there's never been a worse time to be young and British, your screwed if your under 30

[lhldn]

OK the title is taken from a torygraph article, but I do find myself agreeing with it and being sad for the next generation.
www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11231796/If-youre-under-30-bad-luck.-Youre-screwed.html
We’re all becoming depressingly familiar with the results of these policies. The single worst (and most easily grasped) problem is housing. Our housing market has become an in-and-out club. If you’re over 50, in addition to your primary residence, you may well own a couple of buy-to-lets which will augment your already well-upholstered pension. If you’re under 30, you’re screwed.

If you’re under 30 in London, you’re super-screwed. You’ll be in your 40s before you’ve saved enough to buy a dump in Catford. And even then it’s likely that you’ll be outbid by a buy-to-let investor or, increasingly and tragically, refused a mortgage because you’re too old.

A long list of policies across three very different governments has got us here. The “one off” sale of council houses to make us all Tories in the 1980s - over two million homes that went cheap, often criminally cheap. The bottom three rungs cut off the ladder, the proceeds pocketed and the houses never replaced. Even so, property was still cheap back then – and if the housing market was anything like a free market, we might still be alright.

However, for all their devotion to the free market, our leaders have shown no interest in allowing the housing market to function this way. Rather, each year, we build a tiny fraction of what is needed ensuring prices march endlessly upwards. We have no coherent national housing plan. Our planning system is a mess. We have artificially low interest rates. We sell homes off-plan to foreign investors and don’t build enough to house the immigrants who are vital to our economy. The result is an cruelly dysfunctional market – and one which works brilliantly for your parents.

In tandem with this, over the last few years we’ve done a great job of increasing the wage gap between age groups. Guess who low wages hurt? Not people in their 50s and 60s. In fact, they actually help older people as they as more likely to be investors and employers. So, there’s no house for you, but the people who vote can afford a cleaner for their holiday home.

Housing is the most pressing problem

So are we allowed one house each or one house per family? What if you split up? Are you allowed two houses then? Or do you have to actually be divorced. And if you are a one parent family selfishly occupying a house and bed that could have another adult in it do you have to pay some sort of tax then?

It doesn't work as a system and as a PP says, if the rental market contracts because there are no rental properties, where exactly is everyone going to live?

Interesting dilemma

This whole 'young people aren't prepared to work hard/spend on frivolities/don't know how to save' bollocks really gets my goat.

DH and I both work full time, we don't own a car, we haven't had a holiday in years, we don't do meals out, the cinema, takeaways, booze etc, most of my clothes have been in my wardrobe for about seven years, I can't remember the last time I went to the hairdressers... By the time we've paid rent, council tax and childcare each month there's bugger all left for food let alone saving.

We are saving though, very slowly. But we've also been forced to move three times in five years because the landlord wants their property back, which has eaten up the little we've managed to save every time. Add into that the fact that DH was been made redundant when the company he worked for went into administration, and he had to take a job for less money and I'm beginning to feel it's hopeless. We're going to spend the rest of our lives being shoved from house to house with furniture that doesn't fit, no ability to decorate and basically feeling like unwelcome guests in somebody else's home; if it carries on like this we'll be 50 before we manage to save a deposit

No one should own 2 houses?? What nonsense! If you can afford 2 houses, 5 houses, 10 houses good luck to you. Just because they don't buy them doesn't mean you can have them. Why should some people be penalised because others can't afford things? This desire for everyone to own has only been a recent thing.

I know the housing situation is bad at the mo but everyone has the same options.

A: move to a cheaper area (and yes there are jobs!)
B: earn more (2nd job or retrain)
but of course this is easier
C: Do nothing to improve your situation and just bitch about how hard done by you are

I'm 29, university educated, pretty secure job, own my home with my husband, decent income, decent pension, couple of spare rooms for when we expand our family.
Not a massive boast by intention, just pointing out that not all of the under 30s have such bleakness ahead of them, many of my friends are in the same kind of situation as I am and I don't think we did anything spectacular growing up, just luck I guess and I'm very grateful.
I think there are these issues in every generation, I don't believe it's new or specific to under 30s, there's every chance my life will hit the skids in a decade or two!x

The reason some can't afford a home is that prices have been inflated by policies that allow a few to make huge profits.
It's a racket.
Everyone needs a home, there is enough to go around we just need to stop the greedy rich from hoarding property in order to extract money from and further impoverish the poor ?

Are prosperous older empty nesters who don't downsize and keep a room or even more than room for guests "hoarding", Suzannewithaplan?

No, people need to take responsibility for their own lives and homes and stop waiting for someone else to do it. Why draw the line at houses? Why not say people should only be allowed 1 car? Why not take it even further, those greedy rich people are hogging all the caviar and champers, let's limit what people can buy each week. Just the 1 lobster a week is sufficient!

I was once told by a smug investment banker (at a fancy dinner) that people really shouldn't expect to own their own homes anymore, that home-owning was a 20th-century fantasy and that there was nothing wrong with renting.

It struck me as such a privileged position to take - of course he can afford to think it's not a necessity for the plebs, since he presumably has a decent pension coming his way and won't be at the mercy of the private rental market when he's retired.

Not to mention, do we really want to go back to pre-20th century standards of living for the elderly and working classes?

Why draw the line at houses? Why not say people should only be allowed 1 car? Why not take it even further, those greedy rich people are hogging all the caviar and champers, let's limit what people can buy each week.

The problem is not that rich have more per se, the problem is that the very fact that they have more drives the prices up for everyone else, thus increasing the inequality divide in a never-ending cycle.

Bonkers not in all the cheaper areas. We moved here a few years ago because it was cheaper than where we were; since then most of the local shops have closed down, the cinema went (about 40 jobs), and the council offices were relocated when the boundaries were adjusted so it's now an hour's commute to work there. I think it was worked out by the local press that 1800 jobs had gone in less than two years. It's a downward spiral here.

That was in response to your post at 13.00.57

I think people have to look at what they can gain by changing their lifestyle and adopting a different approach as well.
For us only having one parent working was the answer, for others I know this isn't the case.
After we did the calculations of how much me working would impact on our finances there was no way it was viable either short or long term in comparison to the choices we did make.
So whereas to some people being a sahp is a luxury, to others being a wohp and paying for childcare is a luxury.
If you play by the system at the time and are able to be flexible when policies change, long term then you will be ok, ime.

If you put inheritance tax way up, to 90% or more, you would tackle the housing crisis. You would also tackle inequality and it would be a far greater step towards equalising opportunity and eradicating unfairness than taxing people on what they earn, through their own labour.

But theres no great clamour for it. Instead, people will harp on about the evils of people working for and spending the money that they earn, but the same people will go strangely quiet when you suggest IHT go up - because they all live in hope that an elderly relative will leave them their home, and their socialist policies will evaporate.

I do an hour commute twice a day, it's not uncommon these days. It's what you have to do

yeah yeah of course, we're back to the greedy rich again .

Shame since this started out as quite interesting.

Why should the government get 90% of the money that I have worked for? The only people who benefit there are people who don't work or don't save. What planet are you on that you think that is fair? How on earth would it tackle the housing crisis? All it would do it put more money in government funds!

Theres still plenty of affordable housing across the country- you might be screwed if London is the centre of your universe, thankfully for us its not so although the content of the article is reasonably depressing, I'm not too worried.

No, TheChandler, they aspire to leave something to their families when they go.

I think thechandler's post is the most stupid thing I have ever read on MN. I think you can all appreciate just how stupid that makes it

No youareallbonkers I think you're supposed to stand on the street and hand out your cash.

the government is all of us, and its funds belong to all of us. In the same way as we pay for all of its spending through our taxes.

in theory I like the idea of inheritance tax, since inherited inequality is such a big problem today. But it would never work in practice - people would give their property when still alive, and the truly rich would just find all kinds of loopholes.

I think we've all been screwed by a self serving political class that has no particular expertise, no bright ideas, no answers and no real interest in improving the prospects of its citizens.

Yes, it's probably the under 30s who've born the brunt of their incompetence/lack of interest.

Read "The Pinch" by David Willets. There is a real problem for the younger generation. Government policies will never be against the large "baby boomer" population that vote. The NHS will have a great problem in 2-3 decades with the aging population. Final salary pensions for the younger generation are nearly non existant (a few public sector ones left, which if you read the financial reports on them, are seldom viable-this means more taxes for your children to support these public sector pensions). From a personal level (just over 30) I see few of my friends marrying and having children, if they can get a mortgage it is at a later age than their parents' generation. Tuition fees, high costs of childcare (arisen as now ratios for children to carers are very strict), qualifications (and further qualifications that used to be financially supported by the employer are now financed by the student), frequently a job that was for school leavers now demands a degree etc.

Totally agree, if you have a second home you are condemning someone else to a life without a secure affordable home.

no you are not. the law is condemning people to insecure housing. that can be fixed with a few strokes of the pen but, oddly, there isn't any will for it here (i think because most people don't know how tilted rental laws are towards landlords in the UK).

The lack of affordability comes from scarcity. you can't drive up prices if housing is plentiful.