Rachael Maskell: York residents pay the price for housing crisis

His children are stigmatised by that experience. That is no way for children to grow up in our country. They are a family full of aspiration who just want a home of their own – somewhere to safely bring up their children. Following that, a gentleman came in. He was homeless. He was intelligent and desperate to get a job, but he needed a home. He was desperate to get a home, but he needed a job. He was in a vicious circle. Homelessness, as we have heard, is on the increase, and that is unacceptable.

Those are not unique stories. I am confronted by similar ones every week. In York, 1,624 people are desperate for a home. Over the past 10 years, York has built only half the number of homes it needs.

We need to be more ambitious. The housing market in York is collapsing, and people are being forced into the private rented sector because there is not enough social housing available. Some 26 per cent of housing in my constituency is now private rented. The average price of a private rented house in York is £988 per calendar month – we are moving up rapidly to London-style prices – but the average wage is just £473, which is way below the national average. People aspire to a home of their own, but social housing is not available and they cannot engage in the private rented sector.

Our care sector, too, is in crisis at the moment because care workers cannot afford to live in our city. It is impacting on discharges from hospital. I know of someone who was in hospital for seven months, trying all the time to get out. We have seen care homes shut down, and we know that it costs more to keep people in the NHS than to care for them in the community, but if we do not have the care staff in the community, people are going to be left in hospital which is totally unacceptable. What is happening to our public services and to businesses in our city is impacted on by our housing crisis.

We know how much demand there is for homes. We have two universities in the city, which means 22,000 students all looking for homes, on top of the 1,624 people who simply do not have a home in our city at the moment. Under the Government’s right to buy scheme, the situation is going to get worse. The City of York Council will be asked to sell just short of 1,500 homes. It will stretch opportunity further and further away from people because of the price of housing in the city.

We have heard a lot about the opportunity to buy homes, but again this is largely inaccessible for many people in York. Starter homes can cost £209,000 and we know that people cannot afford the deposits.

An average income of nearly £59,000 is required, but the average wage in York is less than half of that. Buying does not provide the solution.

It is not all bad news in York. We have a great opportunity because of the York Central site, which is a 72-acre brownfield site looking to develop alongside the expansion of the National Railway Museum and the enterprise zone.

The problem with the York Central site, which is public land partly owned by the City of York Council, Network Rail and the museum, is that the council is looking at developing somewhere between 1,000 units and 2,500 units, depending on the size of the business area, but for high-value apartments. That will not at all address the social needs of my city.

We are told that building on the site will be expensive because it is a brownfield site and that social housing cannot be considered. Expensive infrastructure in the form of access roads is necessary. The local housing associations have said that they simply cannot afford to build there.

The situation is challenging, which is why I ask Ministers to look again at the principles of how to develop housing on brownfield sites as we move forward.

The reality in York is that recent housing developments are being sold off so that people can come and have somewhere to stay on race days.

People have bought homes to use at the weekends or for holidays, or for commuters to use so that they can reduce the time of the journey down to London to less than two hours, but none of that helps the 1,624 people who are on my city’s housing waiting list. The opportunity to build houses will be
lost if we do not change planning priorities.

Rachael Maskell is the Labour MP for York Central who spoke in a Parliamentary debate on housing. This is an edited version.