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?

All the shops we don’t need should be demolished/converted to housing

Who decides which are needed?

Seriously? You think young people should be rewarded for not going to the pub for protecting a generation who either protected this country from nazi occupation, lived through intense hardship as children during the war or helped rebuild it afterwards.

Even if you ignore that young people are dying too. Even if you ignore that young people work in the NHS and would have to cope with being under even more pressures if the young people weren’t making such sacrifices.

Oh and young people aren’t exactly sparkly white when it comes to the environment- primark/fast fashion, country hoping on gap years, a throw away culture, no make do and mend mentality, foreign holidays seen as necessities. Most of the older at risk groups didn’t have any of this.

You know what, people aren’t entitled to anything, plenty of young people get on the housing ladder by compromising o. Life style and location. By taking responsibility for themselves. I had to buy my first house in a location which meant an up two hour commute each way, leaving home at 6:30 every morning back by 7:30 if I left on time.

This generation only have it as hard as the unrealistic expectations they place on the world.

Planning authorities can be asked to take shops out of retail and be put into the housing stock. Generally shops that are not needed are empty. How do you think regeneration works? Of course councils can re purpose areas and stimulate housing development. We have way too much retail and this is a brownfield site if redeveloped for housing. It saves fields and loss of green space is reduced. Often shopping areas are near transport links and essential shops. If anyone seriously thinks we need huge half empty retail areas as opposed to housing - they are mad. We don’t.

There are some pretty nasty people posting on here! Why do you think young people don’t leave home early to travel to work? Why is that good? It isn’t good for your life or that of your DC. It’s a shitty way to live and shouldn’t be championed.

I don’t see that young people are making any greater sacrifice than any other generation at the moment. Of any age group, it’s the younger, who are mainly breaking the lockdown.

AS a PP said, every generation has its 'losers'.

I started work in 1974 and was geared up to retiring at 60 with my state pension. I am now 64. But the goalposts were moved and I still have 18 months to wait...

This generation only have it as hard as the unrealistic expectations they place on the world
This is the kind of drivel that really annoys me. Since when has it been unrealistic to expect that working hard for years will allow you to have a reasonable place to live??

You're very confusing @Ordree

What is the sacrifice you speak of?

Why do you think any other generation had better access to a decent place to live?

@Ordree

What is the age of the “young people” you’re repeatedly referring to.

How old are you?

House prices will crash during the recession which is bound to hit, young people will be able to afford all the repos.

Not when a recession generally means that the banks pull high LTV products and tighten affordability criteria. House prices mean nothing unless you can get a mortgage....

Please could one of the many people who disagrees with me simply say if they take issue with any of the following statements:
(1) In inflation-adjusted terms and eveb allowing for lower interest rates it is vastly more difficult for an average wage-earner to get housing of any kind now as compared to that same person in the mod 1980s and for almost every previous year for decades
(2) There is a massive shortage of affordable rental housing, the quality is often poor and tenancy security negligible
(3) The world's top scientists indicate that serious and life-altering damage has been done to the planet. The average Western 50 year old has clearly been around, contributing, of voting age for longer than the average Western 20 year old
(4) An 18 year old in England in the 1980s could get a fee-free university education, & there were significant means-tested grants available to contribute to living costs. The same 18 year old in 2020 faces £9k per year fees and is less likely to get a means tested Grant
(5) There are relatively few people alive today who had active lives impacted by the Second World War
(6) It is generally considered a good thing that no generation since 1945 in the UK has faced conscription and mass loss of life and suffering in a world war.
(7) It is not just people under 30 who have benefited from peace but every single person born since 1945, which includes most people alive today

The above points could be true but they have nothing to do with the coronavirus and the current lockdown.

Why do you think any other generation had better access to a decent place to live?
Because they did. Inflation adjust the lifetime cost of accommodation of someone born in 1950 and in almost every instance it will be lower than a person of the same social background born in 1990.
There was vastly more social housing per capita in the UK in 1980 than there is today.
The age of a person leaving home and indeed of a first-time buyer has been increasing for years on end

@Ordree I don't disagree with your statements, but I do fundamentally disagree with your assertion that everyone who you don't consider 'young' (although you won't specify what age you think that is) was an adult in the 80s. You seem to forget that 'baby boomers' were not the previous generation and there have been several since.

As I said upthread, we are 41 and only managed to buy with a 5% deposit 3 years ago, we are screwed if house prices drop. We came into the workforce as final salary pensions ended so none of those for us, were the first group of people to get student loans and fees (no big grants for us).

We wouldn't be considered 'young' by any stretch but also haven't had all these massive benefits you sweepingly state that 'older' people have had.

Also, all of that has fuck all to do with covid-19

But you're using statistics completely selectively there without thinking critically about any of the wider context of them.

The only thing that you've said which stands up to critical thinking is that there's a reduction in social housing stock.

And you still haven't answered what it is that you think young people have sacrificed in order to deserve such preferential treatment.

Example of OPs point.

Mid 50s couple I know, one is a postal worker and the other works part time in a shop, has been this way since their child started school, before which only the father worked. They have a 3 bed detached house in the home counties which was purchased when they were in early 20s.

Early 30s couple I know, one is a doctor and the only is an accountant and they had to move away from friends and family to buy a small terrace (the rent on their property in a similar area to couple 1 was crippling). As they are higher earners, they are paying huge amounts in student loans each month too. No kids.

Surely it is clear these different social groups have not been afforded the same chances?

Another couple I know earn exactly the same as us (she has told me, I didn't ask!) And are 20/30 years older than us. They have a 4 bed detached also in home counties, go on several long hall holidays a year (and have done for 20 years) out every weekend and have a top car. I dont see how anyone can say they have worked harder and deserve this more than a younger couple who just want a second bedroom...!

long haul even!

The enforced restrictions currently in place due to COVID 19 will save many lives. They will also result in a crippled economy and an even heavier public sector debt burden. 20 year olds will have most or all their working lives paying into a system in far worse shape due to the economic damage done by these restrictions. Before anyone gleefully thinks I am saying I think the restrictions are not necessary, I don't. They are necessary and they will place a massive strain on public finances. A massive part of a person's quality of life is their access to affordable accommodation. So I don't think it is unreasonable to act to tilt the scales very slightly back in favour of a generation which overall has been seriously economically disadvantaged.

If we're going down the road of anecdotes my husband and I have worked our entire lives (he's late 50s I'm late 40s) in healthcare. We fell foul of endowment issues, pension issues, property boom in 2007 (plus various other recessions). We had to move to an area that none of us would have chosen to live in because that's all we could afford.

My DSS has just bought a house which costs nearly twice as much as ours is worth, partner works for the family company as an administrator and DSS works as a trainee surveyor.

Fair play to them, I'm sure they will be very happy. But my anecdote doesn't prove any point, just like any other anecdote.

So, OP, who pays for the 6+million houses needed for "young people"?

Where is that money going to come from?

@Ordree everyone is going to be in this situation. People who have worked their entire lives may lose everything.

Young people (as a group) have sacrificed no more or less than anyone else.

Absolutely ridiculous to try and create division with this notion of helplessness or levels of who is most deserving.

*So, OP, who pays for the 6+million houses needed for "young people"?

Where is that money going to come from?*
Through applying higher taxes to inheritances, a wealth tax on net worth, and higher taxation and stamp duty on those who own multiple properties

Climate change and financial uncertainty are not new issues though. As a child of the 1980s we were taught about global warming and what a catastrophic state the world could be in by 2060.

There have been several finanical crashes within my lifetime where people have ended up in negative equity on their homes. This is only really an issue if you're needing to sell or can't afford the mortgage due to higher interest rate. There's enough historical evidence that this happens to allow people can make an educated decision on whether it's worth them buying a house.

I had to take out a loan to pay for university; at the time it felt like a great injustice, but I grew up and realised there's not an inifinite money tree to fund everything.

My parents were born 1946, so just after WW2. By no stretch of the imagination can I bring myself to think they had things easier back then. Can you imagine being born in the 40s and 50s in a post war world where rationing is still in place for most of your childhood? Mental health services were pretty much non existant for those who suffered PTSD from serving the country and even just being a civilian.

No. Just that really. No.

So, the higher inheritance tax, means that the "young people" due to inherit pay more tax to pay for their tax-reliefed affordable housing....