It shows a contemptible want of courage that Keir Starmer’s government fails to follow the examples of Scotland and Wales by simply ending the right-to-buy scam (Call it Thatcher’s timebomb: the great council housing selloff, a crisis hidden in plain sight, 13 February). There are 700,000 long-term empty homes in England, which is almost double the number of homeless people. The temporary accommodation of these families is a needless drain on local governments’ stretched budgets. Some of these homes are in areas of high demand, such as London, and some are owned by councils, which are either are too cash-strapped or so depleted of in-house skills that they cannot get around to putting them into habitable condition. This obscene contrast between wasted resources and essential human need could be corrected by the adoption of tax systems such as exist in France. The French levy a residence tax. This must be paid if you own a property and live in it yourself, have it available for your use, or rent it out on short-term lets. Where properties are rented out long-term, this is paid by the tenant. In France there is also a taxe foncière, which is paid by the owner of the property, irrespective of who occupies it. The tax is divided into two parts: tax on buildings and tax on land. The latter is levied nationally. The tax on buildings is paid on any property that is habitable, whether or not it is occupied. Both taxes apply to non-residents as well as residents, and are often higher on second homes than on main residences, due to possible discounts on the main home, and are a great source of local revenue to support public services. Kate Macintosh Winchester Aditya Chakrabortty rightly highlights the social crime of selling off council housing: in my village, where there were 18 council houses, seven have been sold off over the last 25-30 years. Not only that, the former primary school site (closed in 2014) was sold to a developer that obtained planning permission for 12 houses, three of which were to be “affordable”; this was then reduced to two affordable units; the latest application to revise the planning permission has reduced the affordable units to zero. Needless to say, the site has not yet been developed and is unlikely to be developed for some time. Meanwhile, there is a shortage of the sort of workers who are desperately needed for an ageing population, who cannot afford the increasingly expensive owner‑occupied housing in this area. There’s nothing to celebrate about the 50th anniversary of Thatcher’s rise to power; the only consolation is that I did not vote for her (nor any Conservative). Susan Gregory Burton in Lonsdale, North Yorkshire I am in complete agreement with Aditya Chakrabortty about the immoral sales of council housing. In the 1950s my father was a farm worker and we lived in a tied cottage. When my father’s “shellshock” (post-traumatic stress disorder) from the second world war meant he was unable to work, we were evicted. On the day of eviction, the local authority rehoused us in a very substantial council house. The best that a family in a similar situation can expect today is a substandard B&B. Perhaps, on this one-off occasion, Keir Starmer should have “done a Trump” and slashed the discount for council flat purchases on day one to stop greedy landlords jumping on the bandwagon. David Felton Crewe, Cheshire