Kerry McCarthy's letter ("Don't Let the crunch swallow up our city", Open Lines, April 21) shows her to be "on message" with her party bosses, but why does she make no reference at all to using these empty commercial premises to actually house any local homeless people, only to using the empty premises for short-term community purposes.

She should know that there are currently 6,000 empty homes in the Bristol area, more than sufficient for some socially-minded local MPs to mobilise Government support for an imaginative project involving small builders and related craftsmen, temporarily laid off through the credit crunch, to refurbish these empty homes in a matter of months.

Homelessness could be consigned to history by Christmas. Perhaps we have no socially-minded local MPs.

Her pro-housing colleague Dan Norris, quoted in "We won't sell off our farm land for homes" on page 17 of the same Post edition, appears now to be shifting his ground and is no longer firmly wedded to his own government's policy for the South West of massive "urban extensions" on protected green- belt land, as espoused by the Regional Spatial Strategy.

Perhaps he's finally done the maths and realised that to build 10,000 houses around Whitchurch isn't the answer to the country's homeless crisis either.

For only 2,500 of the proposed highly desirable executive housing units would be designated as "social housing".

Most of these social units, being joint equity, would still be beyond the means of your average person in need of social housing,

Of the remaining social units available for rent via housing associations, most would automatically be allocated to families currently in council-funded B&B accommodation.

The truly homeless (usually single) person still won't get a look-in. So Norris' pro-new-build on green-field sites doesn't help those in need either. It only puts squillions of the Government tax money into the pockets of large- scale speculative developers and the mortgage industry.

And, however much this Government currently plans to spend on inner-city regeneration over the next 20 years, the billions spent on urban extensions is money spent making the plight of inner-urban communities worse, not better.

Both Kerry McCarthy and Dan Norris (together with Ben Bradshaw, Minister for the South West) should watch this 10-minute YouTube video – www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-45ZfKLamg and then come along to the public meeting on Thursday, May 7 at 6.00pm at Kingswood Civic Centre. It could be an eye-opener for them.

Ron Morton, Chair, Shortwood Green Belt Campaign.