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?

@Ordree everyone is going to be in this situation. People who have worked their entire lives may lose everything.
A wealthy older retired couple with a large mortgage free house will be in a much much better position to withstand economic shocks than a working class person with neither assets nor inheritance who will need to work for 40 plus years at a time when jobs may well be scarce

Older people are also far more likely to have voted for the current Conservative government which is composed of mainly architects and cheerleaders of austerity in public services. But 'young people' are less likely to vote. They couldn't be arsed.

What about all the poor old people who are trying to live on the state pension

I can't wait to get mine because it's more money than my low paid key worker job which I do for 30 hours a week.

So, the higher inheritance tax, means that the "young people" due to inherit pay more tax to pay for their tax-reliefed affordable housing
Higher inheritance tax would effectively redistribute a part of the unearned equity resulting from house price inflation from wealthier families to poorer people. Clearly young people from wealthy families do not require the same net benefit as poor ones.

yes, it is all very difficult. I would start with merging tax and NI next year and putting the basic rate tax - 20% and NI about 13% together so 33% as on employed income. I would then apply that to all other incomes including pensions (for those pensioners whose pensions are over the single person tax allowance - not all are over that). That might help the generational divide.

Although in our own case my student sons who in a sense live off rental income have deferred about £200 a month rent from their tenants (tenants who are older than they are) for 3 months to help the tenant - cleaner lost her job entirely and her partner moved down to 2 days a week due to the pandemic so it is not always as simple as older means own property and younger - that you don't.

I certainly won't be happy when my taxes go up next year as my category - self employed honest enough to clear all income and over £50k profits before tax, unlike small companies and employees who get some of the free money but for some reason a sole trader if over £50k does not but an employee even on £10m can get furlough money.

But 'young people' are less likely to vote. They couldn't be arsed
Young people voted in proportionally bigger numbers than for a long time in recent years driving the Corbyn and Sanders movements. For some of them who dont vote their accommodation and indeed financial instability is a contributing factor. There are greater numbers of 50plus than under 30 eligible to voters as well so even 100% turnout in both groups wouldn't result in a balanced voting weight.

@Ordree

Are you a politician? You have so far avoided answering any questions that might expose your opinion as the nonsense that it is, used statistics erroneously, and now you are using very targeted examples to try and prove a much more general (and incorrect) point.

Let me spell it out for you.

Every generation experiences challenges and booms.

Some do well, some don't.
Some do well because they have better opportunities than others (but this is less to do with age and more to do with social situation).

No one 'deserves' anything and to think that you do reveals something about a mindset and attitude which is problematic.

I'm 22 I just bought my first house with my boyfriend last month. We'll be staying there for a few years! I was very lucky to be able to afford this home, while it wasn't without sacrifices such as holidays and avocado on toast, it is a lovely home. I've not yet been allowed to move in. I was also very lucky that mine and his parents didn't charge us rent, allowing us to save 30k from the time we were 17.

My circumstances are not normal. We didn't go to uni. We stayed together for this length of time. Our parents didn't want rent. Have been in full-time employment since 17 and 19.

Personally, my opinion is that my generation don't need affordable housing as a reward, we need it. Any one of my friends that have been pushed through the education system, or is without an earning partner, or both, will not be able to afford their home for possibly the rest of their lives. The problem for us is rent and uni fees. As soon as we have to pay £700-£1000 in rent every month, we have no spare cash to save with. Then you have uni fees on top of that. Banks are also less willing to lend than they used to be. Our mortgage was 4.5x our salary, but I suspect that in many areas of the country that wouldn't scratch the sides. I have noticed that many friends can pay £900 in rent and save, but they would never be lent a mortgage amount like that, or even close to it.

Are you a politician? You have so far avoided answering any questions that might expose your opinion as the nonsense that it is, used statistics erroneously, and now you are using very targeted examples to try and prove a much more general (and incorrect) point.

1. No I am not a politician
2. Tell me which statistic I have used which is incorrect
3. Ask me a relevant question which you think will expose my opinion as nonsense.

The stats are with Ordree’s assessment. The younger people will be feeling this for much longer. The old have bern disproportionately favoured due to voting patterns. We shall give our wealth away to our DC if we are taxed to oblivion and don’t forget - young people benefit from inheritance too. In fact it’s how many get a deposit. Plus bank of mum and dad who seem to have enough spare cash.

We don’t need 6 million homes. About 1/3 of that. We do need to be creative regarding housing and it’s vital young people are not shafted by the current crisis as they were in 07/08 onwards. The generations after ww2 did have it easier overall. The stats clearly prove that.

How many young people now can expect to retire at 60? That’s long gone unless they are a doctor or teacher.

@Ordree

young people (not just those in frontline roles) are making enormous sacrifices to protect others, mostly but not exclusively from much older age groups.
No they are not. Everyone, for a relatively short time, is making sacrifices to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed with more patients than it can cope with at present (patients of all ages).

They will be bequeathed a damaged planet,
You mean the planet which will have had some weeks to recover due to lack of cars and aeroplane travel?
The planet where people in congested cities in India are seeing blue skies instead of smog down to the ground?
The planet where in Venice the waterways are recovering as they aren't in use and fish and dolphins and other wildlife and plants are thriving?

and they will have done further damage to their mental health by staying indoors for months on end.
Ffs, we haven't even been in 'lockdown' for 3 weeks yet and here you are bleating on about months on end. Fucking huge Slight exaggeration there.

Even in the 'lockdown' people can still go out to walk, cycle or run and for necessary shopping. It isn't as if we literally can't go out at all.

As for MH, why do you think it will do "further damage* to the MH of young people. What about older people with MH issues? Will they get further damage to it?

Your arguments are all irrational.

You've repeatedly been asked
What 'young' means
And
What sacrifices young people are making.

You haven't answered either of those questions.

You have used anecdotes as evidence both yesterday and today.

When it was pointed out that everyone is affected, you selected one very specific group of people who may be less affected than others rather than looking at the whole.

Some of your points are sound but you devalue them by insisting on competitive misery.

The turnout in the 2019 Gen Election for 18-24 year olds was 47%. They voted 62% for the Labour party so that means 37% of them voted for other parties including 19% for the conservatives.
www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2019-election

*38% of them voted for other parties

Your arguments are all irrational
Just because you disagree with all of my arguments does not mean they are irrational. This virus disproportionately (not exclusively) affects older people. All people including those with a much lower chance of fatality are having their movements heavily restricted at this time. Senior political and economic figures estimate the economic fallout will be comparable to the great depression. More young people need jobs for an income than retired aged people most of whom have a pension income and very many of whom have no housing costs plus significant savings. An older person gets a greater proportionate benefit from the shutdown of the economy due to the greater relative risk to them if It were not shut down. Many of them have also had a massive relative economic advantage and will continue to do so. So I am advocating steps to go some way in the opposite direction to redress this imbalance. I don't consider that irrational.

@Ordree

Do you need me to ask “what classes as a younger person” in simpler terms?

I think a far better strategy would be to review the Country's education system. We have placed far too much emphasis on academic achievement leading to a successful life for far too long. If you pursue a trade or vocational pathway many people deem this as being less worthy. The reality is very few people actually use their degree in the workplace or even day to day life.

Like it or not, capitalism is here to stay for the forseeable future. Better to be transparent with young people about how the world of work actually works in terms of supply and demand early on, rather than expect to Government to 'reward' them with affordable housing. No point in encouraging a mediocre student to get into debt studying for a career in pop singing if they're not going to 'make it' and it's unlikely to help them find a job at the end of it.

Who are you classing as 'young people' OP? Specifically which age group please.

MarieQueenofScots

I think so...

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

If house prices crash then mortgage companies tend to panic and you have to jump through many more hoops to get a mortgage.

Remember just because a house goes into negative equity it doesn’t automatically mean it gets repossessed.

Yes people will be made redundant but mortgages atm are very cheap and even if one person in the family is working it shouldn’t be too much of an issue paying the mortgage.

No one in our family has a job atm.
Even adult children lost all their work virtually overnight.

Unless the BOE put interest rates up sky high then I don’t see a problem in getting together the £200 per month mortgage.

I could earn that on matched betting.

Negative equity only affects you if you want or have to move.

If their are going to be a lot of redundancies after this then they will affect younger people as well.

Whilst there might be some adjustment of house prices this year I don’t believe it will fall as much as some people are forecasting.

I think there will be a lot of houses hitting the market all at once when this is over which will mean the market will be saturated

This virus hit just as everyone was deciding to sell.
I think people had been holding their breath for BREXIT and I think a lot of people who were putting off selling to see if the sky fell in after we started the proceedings to leave were planning to sell this spring.

Add to that the number of divorces there will be after being cooped up in a house for weeks on end and the amount of diy people are doing, the market is going to be flooded with properties.

But all those selling will need to buy and those divorcing will need 2 places and you have a mass of potential buyers to balance it out as well.

Looking at auctions that are going ahead atm for places that can’t be viewed I would say flats are the ones where bidders are being cautious because you really can’t peer in a flats window if it’s on the 3rd floor.

Houses seem to be holding there own to the extent that a couple I was interested in went for way over the guide price and even way over what I thought they realistically were worth.

I think there are people really hoping that house prices will plummet but I just don’t think there is going to be a cut in house prices as much as people think.

Building social housing that is affordable to rent would be great (not available for right to buy!) Rents of this social housing should be guided by local earnings - so perhaps capped at a third of average local wage.

In conjunction with affordable social housing it should be made progressively more unviable to own more than one house. This has already begun with increased stamp duty for anyone buying a second property, reducing the amount of tax that is deductable for paying mortgage interest on let properties and in many areas removing or reducing council tax exemptions for empty homes. For many landlords of multiple properties this has made their business model unviable.

This can incrementally be taken further with new initiatives e.g. higher tax on land and property income so that by stealth over the next 10 - 20 years it is no longer viable to buy to let.

When new buyers (of any age) don't need to compete with buy to let buyers house prices will then be affordable to working people.

There is no good rushing to force private landlords out of the market unless there is adequate alternative social rental - there will always be people that need to rent.

I know a 70 something couple who bought a house in Greater London for £35,000, around twice the sole breadwinner's income, in 1984. The same house without substantial alterations would now cost £400,000

If one of them earned £17,500 per year in 1984 then they weren’t ordinary people.

In 1984 we bought a terrace house in Greater London.

We struggled to get the mortgage even though we had a good deposit. (Already bought, done up and sold 2 places)

Dp at the time was a qualified professional who worked in the City and had a quite good wage of about £7000 per year. He had just had a big boost to his wage as he had been promoted.

If someone was earning £17500 then that would have been the equivalent to £200,000 per year now.

So you saying the house price now of £400000 means the earnings to house cost ratio hasn’t actually gone up at all.

When people talk about baby boomers and how they had it easy I think they compare average earnings and think everyone earned that much.

I am a boomer I think I missed out somewhere along the line.

I don’t have a fantastic pension. I don’t actually have a pension.

I didn’t go to university, only real brain boxes did and even then it was whether your parents could afford it.

So saying we had free university means nothing as the majority of people didn’t have the opportunity to go.

I seemed to have missed out on the apparent fact that banks let us borrow any amount of money to buy a house.

We must have been with the wrong bank.

Yes there was no deposit really needed but most people earned so little that the multiples didn’t add up to the cheapest thing on the market.

I remember Dp and I both worked several jobs, didn’t really go out or spend any money for a year to afford a grotty Studio flat that needed work doing to it.
We knew accountants and solicitors who after doing there day job were stacking shelves in supermarkets at weekends and or pulling pints, one even worked on a building site during his holidays.

No one I knew had only one job.

I think the biggest difference between now and even the 80s was how accessible information is now.

Growing up if you couldn’t find the answer to something in the library or you didn’t know who to ask then you were in the dark.

Everything was a huge struggle to find even the simplest bit of information out.

If I could I would have wished to be born in the late 90s early 2000s.

Everything seems a lot simpler now.

OP have you actually considered that older people of retirement age have investments that are also suffering?

Didn’t think so.

We need to come together not push further apart.

I think you’re using the crisis as an excuse to justify some blinkered views you obviously hold. Early 30’s here.

If someone was earning £17500 then (1984) that would have been the equivalent to £200,000 per year now

According to the Bank of England inflation calculator £17500 in 1984 =£56,700 in 2019.