Housing

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

On average, house prices are 10 times wages, and we know this skews our local economy but also drives the housing poverty that is so damaging to my city of York. The Lib Dem-Tory council has presided over this housing failure, with a fall in social housing when there is such desperate need, while at the same time developers have made their millions building luxury apartments that our city just does not need. City of York Council should be getting to grips with what is happening in housing, but it has failed, and I am glad the Government have rejected its local plan.

Just last Monday, the council failed again when it signed off a 72 acre brownfield site for over 2,000 luxury apartments that our city does not need. I would juxtapose that with the 11 homeless people who lost their lives in our city last year, and with the people I see in my surgeries who are living in box bedrooms—whole families are in that situation—with adults and children sleeping on sofas. That is the reality of York, as so many people in housing poverty know. Not only that, but the council has handed over its influence over the future of that site, through a commercial agreement, while contributing £35 million to the site. This must be stopped and reviewed. Residents are rightly angry. They are being driven into deeper housing poverty, while the elite moves in on their space. They are being driven out of their city, and they are being ignored. While people invest in their assets and purchase their commuter and second homes, my local families are cooped up in unsuitable, cramped and damp housing. York, which calls itself a human rights city, is the most inequitable city outside London, and this latest development will simply make it worse.

The Lib Dem-Tory council’s plan just supports corporate greed over local need, and it must be changed. That will start with a Labour council, which will build the housing that our city desperately needs. It will put right the local economy by ensuring that we have the skills our city needs. We need 500 people in the NHS, and there are also those needed in the care workforce, but they cannot afford to live in our city. We will relive the dream that Joseph Rowntree planted in our city as he built the houses fit for heroes and the housing developments that set the agenda for the garden villages and sustainable green homes that will ensure people across our city can live in and enjoy our city. Labour will make the difference in York: it is time for change.