Editor-At-Large: It's not Mr Saatchi you should worry about, it's that awful Mrs Wilson

Hate figures come in all shapes and sizes, and I'd like to tell you about someone whose activities seem thoroughly reprehensible. She may not run a government, an army, a political party, or even publicly espouse any particular cause, but what she is doing, in my opinion, is repugnant.

Step forward Mrs Judith Wilson, one of the largest property owners in Kent. Mrs Wilson is a speculator, a business operator who buys up houses in bulk, watches them rise in value and enjoys a steady stream of rental income. She might not be doing anything wrong, and she is just taking advantage of our laissez-faire economy, but is this behaviour acceptable when so many people cannot afford anywhere decent to live?

Mrs Wilson came to my attention on the same day as Radio 4's excellent You and Yours programme broadcast a depressing report about the lack of affordable housing and rented accommodation in north Norfolk, a situation which is only too common all over Britain. Sometimes, two seemingly disconnected events collide on the same day in your life, and the result makes you thoroughly ashamed. I had just read a whole page in the London Evening Standard devoted to the astonishing saga of how Judith Wilson had given up teaching maths to amass a property portfolio of 465 houses in and around Ashford, worth an estimated £75m. Mrs Wilson and her husband now own 10 racehorses and are building a lavish five-bedroom house. They couldn't be more different, comapred to the sad, young woman speaking on You and Yours. She described how she had been sharing B&B accommodation in Cromer with her young daughter for the past six months. Her daughter had no room of her own, they shared a bathroom and kitchen, and they were at their wits' end. This week's Country Life magazine features an East Anglian property special, with page after page of glossy pictures of desirable homes from cottages to farms. House prices in north Norfolk have risen around 60 per cent in the past couple of years. This is not just due to the growth of second homes near the beautiful coast, but also because more and more professional people commute to work in Norwich and Cambridge. Affordable housing and rented accommodation have dried up, as people take advantage of high prices to sell their homes.

Even though the Government has increased money for new social housing in this area by 70 per cent, and 100 new homes will be built this year, 130 properties will still be bought by tenants under the right-to-buy scheme. You don't need to be a former maths teacher to see the problem. There are currently 2,000 people on North Norfolk District Council's waiting list for housing, (an increase of 90 per cent over the past three years) and 30 people with nowhere to live except B&B accommodation. Last year 327 local people approached North Norfolk District Council because they were homeless.

So what is to be done? Mr Prescott has announced a massive house-building plan for the South-east, with between 250,000 and 500,000 houses for the London to Cambridge corridor and 31,000 targeted for Ashford in Kent. Although he has specified higher densities – at least 20 an acre – his grand scheme relies on the participation of developers and buyers willing to invest. The Government may be committing more money to social housing, but as we have just seen, demand is far outstripping supply.

The Kentish Express reported that on the day that bank interest rates dropped in February, after Mr Prescott's plan was announced, Mrs Wilson spent more than £7m on 40 houses in Ashford. She has amassed her property empire by frequently buying "off plan", that is, before construction had even started, and has concentrated on detached homes with good transport links. Her husband has been quoted as saying: "If John Prescott is going to build them, Judith might as well be the landlord." Now Mrs Wilson owns whole estates of £110,000 houses in Prezza's target zone and reckons to buy one property every day this year. Am I alone in finding this woman's lust for property thoroughly repulsive? It appals me that a Labour government committed to helping the most disadvantaged in society can stand by and do nothing to stop the threat of people such as Judith Wilson controlling rent levels and house prices in one of their expansion zones.

It would have been good to report that, along with stabling her 10 racehorses, she funded some housing for the poorer and more deserving people on Kent County Council's housing list, because Kent, like North Norfolk, faces a severe shortage of accommodation. But as long as the right to buy still exists, and as long as the Government allows people to speculate in property as if it were no different to stocks and shares, then people such as Judith Wilson will be millionaires while other perfectly deserving hard-working mothers will be sharing a toilet with 12 other people, and queuing for a bath. Britain is still a country of two halves – owners and renters – but for some there's not even a chance to rent the most basic of homes, and nor will there be in the current climate.

A grave issue

When I wrote about Adam Faith's attractive wicker coffin my pleas for the funeral business to enter the 21st century sparked off a heated debate. Hazel Selina from Brighton wrote to tell me about the struggle to get the funeral industry to accept her beautiful eco-pod disposable coffins which are made in mulberry leaf and silk paper in a whole variety of elegant colours and designs. There's even an urn shaped like a dark green acorn with a wicker lid. I wish I'd known about eco-pods when I took delivery of my mum's ashes in what looked like a grey plastic instant coffee jar a couple of years ago. Rodney Ford from Sheffield sent me pictures of the coffins shaped like fish, pigs and even giant books that he has made. Sadly, he didn't sell one after exhibiting them. Are we too squeamish to follow the African tradition of themed caskets?

Finally, the British Institute of Funeral Directors has invited me to an exhibition, "Handled with Care", at Belsay Hall in Northumberland in June in order to "demystify" their industry. Any chance of designers Tom Dixon or Philippe Starck being given a stand?

Charles Saatchi opens his astonishing gallery in County Hall in a week or so, but the hype is already under way. We didn't need Philip Dodd, director of the ICA, to throw down the gauntlet by announcing that the finalists in his Beck's Futures show represent something more important than artists such as Damien Hirst and Ron Mueck, whose work has heavily been collected by Mr Saatchi. Mueck's installation at the National Gallery is truly moving, and when Damien Hirst's work is open to the public at County Hall we can feel that London is a city with a tremendous creative buzz. Next door to the disgustingly vulgar Dali installation, Saatchi has created a series of spaces that surprise and entertain. Instead of knocking the man, let's just give thanks that we have another place to enjoy the riches of our art scene. By the way, ignore the dreary videos and depressing agitprop works by Inventory at the Becks Futures show, but don't miss the tiny mummified figure by Francis Uprichard. Meanwhile, an "art boat" is planned to connect the Tates Modern and British on the Thames in the summer. I bet £5 that it won't be stopping at County Hall.