I CONGRATULATE the York Housing Association for their perseverance in securing a site for the 18 green and affordable homes they intend to build in Tang Hall (June 7). It has taken five years, and still not a brick has been laid.
Meanwhile the council itself has totally failed to tackle the problem of the city-wide need for affordable homes. It is happy to grant planning consents to over 700 private dwellings per year, which, under the affordable quota system, could be expected to release some 250 affordable homes per year if the system was rigorously applied.
Yet the council's own figures show that over at least the next five years this will still result in a shortfall of 700 affordable houses per year.
More than 40 per cent of households in York cannot afford to purchase housing on the open market.
Increasing the densities and raising the threshold at which affordable housing becomes a requirement for housing development cannot possibly solve this problem, unless permission is given for many hundreds of new houses to be built on sites additional to those already allocated, so that the required proportion of affordable homes is achieved. This will take green belt land.
What does the new administration intend to do about this disastrous state of affairs?
Philip Crowe,
York.
Updated: 11:13 Monday, June 16, 2003
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