Housing Crisis - 5 in a two bed flat

lots of my neighbours have 2 kids in a 2 bed flat, it's a nice middle class sort of area but 3 bedroom flats are rare and houses are £450k+ so out of a lot of people's price range and you need to move quite a way before you find something more affordable.

Our kids (boys ages 8 & 10) both have double beds in their own rooms, but choose to sleep together every night. They like the company and I love hearing them chat when they’re falling asleep. They’re happier still when they get to “camp” (sleeping bags and single camping mattresses) on the floor of my/DH’s bedroom 😂 I don’t get it, but they love being close.

It’s nice to have space, but we’re social creatures and living in close quarters was probably the norm.

I had a colleague who chose to have three kids in a two-bed tower block flat in London. He knew he couldn’t sell it easily because of the cladding issue. That situation I have much less sympathy with than someone making the best of a situation with a small home after leaving DV etc.

But all of that stuff still needs doing when you own except you also have an extra £20k in tax and fees to pay. I’m not saying it’s not expensive I’m just saying I don’t think it costs anywhere near as much for renters to move than owners.

Well, yes. The expenses associated with moving - boxes, hiring vans, storage if their new place wasn’t ready…
Then there’s the practicality of it; they’re just scraping by on their current wages and so any rental property needs to be bigger than 3 bed, but with the same price or preferably slight less. They have an ok landlady currently who hasn’t increased their rent since 2019 (when the shit hit the fan for them!) so it’s reasonably cheap for a 3 bed: they can’t afford any more.
Then there’s stuff like general painting and maintenance that would need doing before they moved - general maintenance things are their responsibility as per their tenancy (stuff like painting the walls, fixing a new tap and sorting the floor where the dog chewed it as a puppy). These are things my friend manages with because she cannot afford them right now and her rent is cheap. To move into a rental property nearby (all 4 children attend local schools, 3 walk and one is taken by me with my son) she would be looking at minimum doubling her rent.

I appreciate some people fall on hard times or for some their circumstances change, but there are parents who choose to keep having children without room to house them properly.

That's not the state's fault. That is the fault of the idiot parents.

People are often choosing to have more children than they have adequate space for. That's their decision.

i grew up with 4 in a 2 bed flat. Well, it was a council house that was 4 homes in one block. It was normal where I lived. We just got on with it. What else can you do?

I had to share a room with a baby when I was a teenager, then eventually we swapped when I had my gcse's and I got the box room but had no storage for anything. It made me determined to ensure I could provide my own children with their own space. I personally feel it's selfish of parents to keep having children when they don't have space for them.

Where is there a situation where there isn’t this option?

I don’t think that’s necessarily true at all. My husband had to share a room until he was 14 and he talks often about how much he hated it. They even still made their two bed into a small 3 bed and it functioned okay but he would definitley say his relationship with his brother improved once he didn’t have him in his space all the time.

I’m very close to my siblings. We all had our own rooms.

Other people aren’t close and didn’t share or are close and did. I don’t think it’s a determining factor.

Is it more expensive to move when you’re renting? No stamp duty? No commission? No fees. It’s costing me £20,000 to move this year, I can’t see how you would spend that if you are renting.

That’s exactly what we’re trying to avoid…although at this rate we’ll be moving when I’m like 37 weeks so extremely stressful still just in a different way 🫣

The less than 300,000 second homes kept for private use are the “true” reason for the housing crisis? What about the 2 million affordable social homes that have been sold via right to buy?

There were seven of us in a 3 bed semi, so four kids in one double.
My friend was in a family of six in a two bed bungalow.
Could be why all the kids were out all the time as long as it wasn’t raining.
Times change.

Not always.

I now live in a 3 bedroom house with 3 dc, dds loved sharing a room when they were little but now they are teens they do not, so I have my living room separated with a partition wall and I am back to sleeping in a windowless cupboard for the second time in my life so they can all have their own rooms.

This is one of the things that has changed in recent years. Parents giving up their bedroom so their children can have a room each. When I was a kids in the 70s/80s kids had to make do.

Depends on what you're accustomed to I suppose. I grew up in a big family in a big house, and had my own bedroom, but still had the sense that the house in general was crowded.

For most of my adult life I've had a detached house entirely to myself, apart from a few brief stints of living in flats and an even briefer (and unpleasant) period of house-sharing.

But even now, I'd prefer a much bigger house than I currently occupy, with more land and more distance between myself and any neighbours. I wouldn't be able to cope at all with the tiny, over-crowded living spaces being reported here.

As adults I am still closer emotionally to my younger sister and our 3 older sisters stick together like glue. Shari g a room through childhood bonds DC together.

I shared with my two brothers till I left home at 18. My sister had her own bedroom (fair enough). It was a 3 bedroom council house.
My dad was one of 11 children - he shared a (double) bed with 5 brothers. His 5 sisters shared a different room.
Mum was one of 10 children, in similar city-slum dwellings.
I count myself lucky.

I grew up sharing a bedroom with my sister and absolutely hated it, bu it wasn’t really the expectation for kids to all have their own rooms back in the 80s, we weren’t that long past the times when kids were lucky if they weren’t sharing a bed with siblings! I ended up moving my bed and all my belongings into a “box room” which was more of a cupboard and sleeping in there quite happily until I left home.

I now live in a 3 bedroom house with 3 dc, dds loved sharing a room when they were little but now they are teens they do not, so I have my living room separated with a partition wall and I am back to sleeping in a windowless cupboard for the second time in my life so they can all have their own rooms.

My grandparents were fortunate to have a house with three bedrooms and a proper bathroom.

At one point, the one place accommodated my grandparents, my great-grandmother, my great-uncle and my grandparents' 6 children. I know that there was a fold-out bed in the living room, but I don't know how else they organised the available rooms.

I grew up with 4 sisters in a 3 bedroom house. I shared with my younger siblings in smallest room. Parents had medium room and older 3 sisters shared largest bedroom. Only 1 bathroom with 1 toilet. We managed.

I agree, but not really the point I was making.

I grew up living in one room with my parents and sister for a number of years. My elderly grandpa was in the second room.

As a child it didn't bother me at all as I didn't know any different. It was probably tricky for my parents but they were working so many hours to keep afloat that I imagine they were too exhausted to care

The mother is not from a culture that frowns on contraception