The suggestion that people living in houses considered too large for them (Bid to ease homes crisis, The Press, March 18) raises a number of points and questions, among the being:

1 Why did City of York Council, when granting planning pemission to developers for hundreds of flats, not demand that builders should also build larger properties, As it is there are now many small properties for sale or rent.

2 What if the inducement to persuade owners of larger propertes fails? Compulsory purchase, perhaps, at a price to be determind by the council, followed by the issue of tents to be erected on the racecourse?

3 On a more serious note, why should people who have worked and saved most of their lives be asked to give up something they love because City of York Council has failed to make appropiate arrangements?

4 If the suggestion is taken to its illogical conclusion and the criteria is the ratio of people to bedrroms determining who are asked to move, where will it end? Will HM the Queen and Prince Phillip have to vacate Buckingham Palace?

Finally, we are surprised that the council is not aware that a scheme to move older people to allow others to move in already exists.

It’s called sell your home (and deprive your children of their inheritence) to pay for your care home.

Dusty Wartho, Grace Maiden and John Wartho
Eastfield Lane, Dunnington, York.



• SO the council wants private householders to downsize from three-bedroom to one-bedroom houses – to make room for whom? Does that apply to councillors, lawyers, doctors, etc, in bigger houses? No incentives would make us move, unless we became too infirm to look after the house and garden. My husband says that, God willing, his last journey will be from this house, when he is carried out in a box.

Council officials should get their walking shoes on and have a look at certain areas of the city, eg The Groves, Fishergate, Heslington Road, Fulford, Badger Hill, and count how many houses which used to be family homes are now student lets.

Strange, they are all fairly close to “York’s best-kept secret” the university and its new campus.

I have nothing against the students, a lot of them do good community work, but with £500 million being spent, more accommodation should have been incorporated in the plan.

Then a lot of the new student lets could be family homes again, albeit rented ones.

Mrs M Robinson
Broadway, York.