We cannot hide from need for new homes (From Oxford Mail)

We cannot hide from need for new homes

10:00am Friday 4th May 2012 in Letters

I understand your correspondent David Scott (Monday’s Oxford Mail ViewPoints) cares a lot about wildlife and the countryside; so, as it happens, do many of us.

He neglects to mention a number of important features of the proposed housing development at Barton.

For instance, at least 40 per cent of the homes there will be for social rent – helping to alleviate the massive shortage of such housing people in Oxford face.

The development is not in and does not encroach upon the Green Belt.

While Mr Scott is more interested in the rights of animals, I’m also interested in the rights of Oxford people: the rights of families doing their best to raise their children while sometimes having to cram four kids into one bedroom; the rights of people who have lived in Oxford all their lives but now find themselves completely priced out of their city, facing a move away from families and friends; the rights of young adults unable to start a family, as they cannot afford a place to live away from their own parents.

Mr Scott would perhaps favour cramming more and more people into existing built-up areas, or else condemning thousands to lives of misery because of lack of access to housing.

I think that well-designed extensions to the city of Oxford represent a far more humane alternative – and one which would do no harm to and might indeed benefit the environment.

ED TURNER Deputy Leader Oxford City Council