A POST has been created to help people at risk of homelessness.

More than 1,000 people told authorities in York they were threatened with homelessness in a 12-month period between 2000 and 2001.

During a one-year initiative, the council's homelessness prevention worker will visit those at risk to look for a way of keeping them off the streets.

The council's head of advice and housing assessment, Lesley Healey, said: "If people are living with friends, in another household or in a short-term freehold, we would try to get to them quickly and work with them on the options they have.

"If it is someone living at home with their parents who looks likely to leave or be asked to leave there are options. We would try to get them into family mediation.

"Unless the problem is something highly technical, like mortgage repossession - and we have specialists to deal with that - we would offer to help."

Carol Robinson, the co-ord-inator of local homeless charity Nightstop, said: "The scale of the problem is such here that we would always welcome a new initiative such as this, and would hope it would make a significant difference."

The project is currently only a trial one, but hopes are high that it could become permanent.