To worry about where 'Generation Rent' will live when they are retired?

[VestaCurry]

If they never get on the property ladder, what kind of 'retirement' and where do they face? With house prices outstripping wages by a huge margin and 'bank of Mum & Dad' not available to many to help with a deposit, I foresee vast numbers of ageing people living their whole lives in privately rented accommodation. Unless regulations change, they could be given 2 months notice to leave whenever the landlord wishes. At eg age 70 that really is a grim thought.

My dc's are 13 and 11, so considerably younger than Generation Rent, but I cant see how much the situation will have changed by the time they hit their mid-twenties.

I feel a right doom & gloom merchant but I don't think I'm wrong and have seen no evidence of the government or opposition parties trying to understand and/or tackle this issue.

Many children will take more responsibility for their parents than in the previous generation of two

That's very very common here.

Mainly it means females get an even more unfairly distributed heavey lifting to do than they already have to deal with.

It sounds lovely, but in the main is yet one more element in keeping the playing field unlevel for women.

I was lucky. DH was at my side for every incontence pad change, wash and battle over meds when his mum lived (and died) with us. Lucky, becuase none of the other daughers or DILs I knew in similar circs had anything like similar hands on collaboration from equally (or even more) related males.

The social pressure placed on women to put themselves very much last where the status quo is care in the home of offspring is not to be sniffed at.

Having lived it, my feeling is that as a solution it like a step backwards in making sure the social expectations on our sex keeps us as firmly shakled to domestic conerns. Choosing it freely is one thing. Being strong armed into it by circumstance, moral browbeating and societal expectation, quite another.

No, YANBU. It keeps me awake at night.

I'll never own my own home.
That coupled with the lack of social housing and the shitty private rental 'regulations' means I'll never know what it's like to have a secure home.

Unless something huge changes, old age is looking to be a pretty miserable existence.

Some jobs aren't jobs for life though

Teachers struggle at 65, will they be able to teach at 90?!

Manual labour jobs, jobs on your feet all day, shift workers, all much much harder post 65

They'll do what normal people do.

Downsize and continue renting, move in with family or not downsize and have family move in with them.

My grandparents did the latter 2, my parents are doing the first.

It has always been like this - we are the first generation that has even thought about owning its own home.

And my parents and grandparents are/were all blue collar workers so no big pot of money to help out either.

They will do what my grandmother did, who also never owned a property in her lifetime - they will continue to rent from either their private pension income or whatever housing benefit becomes when you are elderly.

(Is it still housing benefit or does it get renamed as something else? I don't know)

Mammuzza, yep, I could in theory, do my job until I dropped (unless I developed Alzheimer's), and I'm older than the age group I refer to in my OP. DH can (and wishes to) do his job until he dies, unless again, eg something like Alzheimer's bites. But, anyway, we are of a previous generation who were able to get onto the property ladder. Even so, and even with equity in property, plus pensions, we did engineer our careers to be able to go on and on (in theory).
Interesting that you refer to 'Cathy Come Home', because it resonates with age groups who had similar experiences. I remember at age 3, walking the streets with my mother trying to find somewhere to stay the night. If there were womens refuges in the sixties, Mum didn't know about them. I remember her desperate hopefulness, knocking on door after door, being turned away because she was a woman with a black eye and a child in tow. Bloody Awful. I actually remember houses were being built in the area, these were council houses.

It's no just affording it though is it.
As Vesta said it's about the lack of security, the lack of permanence.

It's bad enough being given two-months notice when you have a young family but what about when you're in your 80's?

Apart from the physical and emotional stress you'll have to find a new deposit, moving costs, plus HB rarely covers the full rent anyway so you always have to top it up. Pensions are going to be practically non-existent as it is, paying extra out for rent too is going to leave naff all.

It's going to be fucking miserable and I'm absolutely dreading it.

Looking back in time, though, I'm sure I read a statistic about the proportion of household income spent on rent in the 1930s-50s compared to now.

thinking of DD1 and her boyfriend, current income is just under £2k per month. Looking at local property website (south of england, not in London just a reasonable sized town with no great schools) the lowest priced property (not counting rooms in a shared house) is £625 per month for an unfurnished one-bed flat which would be the minimum a retired couple could need. Assuming they save enough to have a pension of half their salary, which would be pretty good going, how could you afford to live with £375 left per month for food/utilities/clothing and some enjoyment? You can assume minimal transport costs as would have a free bus pass so could sell your car but sounds like a pretty miserable retirement to me.

Squeezy, can you remember how often your grandmother had to move?
My grandad also rented (until he died). He didn't have to move and was in the property for many years. I'd class it as slum housing though (eg outside loo and no running hot water right up until he died in 1982).

OP your childhood experiences are very interesting

Up until the mid 80s much of the urban social housing was just like that, Vesta. Our rural rented house was like that a little longer and FILs private rented house only got proper hot water and an indoor loo in the mid 90s.

And not all rentals are so unstable and many councils have retirement flats dotted around - council owned or in partnership with private landlords.

I reckon as well that people are going to have to be a bit more flexible about where they live, if they want to buy. Realistically, how WILL lower earners get on the property ladder in London or the SE without any parental support?
I know Up North isn't everyone's cup of tea but when you can buy a perfectly reasonable 2 bedroom house like this for under 60k it makes the idea of buying a lot more doable.
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-46783664.html

area52, it was grim and harrowing to experience. Today, with a better communication system, more refuges etc, hopefully we'd be spared our version 'Cathy Come Home'.

Back to today and tomorrow, I agree with another OP that there is a time bomb ticking.

The lovely retirements we've seen people have will hopefully disappear as 30 years of playing golf while you benefit from your house being worth 2 million quid is completely unsustainable.

The working poor will get housing benefit and will try very hard to get a secure tenancy in a retirement community so they don't have to move - anyone in this category should have their names on housing lists now as lists close all the time. Get on your nearest list even if it's a hundred miles away - there are still some that aren't closed and are accepting people from out the boroughs.

Everyone will work longer, no bad thing if you're healthy - mine is an easy work til you die job. DH will have to secure an easier teaching job as he gets older as his current energy will be bloody hard to sustain.

For us personally our short years of life in retirement will be much easier - our mortgage will be paid off. The payments for our mortgage are crippling - we have really good salaries and not a chance of a sniff at any sort of holiday because our mortgage and bills for our house is 70% of income. Once you've added in transport we've got less to live on for food that the government allow in tax credits for people who can't work - about 300 a month for everything left. So daily life is good but a bit of a grind as it is for everybody.

And we will move North on retirement to free up money so that makes us much better off.

Our house is a very standard build and we could swop it's 350 value for exactly the same house costing under 100k if we moved 3 hours away.

I'm a Nurse, nearly 50 and already struggling with the demands of a hugelystressful job and shiftwork. I can't imagine being able to continue doing it until I'm 50. A lot of my colleuges are strugling too with ill health and taking long periods of sic time.

there are thousands of houses being built over here unfortunately we can't afford to buy (and they have no gardens anyway) my nan rented all her married life she went into sheltered housing when she was unable to cope alone so im guessing i will be like my nan

People will have to accept that they might have to do more than one job in life, Baby.

Sadly, the current paradigm isn't sustainable.

'Retirement' was supposed to be about 5 years, with a certain percentage dying before ever reaching it.

I realise it doesn't seem fair, but life is not.

Our mortgage will be paid off when we're 67. That gives 5/6 years of retirement before death on average.

This worries me a lot. DP and I are both 25, he's studying at the moment to better his career options and I'm working in childcare (a nanny). We live in the South East and are never going to be able to afford to buy, it just won't be doable.

We'll also be unable to relocate within the UK as DPs future career opportunities are mostly based down south and the company he's hoping to work for are based down here too. We're hoping that he gets offered a contract in one of the other countries that this company has bases in as we'd be much more secure housing-wise in quite a lot of those countries.

I don't think the idea is that you continue in your current job though, depending on what is it obviously.

I hope more part time opportunities will be created in less stressful/physical roles, for the older generation. That would then free up the other jobs for young people. I certainly cannot do my stressful, global role into my 70s, working round the clock to touch all the time zones. I'll be quitting that, and looking for a simple job...maybe b&q?!

I presume renting pensioners get some kind of rent benefits inorder for them to cover the rent.

I think this will continue to happen until a goverment get to grips with the situation and start building low cost housing for pensioners as well as first time buyers.

I agree Nomama. I was involved in a research project in the early 90's, investigating the socio-economic status of a number of London Boroughs. The % of properties with no bath or shower facilities in certain districts was very high, as was overcrowding. I often wonder how the numbers have changed in 20 years as I know eg overcrowding of illegal immigrants is routinely reported.

Of course they do! And there is an entire governmental dept. looking at the long term costs of it at the moment. You never know, they may start building...

Housing benefit will pay the rent if people live of basic level pension. I'm hoping to help the kids with some security towards housing should my DH and I ever inherit any money, or let them stay at home while they save up. I'm not a baby boomer, my parents are, but we have had fairly low housing costs so have been lucky.