AIBU to be totally confused (cost of living crisis)

[LittleBitHeiressLittleBitIris]

AIBU to not be able to understand/ grasp the scale of impending disaster that is building over the increased cost of living?

I genuinely don't see how millions of people with outgoings that are about to be actually higher than income is going to play out.

I'm not trying to be goady and obviously realise no-one has a crystal ball but am I missing something? Has this ever happened before in other recent times/ other cultures and what was the result. I can't even imagine what could happen.

I feel really clueless! Any ideas/ opinions/ further reading much appreciated 👍

@swallowedAfly

And to the lady saying you wouldn't be homeless - I'm not sure my son would agree we weren't homeless if we were moved to a b&b 10 miles away and he couldn't get to his school or be anywhere near his friends. I also don't drive and currently walk to work and would likely have to leave my job and become unemployed as I wouldn't be able to get to work bar spending over £40 a day on taxis which wouldn't be viable. My dog and cat definitely wouldn't agree and all of my possessions would be lost. You don't have to be sleeping on a park bench to lose everything and be forced into unemployment and isolation and watching your child's life be destroyed.

Housing should not be this insecure - especially for working people who have never defaulted on rent and had zero control over the fact that their landlord decided to sell.

I think you mean ne. Not 100% though . The person. I was replying to said she would be on the streets. I was saying she would not end up on the actual streets.

I do know what it's like . It's hapoebd to me twice. I was private renting for a long time. I was given a section 21. Ended uo in temporary accommodation for around 6 months or so . Then found a lovely private rent. My situation changed and I ended up on full benefits. Even though the council reassured the landlord the full rent would be paid she could be paid directly etc offered her a cash incentive to keep me on. But she would not. So that lead to my 2nd eviction.

Because I have a child with special needs also children do GCSE/A levels it meant I would be kept in borough (or) as close as possible. I was lucky enough that all my temporary accommodation have been flats or houses. I have never stayed in a hostel.

I did have a dog and he stayed with someone I know sadly he got ill something to do with his brain I forgot whatvit was called. That was an awful time. I did have to rehome my cats sadly.

With my belongings my Council had a place I could store all my stuff.

I have in temporary for just over 3 years now . (Not including the time in temporary from my first eviction)

I just wanted to add this post because I do understand its very hard and very stressful. Its not something I'm just posting thinking it's easy I know its not.

@chinupoldchap

I always find with things like this that we are all pitted against each other. The 'rich' blame the poor for bad money management, nails, sky and holidays. The 'poor' blame the rich for not paying tax, inherited money, luck.

All in all we all live in a failing society. Can't see the gp, year long waiting lists for hospital appointments, terrible road infrastructure, underfunded schools, underpaid and over worked nurses, teachers, etc.
Rent and mortgages are stupidly expensive, the older population can't afford to stop work, therefore less help with childcare for younger generations.
Food is expensive, energy is expensive, fuel is expensive. Wages aren't enough.
All house that are built now have tiny garden (or none) so we can't even try to be self sufficient.
I always wondered why my local council plant thousand of flowers every year, why not plant blueberry bushes, apple trees, etc?
I don't know what the answer is, it's shit, I'm worried. But blaming each other certainly doesn't help.

Bleak, but spot on.

swallowed, yes it is very difficult indeed. I am on the thread as someone on the other side of the tracks but I like to hear the views of other people as we only understand each other by hearing other views. My sons when letting their houses last year were on the other side of that as landlord (they still live with me at home so let their one house each out for now). It does depend on the market. At the moment there seem to be lots of people wanting small houses with a garden so the day (the actual day of completion of the purchase!!) a year ago my son had 2 tenants view it and 5 more over the weekend. I have never known demand like it even back in the 1980s when we briefly let out a flat on which we made huge losses. So he was choosing from those 7 couples. How do you decide who gets the home? They were all offering the same rent (and no one had pets as there is a no pets rule). He went for a teacher with working wife and small child. Not someone who had a guarantor as wage very low. (No one on benefits visited the house). Not the couple who sometimes had teenage or adult children staying and were just getting together. It is certainly not easy to pick even amongst people who meet the agent's credit checks.

Whereas when the flat near one of my daughters was let out in London at peak covid when everyone was fleeing inner London for places with gardens rents went right down and people were being taken on who otherwise might not. It seems to be supply and demand.

I have never known demand like it even back in the 1980s when we briefly let out a flat on which we made huge losses

Of course there wasn’t such high demand in the 1980s. Thatcher hadn’t introduced right to buy to bribe working class voters then. Those were the days when there was an adequate amount of social housing stock.

As Blossomtoes has said, in the 70’s and 80’s all you had to do was turn up at the local council and you would be promptly given a flat or property.
Ditto Housing Associations, some were more selective and it was difficult to find out how you approached them. For private rentals you often had to pay ‘key’ money, normally £500 a not insignificant sum then.
Mortgages were nigh on impossible to get for a single woman though.

@Malibuismysecrethome

As Blossomtoes has said, in the 70’s and 80’s all you had to do was turn up at the local council and you would be promptly given a flat or property. Ditto Housing Associations, some were more selective and it was difficult to find out how you approached them. For private rentals you often had to pay ‘key’ money, normally £500 a not insignificant sum then. Mortgages were nigh on impossible to get for a single woman though.

I think that varied, in my city it wasn't true in the early 70s, even less true in the 80s. I knew young couples living in what would now be called HMO but then were referred to as "rooms" and they weren't any sort of priority for the council.

As a younger sibling I hated hand me downs, I swear I made an effort to grow so I'd be bigger than my older sister. I swore my kids wouldn't have hand me downs and they didn't. I didn't always have much money, things were very tight in the 70s and even worse when I became a single parent in the 80s but I went without rather than one of my kids feeling less than their siblings.

I noticed someone letting their second home out on FB, the rent is within my means and there's no agency fees etc as it's direct through the owners. It's been up for 2 hours. They've had 7000 enquiries so far. That's the state of the housing situation where I live.

It probably did depend where you lived @ancientgran. There was loads of council stock where I lived. A friend of mine got married in the early 70s and they got the keys to a three bed house on return from their honeymoon. But wherever you lived, there was a very good chance of getting a decent place to live if you had a family.

Happened a lot historically. 2008/9 recession aside the younger generation (myself included) simply aren’t used to it.

In the 1970s it was rampant inflation, 1980s it was high unemployment, in the early 1990s it was 15% mortgage rate rises (shudders).

It’s about to bite here in a way we haven’t seen for many decades. It will be devastating for our poorest and “just about managing families”. DH and I earn well, but we won’t have a lot left either each month - if we’re going to feel it I dread to think how the poorest will fare.

@Blossomtoes

It probably did depend where you lived *@ancientgran*. There was loads of council stock where I lived. A friend of mine got married in the early 70s and they got the keys to a three bed house on return from their honeymoon. But wherever you lived, there was a very good chance of getting a decent place to live if you had a family.

In my city you would wait for 2 or 3 years and then the young families I knew were in flats, old flats not high rise. The idea that a couple would get a three bed house would have been total fantasy. Thinking back I can't remember anyone I knew getting a council house, they all did their time in the flats and then bought. In the 60s I knew people who got houses but the trick then was to rent a house that was in an area that was going to be demolished, whole areas of the city were in the 50s and 60s, and then when your house had to be compulsory purchased from the landlord you got a house on one of the new sprawling estates on the edge of the city.

I assume the housing market still varies round the country.

The 15% mortgage rate in the 90s was for one day. In 1981 our first mortgage was for £15,000
but the repayment was £680 per month. It did come down several years later but was very high and an endowment mortgage so we also paid for a policy that paid the mortgage when the time was up.

The 15% mortgage rate in the 90s was for one day

Are you sure you're not thinking of the base rate, Malibu? It says here that the huge mortgage rate hike lasted from February to November 1990: www.mortgageintroducer.com/15-years-since-the-peak-of-mortgage-rates/

More generally, there's an interesting piece about bank rates over the years here: thinkplutus.com/uk-interest-rate-history/

[quote Puzzledandpissedoff]The 15% mortgage rate in the 90s was for one day

Are you sure you're not thinking of the base rate, Malibu? It says here that the huge mortgage rate hike lasted from February to November 1990: www.mortgageintroducer.com/15-years-since-the-peak-of-mortgage-rates/

More generally, there's an interesting piece about bank rates over the years here: thinkplutus.com/uk-interest-rate-history/[/quote]
Don't forget that there was no such thing as fixed rate interest mortgages back then. You were on the same rate as everybody else. You couldn't gamble and fix, or fix at what was currently affordable.

Of course you could fix but the cheapest were at 10 or 12%.

@Kipperandarthur

Of course you could fix but the cheapest were at 10 or 12%.

The first fixed rate mortgages were introduced in 1989.

I don’t want a return to the bad old days. But a return to a simpler life, at least in some elements, could be a good thing.

For example: second hand clothes (whether hand me downs, charity shop buys or Vinted) mean fewer new clothes need to be made and that is good for the environment. And until such time as we have limitless renewable energy, things which encourage people to reduce energy use have a positive unintended consequence.

However, this should happen through informed choice rather than having no choice. The stories of people only putting the heating on for a few hours make me so sad.

I would like to see the government investing massively in improving the insulation in social and low income households.

I eat porridge by choice. I don’t grow vegetables. I do use charity shops.

@ancientgran

As a younger sibling I hated hand me downs, I swear I made an effort to grow so I'd be bigger than my older sister. I swore my kids wouldn't have hand me downs and they didn't. I didn't always have much money, things were very tight in the 70s and even worse when I became a single parent in the 80s but I went without rather than one of my kids feeling less than their siblings.

I hear you. I am the youngest of 4 girls, all close in age, so there was always plenty of wear left in the things which were passed down.

I once had a coat that was bought new for me. I loved it so much, I was absolutely distraught when I grew out of it. I think I was about 5.