Your welcome article on the dreadful extent of Brighton's homelessness crisis deserves some comment (The Argus, November 15).

Brighton and Hove City Council's tall buildings policy, encouraging proposals such as the marina and King Alfred tower blocks, threatens serious damage to our downland (soon to be a National Park, like Dartmoor or the New Forest), just as building directly on it would do.

The landscape-dominating marina towers proposal would have visually intruded on to our Downs from as far away as Chanctonbury Ring and Seaford Head.

The economic "driver" for these developments is not the provision of affordable housing.

On the contrary, it is the provision of luxury accommodation for a rich elite who will pay crazy prices for seafront homes.

The knock-on result will be to make the housing market even less accessible to the low-paid and make Brighton even more of a city fit only for those on high incomes.

It is for these kinds of reasons that the marina proposal was rejected by the planning committee last week.

Less than a generation ago, all major political parties were competing to build high-quality council housing on a large scale.

It is galling to read the quotes from Labour's Don Turner and Delia Smith regretting the loss of the opportunity to build affordable housing at the marina, when their party has continued the appalling standstill on council house building and tries to push through the privatisation of Brighton's precious stock of 13,000 council homes.

Local authorities which have transferred their council housing to housing associations find themselves less able to house the homeless than before and their tenants pay significantly higher rents.

Homelessness will be more sensibly tackled by rebuilding a strong and attractive council housing sector than by damaging the environment with high-rise towers for the rich with add-on cheaper housing for those left struggling in the low-wage sector which services their needs.

-Dave Bangs, Brighton