THERE’S a real air of prosperity about Brighton and Hove these days with smart restaurants and fashionable clothes shops opening every week.

Yet by contrast I have never seen so many rough sleepers on the streets as I have in the last year and there are a lot of people seeking help from the evening soup run on the seafront.

It seems that however wealthy much of the city becomes, homelessness is the problem that simply will not go away.

And while men sheltering in shop doorways are the visible manifestation of a housing crisis, there is a lot more going on that is deeply disturbing.

Huge numbers of people are on the city council’s housing waiting list. Many will have to wait years before being made an offer while some will have almost no chance.

There is a flight of young families from Brighton and Hove to places east and west where prices are slightly cheaper and the pressures are not as great.

So while the wealthy pour into the city by the sea attracted by its verve and vitality, indigenous Brightonians are being forced out to Lancing, Worthing, Peacehaven and Eastbourne.

Organisations dealing with the problem such as Brighton Housing Trust give stark warnings about what needs to be done.

Barely a week goes by without Andy Winter, the long-serving boss of Brighton Housing Trust, prodding the city’s conscience.

His organisation, and others such as Brighton YMCA, are doing their best to find homes for those who often have problems with drink, drugs and mental illness.

Some success stories see the homeless move from hostels to supported housing and eventually to independent living. But there are many others who will always need social help as well as basic housing,

There are vast numbers of poor people in Brighton who are not homeless but who live in the bedsitter belt. Their homes are often cramped and unattractive.

Often unemployed or on low wages, they have little chance of beating newcomers and students to the better rented properties and no hope at all of buying their own homes.

Brighton and Hove has always had the difficulty of being squeezed between the sea and the South Downs. There simply isn’t enough space to house everyone who wants to live here.

Some homes have been built in the sea as at the Marina. Houses are being converted into flats. Buildings are going into back gardens. And still the shortage continues.

There is little doubt that new homes will have to be built at densities considered impossible 20 or 30 years ago.

Some compromises will have to be made over land on the edge of the city previously considered sacrosanct.

Toad’s Hole Valley in Hove, unused and unloved, is an obvious example of land that could provide hundreds of jobs as well as beautifully landscaped homes.

Even more emphasis must be made on making sure there is a high proportion of social housing in all but the smallest new schemes.

And the right of council tenants to buy their own homes at enormous discounts must be curtailed. Each time this happens, a valuable rented property is lost to the city.

By all means encourage the better off tenants to buy their own homes but make them move into the private sector.

We need more council housing not less. Housing associations simply cannot play the same role as local authorities.

Many people think the right to buy started with Margaret Thatcher’s rule 30 years ago but in Brighton council homes were being sold as far back as 1952.

Whole estates such as Coldean which should be providing much needed rented housing have largely been sold to tenants at bargain basement prices. It flies in the face of all reason.

At one time a fifth of the housing stock in Brighton was municipally owned but the percentage has dropped since then. Some new council homes are at last being built but the numbers are very small.

Help is so obviously needed to house people with problems who are shivering in shelters on the seafront.

But just as pressing is the need for a strong pubic rented sector so that more Brighton and Hove families can have reasonable rented homes in their own city.

The Argus: Paul McCartney performs on day 2 of the 2016 Desert Trip music festival at Empire Polo Field on Saturday, Oct. 8, 2016, in Indio, Calif. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

Paul McCartney looks strange these days. His face is unnaturally tight and his hair seems to have gone prematurely orange.

He is probably pandering to the millions of fans who love him as the mop-topped Beatle of the 1960s rather than the 74-year-old pensioner he has become.

McCartney might take a lesson from David Essex who has let nature take its course with greying hair and a few signs of getting older.

Even Ringo Starr, the other remaining Beatle, looks livelier and more natural than McCartney who should simply let it be.