A FAMILY home is much more than just a roof over your head. It is a place of shared memories; a place where you bring up children, invite friends, have arguments and make up again afterwards.

As you reach the later stages of life it is also a place where you can grow old together, surrounded by the memories of those you love.

Small wonder then that as we do grow towards old age, many homeowners are reluctant to downsize.

The family home may become too big, and too expensive and difficult to heat and maintain.

Moving into a smaller, more manageable home may make sense. But there are simply too many precious associations to let go.

Our reluctance to downsize is causing problems, however.

York has a chronic shortage of larger family homes. But it also has a very high level of “under-occupied” homes, in which there is more than one spare bedroom.

Often, these are the homes of elderly people whose children long ago moved out.

Housing officials now see under-occupied private homes as one of York’s key housing challenges.

And they are looking at ways of trying to encourage people to downsize so as to free up more desperately needed larger homes.

There will be many who will be tempted to tell them to stop sticking their noses in where they are not wanted.

If we want to live in houses that are bigger than we need, surely that is up to us?

It is not older empty-nesters who are to blame for the flood of small flats that no one wants to live in.

But the council is not seeking to force anyone to downsize.

It is simply trying to encourage people to do so.

In the past, cash incentives have been offered to encourage social housing tenants to downsize, said council housing chief Sue Galloway.

A similar approach might work with private householders, she said.

It might. And if the council can really come up with some worthwhile incentives that make homeowners want to downsize, that is fine.

Just as long as it remains their own choice.