in wondering what this generation of enforced renters are going to do

[mustbetimeforacreamtea]

When they reach retirement and can't afford commercial rents on a pension? What happens then?

I think living independently of parents is an important part of becoming an adult, living with parents into your late 20's or 30 is likely to prevent you from maturing and developing as a person.

OK, I'll step down. My parents lived in a two-bedroomed council flat in Surrey and I shared a bedroom with my sister.

My new husband and I moved 50 miles further west to enable us to buy a house. He kept the same job so just commuted a bit further and I got a local job.

This situation where the younger generation can't afford to live independently is clearly part of a plot to infantilize the population and make them more biddable

Also, re the earlier discussion about long tenancies, I think many more would want them under certain conditions: tenant able to end the tenancy (after a certain period) by giving notice, landlord unable to evict tenant unless the tenant had done something wrong. That would give tenants security of a long tenancy if they want it, whilst still providing the flexibility to move if they need to.

I realise that many tenants enjoy the flexibility of renting, but being able to be evicted at the whims of a landlord despite having done nothing wrong is not on. My idiot landlords have decided they want their house back so I have to move out when the tenancy expires in October. We have just got DD accepted into the school of our choice, and we're due to apply for DS's school place in the next round, so we face a massive hassle of trying to find somewhere suitable in the right catchment area (not easy given housing shortage and extortionate rents) to ensure we don't end up with the massive logistical headache of possibly having to take the two DCs to separate schools >6 miles apart.

Landlords shouldn't be allowed to evict tenants just because they've changed their mind about being landlords. Either accept that renting out your property is a serious business plan, or don't get into it in the first place. If they want out, they should have to sell the house with the tenants in place (and with the tenants rights continuing when someone else buys the property).

I agree housing is not like other goods and services, if your hairdresser changes profession, or the corner shop decides to close you get go elsewhere without much hassle.

But a secure home is a fundamental bedrock of most people's lives, without which everything else can fall apart.

Landlords should not be able to destroy the foundations of other people's lives.

We used to prevent them. People had tenancies for life and fixed rents - sometimes £10 a year. Tha did not work and meant there were no properties to rent. The Rents Acts were abolished. If you go back to that system the result is people will have to live with parents for life and no one will become a landlord and we will be back to how we were when the Rents Acts operated. The other option is build a lot more council housing but there is not really the money for that.

If there is enough money swilling around to pay £22 billion a year out in housing benefit to housing providers, then there is enough money to build council houses.

And who pays for the housing benefit whilst the builders use the cash to buy the bricks?

Your taxes nomama

I was thinking about the mechanics of it... we take a million this week, you can live in a box for a while....

It made me think of the old story about a country changing from driving on the left to driving on the right... they would do it gradually!

Spending on council housing isn't the same as spending on housing benefit though - it's an investment that pays for itself many times over, as opposed to just handing money over to landlords. All it takes is a little long-term (and not desperately long-term either - think 20 years or ) but we won't get that with five or even four year parliamentary terms. It is the answer though. Otherwise you can just sit back and watch the housing benefit bill get ridiculously larger and larger every year, for no return at all.

• or so

Where do you build this council housing? There's no spare land where the jobs are, and there's no jobs where the spare land is.

Only 2.7% of the UK is built on. Even urban areas are only 52% built on. The problem is not lack of land but lack of a coherent policy - patching things up with housing benefit is not the answer.

Only 2.7% really? It's like a bloody concrete jungle in the south east.

The housing benefit bill will explode in 30 years time. People saying about 'work houses' and the like... It's just not going to happen. State pensions will be later, but because we are living longer and the money had got to come from somewhere. So I don't think that's an issue. I do think you'll have to work for the housing benefit though unless you're physically unable to.

How much of the UK would you like to be built on, Cruikshank?

Yes, really. We actually have plenty of space. All of this talk about us being overcrowded is just because we aren't building on it - because councils aren't being funded for it and because building companies land-bank, which is why we can't house our population, which is, for a country as rich as ours, a pretty fucking poor show.

I'm not in govt, TucsonGirl, but I reckon we could easily get away with (pulling a figure out of the air) 10% before we started running into trouble. And that would be five times more houses than we've got right now, so would surely sort us out.

I agree also the solution isn't to just 'move up North' because it's cheaper. Er, yes because the average wage is also less. Six to one half dozen the other.

Apartment living will be one way; more people on less square footage. Also, generations being encouraged to live together. I'll probably have my mum in with us in an annexe when she gets older, then I'll either give DS a lump sum when she dies, or move into the annexe myself and look after my GC and hand the house over to my DS. I'd be happy to do so.

Define "plenty of space"!?! We are already one of the most densely populated countries in the world.

According to the BBC article I just googled cruikshank over 10% of England is urban. Where have you got your figure of 2.7%?

Seriously, I was thinking about the mechanics of it... not the common sense, obviousness of it.

Who do you make homeless in order to free up some money to build? That budget is stretched as it is... how do you siphon some of it off?

If it were easy/possible then when Osbourne gave councils more leeway by removing the borrowing cap you would have thought councils would have run to start building... but there is a problem, the CIH have warned the legal requirement to sell off high-value social housing plus the increased support for right-to-buy raised it is likely that there will be no net increase in the volume of social housing stock, despite the councils' new building powers.

Shelter agreed and added that some places the high value housing was in the very areas that most social housing was needed... so selling them off to finance other building problems would only exacerbate the problem.

I don't understand how people keep saying there will be no state pension. Of course there will be one, it's something that's quite an integral part of society by this point. The grey vote is the most important vote for politicians and the shrieks of rage and fury at any mention of removing the state pension would be political suicide.

Or am I missing something?

"I'm not in govt, TucsonGirl, but I reckon we could easily get away with (pulling a figure out of the air) 10% before we started running into trouble. And that would be five times more houses than we've got right now, so would surely sort us out."
I wouldn't want to live in a country like that and I seriously doubt you would, either. The infrastructure we have now can't cope with the people we currently have, and you want to increase the population 5 times over? We should be reducing the population, not increasing it!