Affordable family housing in York
Local Labour have launched a petition for more affordable housing in York.
Cllr Dave Horton said, "As we have long said, York is in the grips of a housing crisis, and something needs to be done urgently to create affordable homes for a large number of residents who are adversely affected by the high costs of buying a house and also high private sector rents. This is why Local Labour have organised this petition to campaign for affordable housing in our city. We believe that a lot more can be done to help people in this City to own or rent their home at an affordable price."
Labour set out a number of strategies to tackle York's Housing crisis.
"Locally Labour will seek to increase the supply of housing through the proper use of brownfield sites and better use of planning
policies to increase the number of affordable homes" , said Cllr Horton.
"We would put a greater emphasis on family housing with gardens, there are too many unaffordable houses being built in
York and too many buy to let flats'.
- Argue for a higher housing allocation and not go down the Lib Dem line of forcing the less well off to move to South Yorkshire.
- Explore other innovative ways to tackle the housing crisis, including working effectively with our partners, Leeds and Harrogate in the Golden Triangle.
- Preserve and enhance York's wonderful historic and green environment, whilst ensuring the City does not stagnate through a lack of suitable accommodation for local people.
- Reverse the Liberal Democrat's policy of allowing excessive increases in housing density in wards they don't represent. This is leaving those areas without adequate open space, gardens and community facilities, leaving aside the road capacity to accommodate all the extra traffic
- A effective Local Plan which helps strengthen policies and define the Green Belt boundaries - protecting the strays and river corridors, and tackling the lack of affordable housing. Subsequent Liberal Democrats changes have meant that we still have no adopted plan or approved green belt boundaries, which causes major problems in controlling and planning the local environment, and leads to extra public enquiries at very high cost to local Council Tax payers.
- Local Labour will also ensure that the Council's own housing stock meets the Government's improvement standard and continue to maintain high customer satisfaction levels with the housing service generally.
- Strengthen Residents Associations and improve tenants involvement in them.
In summarising the Liberal Democrats have presided over a buy-to-let apartment boom, they have delayed for almost three years the introduction of the previous Labour Council's new affordable housing requirement and even campaigned to massively cut York's future regional Housing allocations.
The latest evidence shows that 3-400 households are being pushed out of the City annually. Already 75% of York households do not have the income to afford to buy or rent a basic two-bedroom property in York. If the Liberal Democrats continue to have their way then virtually no one will. These actions betray the trust given to Liberal Democrats by York people in 2003."