Younger people should be rewarded for lockdown via affordable housing

[Ordree]

As others have noted, young people (not just those in frontline roles) are making enormous sacrifices to protect others, mostly but not exclusively from much older age groups. They will be bequeathed a damaged planet, a ruined economy and they will have done further damage to their mental health by staying indoors for months on end. They are the ones paying older people's pensions when they won't have anything like the same financial security to look forward to themselves. Yes I know older people paid their elders pensions during their working lives, bit never has there been such an imbalance. As the economy is likely to be ruined short to medium term anyway, would it not be reasonable to start the biggest givernment-funded housebuilding programme ever, allow younger people who have just bought to write off negative equity losses against tax, and essentially redress some of the appalling imbalance between generations and classes?

FT articles.

Further FT analysis.

As for a nurse thinking that they have paid enough contributions for their pension is total piffle!

So a nurses contribution is purely monetary? The fact a nurse contributes to keeping the nation healthy and thus contributes to a healthy workforce is irrelevant?

Exactly @triangle its bizarre. But then some people do think they are more worthy and deserving of handouts for whatever reason. A few years ago I had a stab at my dream job. I became temporarily homeless and lived in a homeless shelter for the experience, realised i couldnt maintain my dream job long term and made the hard decision to move away from everyone i know for a better life. I still rent but quality of life is easier and it will still take me about 5 years unless i strike it lucky jobwise soon to get a house. Then again a younger coworker just bought a house with her better off fiance and I see a lot of jealous people crawling out the woodwork to belittle her for it. Whereas im just proud that she has acheived what she wanted. I will have to work much harder than her to get the same thing and im much older than her but its fine. I dont feel entitled to something i havent worked for.

Maybe they should relocate to a cheaper area. Even in london theres cheaper homes than £400k. Again everything handed to on a plate

The person in question would not be able to get a job (if they could get one at all) in any other area of the UK with low house prices. Plus they would not be able to provide the practical or emotional support to the parent they live with. It is not asking for things to be handed on a plate to hope for the opportunity to have a modest property allowing them to remain in the area they currently live in to look after their relative.

I think personal anecdotes don’t really matter here. It’s harder for younger people and that’s fact.

Social housing is provided by housing associations and they borrow money to build. They are not given massive government handouts. When the economic is bleak their borrowing stalls and building stalls. The government can help by priming the housing associations with money when lending is a problem. The world and his wife knows we don’t have enough homes. It’s also partly to do with single people not wanting to share a home and divorced people wanting (needing) two homes.

The FT also says 1 in 5 baby boomers is a millionaire. Inheritance, pension lump sums and property are the main drivers of that.

OP your friend will either have to commute, which isn’t as radical as it sounds, or continue to live with their parents. It doesn’t sound practical for them to leave home anyway with their caring responsibilities.

Could you give some insight as to how covid19 has caused her predicament? I’m struggling to follow your train of thought. What part of it is a consequence of being asked to stay indoors that she now needs compensating for? 🤔

Well if you consider the government handout for state workers pensions, they are not that badly paid at all. Everyone else contributes a lot for their pensions. Many cannot afford their own pensions. I object to statements that say the nurses pay for their pensions. They don’t. The rest of us contribute around 1/3. I didn’t say I begrudged it’s. I just said - look at the facts! Please!!!

@Geepipe exactly. Nothing comes for free. I think the trouble is many millennials have grown up thinking they just have to work at school and they can have anything they want, right now as of right.

I think of my dad, the oh so well to do generation the op seems to think owes her a living, born just before WW2 the 2nd youngest of 6, living in a two bedroom Ed cottage, walked 3miles to school and 3miles back. Spent his childhood eating the scraps left from the ration - scrumping apples because he was hungry rather than naughty. Told his eldest brother had died 2times in the war after his ship was blown up twice. Denied the chance for grammar school because, despite being top of his class his family couldn’t afford the uniform

Left home for national service - moves back home until he got married when he moved into a house that was such a wreck he was trying to make it liveable still the morning of his wedding.

Lost their business early 80s and had to move in with his wife’s family for the next 10 years.

He worked long hours,often away. My mum worked nights and piecework at home.

Maybe one week in a run down static caravan each year. Eating out was for major events like parents golden weddings etc

Such lives are not unusual for baby boomers.

It’s funny the lock down is not too dissimilar to my childhood except lack of school.l and catch ups via Skype rather than having mates round. Where Sunday afternoons were a walk out, most days playing in the back garden. Mum baking a cake as a weekly treat. The weekly shopping trip, was that, a trip out. Walking rather than during a car.

Maybe use this time to think how you can improve your life through your own hard work and attitude rather than being so entitled to think you deserve a reward for being a good little girl. Life is fucking hard for most people, everything needs to be fought for, the sooner you understand that the better

Personal annecdotes really do matter. And them statistics tend to be bullshit by area. Look at babyboomers in rural northern towns compared to ones in say london or surrey.

The ageism here comes from the venemous anger that anyone could possibly have had one asoect of life easier so they owe it to young people. Younger generations dont have it anywhere near as bad as they make out. Again owning property is not a human right. Its grim this weird bleak materialistic attitude so many have they feel owed and entitled. Is definitely a really grim western attitude.

In Greater London with long commutes, there are cheaper homes. Not so much in London where prices are still very high and largely not seen elsewhere.

So why did Margaret That her buy votes by selling off council houses cheap then? If it didn’t matter! It matters to some people. Cheaper areas are great if you are a teacher or doctor because your wage goes a long way! It’s better to be well paid in the NE than London!

@Lifeisgenerallyfun totally agree. I look at my grandparents, one set came from abroad and suffered persecution for years fleeing poverty and living hand to mouth to get by and the other set who lived in someones basement with 8 kids. Literally a basement in someones house thats where my father was born and raised. Both my parents came from poverty and we grew up a very frugal life. Me and my siblings didnt have a takeaway until we were adults and moved away. I was lucky enough to get to university and have already experienced in my 28 years more than my entire family and i am still classed as below the breadline and according to the bbc i am 2 classes below working class. But i guess i just think you should live within your means. Where i live now everyone has cars on finance, cosmetic surgery on finance, clothes cosmetics gadgets on credit cards takeaways once a week then they complain rents too high and they cant possibly save anything. Its infuriating and its very very common in my age group. I even know people who had massive inheritances still claiming to be poor and cant afford a home... i will never understand how.

Why do young people expect everything to be handed to them on plate.

Get off your iphone & xbox, stop shopping for designer clothes & trainers, learn to cook rather than ordering takeaways. Maybe take your education & training seriously. Don't turn your nose up at fruit picking jobs.

Then save up for a deposit on a bedsit before you have 4 children and expect the state to pay for them.

Its not rocket science, its called work and living within your means.

Oh God, this again. Anyone who thinks the 70s, 80s and 90s were easy is very ill-informed. OP, you clearly weren’t there,

I’m mid 50s and I don’t know anyone with a final salary pension scheme. We had negative equity and 15% mortgage rates (that’s 7 x the current rate). Yes I bought a flat at 24, but no central heating, no fitted kitchen, no fridge, no washing machine. For the first month, I slept on the floor. No nights out, no foreign holidays, no car.
I worked for a bank in 1989 when the £ came under attack. The mortgage rate went up 10% in one day. People were walking into building societies and handing back the keys to their homes. Two of our share traders committed suicide with the stress.

You just don’t have a clue.

I’m 64 and everyone I know has final salary if they worked for local government or the state. Others didn’t all have this but home owners are very well off.

Bubblesbuddy part of the reason public housing was sold off was because much of it was built in the 50s. By the time it was sold, a lot of it needed new heating, new wiring, new windows and doors, new kitchens & bathrooms. Old lead piping needed replacing by law.
The potential bill was vast. By selling it off, councils passed that liability onto the new owners.

I have a sister who was a teacher for decades. Another who was a nurse for 35 years. Neither has a final salary pension. One gets £14k, the other £17k. Hardly world-cruise money is it? The only people I know with more were either private sector or in the police- and his contributions were 11% for 30 years so he paid for that himself.
I Amit I don’t know anyone who worked in local govt, but it’s not true of most public sector.

Even if people in their 20s were frittering money away on unnecessaries which in large part they are not, the amount saved by reducing discretionary spending to zero would still in almost every case not be enough to make up the shortfall between their savings/income and that needed to secure the kind of housing that many ordinary people had. Way too many people from the Western baby boom generation hate being told the truth which is that as a generation overall they grew up in some of the most benign economic conditions in history, & that there are people younger than them (& indeed earlier now departed generations) who had it far harder. The Daily Mail reader mentality is that all young people suddenly decided that they'd prefer to go on a spending splurge instead of saving for a house.It is a lie which people cling to instead of facing the truth

BubblesBuddy

Maybe you could assist as the OP isn’t able to, when you discuss “younger people” what sort of age group are you referring to?

That's what our parents did in the 70s/80s. They are veeta curry from a tin. And tinned pies. They bought a house and had nothing but a sofa and a mattress and gradually built it up

Lived at home until the wedding, and all the household stuff was our wedding presents and second hand furniture. Then no maternity protection at all, and when it did come in you had to pay it back if you didn’t stay working for a specific period. Then a period of 15% interest rates and repossession for many. And now I’ve lost £50k worth of pension.

But the thing is, if all the housing is so unaffordable for the 'young person', then why aren't all if these people homeless?

And why aren't houses standing empty or falling in value?

Why are fruit picking jobs for the young and not the middle age unemployed?