire, Lancs.