Councillor Warren Morgan (Letters, August9) is in my opinion wrong about Brighton and Hove's proposed stock transfer of council housing to a housing association.

Whether it's a sell-off or a giant giveaway, what it's really about is taking the housing out of public control and using privately-raised money to do up the houses, with huge interest rates to match.

It's obvious why housing association rents are so high and why our rents will be forced upwards. Everyone along the line in private developments needs their cut.

The history of the backlog of repairs and improvements for which funding is needed has to be understood properly.

Council housing has suffered decades of neglect through under-investment.Rent incomes are still siphoned off to pay for other services and the receipts from right-to-buy sales can't be fully utilised to build more houses.

On a national scale, £14 billion has "disappeared" in these ways.

So it is entirely fair to expect this to be corrected by public money, especially as it's £1,400 cheaper per dwelling to do so.

Tenants can't make up the majority of the board running a Community Gateway housing association, as Councillor Morgan states.

This is not allowed by the housing corporation.There are no automatic virtues in it being "newly created" either, and "independent" of what exactly, other housing associations?

What difference does it make when they all play by the same rules?

A housing association is a housing association. However much Councillor Morgan and others try to tart it up, it can't make up for the destruction of our council housing.

Tenant participation through Community Gateway alongside stock transfer is meaningless.

As a tenant I've no intention of participating in my own destruction, thank you.

The only way Community Gateway can be genuinely for tenants is if it's Community Gateway council housing. Otherwise, I'm just not interested.

-Dorothy Warburton, Brighton