YOUR front page story headlined “£4m fund to help build over 100 rural homes” (D&S Times, Feb 10) is welcome good news. The Broadacres Housing Association has received a £4m Government grant to build 139 new homes in Northallerton, Malton and Richmondshire.

It’s particularly good that the homes will have a mix of tenures. The fixation with home ownership, as an appreciating asset as well as a place to live, has distorted the housing market for decades.

Everyone should have a place to live – it’s as basic a need as good health, education, and a decently-paid job. Leaving it to the market means that money and profit take priority over meeting need, so families are inadequately housed and, at the worst, people are made homeless.

I hope that Broadacres will take the opportunity to build zero-carbon homes, with the highest possible levels of insulation and with solar panels built into all the roofs. The cost of solar panels has fallen so much that they make sense for everyone, but even more so if they are incorporated into a new-build.

Zero-carbon homes are not only a practical response to the threat of global warming, but they have the added benefit of moving the poorest tenants out of fuel poverty, as demonstrated in other projects around the UK.

Fiona Yorke, Green Party Parliamentary candidate, Richmond constituency