YORK’S great Quaker philanthropist Joseph Rowntree believed passionately in the importance of decent quality housing for rich and poor alike.

His model village of New Earswick was designed as a mixed community in which the better off and the less well-off could live side by side. There were houses for both workers and managers, each with their own garden, and plenty of green space.

Rowntree would have been horrified at the thought York might one day become a city in which only the rich could afford to live.

Yet according to Julia Unwin, the outgoing head of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, that is what is in danger of happening. “We need to be careful we do not become a city for rich people,” she says.“There is a risk if we do not build housing for families that we will drive working families out.”

Anyone who has lived in York over the last 25 years will have seen the way the city has changed. There has been an influx of professionals coming to work in the city’s universities, and in the booming science and technology sectors. But many local, working families have felt sidelined. And the lack of affordable housing has made it almost impossible for their children to buy a home in York.

Successive council administrations have struggled to provide enough affordable housing, while protecting the city’s green belt and green spaces. It is not an easy balancing act to achieve. Not only have house prices spiralled, but whenever a parcel of land does become available within the city boundaries, there are people opposed to it being built on.

There is no more significant challenge facing York, however. No-one wants it to become a rich man’s ghetto. That’s why a proper local plan setting out how York will meet its housing targets is so vital.