A Plan for York

The UK has a housing crisis which is taking from the young and the poor to give to the older and affluent.

In the 1970s, During the 1970s, average house prices in the UK were around 2.6 times income, in the 2020s they increased to almost 8 times income. In York, with the highest house prices in Yorkshire and the Humber, it is over 8. Here are the estimates of the housing affordability ratio for three Yorkshire towns (Costs are average of prices give by different AI bots):

Town	Affordability Ratio (2025)	Cost of 3bed House	Meaning
York	9.0 to 9.5	£350,000.00	Very unaffordable
Bradford	5.0 to 5.5	£250,000.00	Moderately affordable
Middlesbrough	4.0 to 4.5	£200,000.00	Among lowest in England

House prices are a social emergency. Climate change is an existential emergency, where the UK has set a target to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. (However, this target uses territorial emissions so counts about half the UK’s consumption emissions.)

This plan here aims to cut both house prices and carbon emissions.

Planners make mistakes that become evident decades after their plans have been implemented. The interval between implementation and the evidence of success or failure is usually too long for any change in course. A new local plan must be very flexible and begin evolving from day one. A rigid plan that marks out exactly where development is to be located should be avoided.

I begin with the assumption that any plan should be in the national interest – not just the interests of politically powerful groups in York, such as ageing home owners and land owners. This is a contrast with the plan adopted in 2025, which favours these groups The new plan must have many more new homes than are projected in that local plan. New homes on the market in sufficient quantity will stabilise the cost of housing in York. This plan will do this in an environmentally friendly way.

This plan will avoid multi-storey flats. They create high carbon emissions when they are built and, in general, discourage neighbourliness. On a per-square-metre basis, they are more expensive to build than houses. They were subsidised by the government through the Housing Subsidies Act in 1956. That became a disaster for many of their residents. Judgements about other housing types will be made with regard to considerations of greenhouse emissions and encouragement of neighbourliness.