I READ with interest the article on the Hungate development and the fact that it will have an allocation of affordable housing, as most new developments do (November 6).
Maybe it is me, but, I have never understood the concept of affordable housing.
For example, I am a first-time buyer who cannot afford to buy a property in today's market but I have been lucky enough to find a development which is building 150 houses and 25 of those are affordable homes. Great, I am now on the property ladder. Five years later I decide I want to move to something bigger. Am I going to sell my present affordable house that I paid an affordable amount for or am I going to sell my affordable house for the same amount that my neighbour got for their unaffordable house on the same development?
Of course, I am going to sell it for what I can get for it but that deprives someone of an affordable house, doesn't it?
In a nutshell, is affordable housing actually affordable or is it a ploy to deflect attention from the real reason we have no affordable housing, the demise of the humble council house?
PR Willey,
Burnholme Drive,
Heworth, York.
Updated: 11:47 Monday, November 11, 2002
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