The housing catastrophe has ruined lives

[Croydonishell]

The real terms rocketing in house prices since the mid 90s, particularly in desirable cities in the UK & elsewhere, have been a social catastrophe.
Young and many middle.aged people without rich and donarion inclined parents, people doing jobs they hate and working all hours just to afford basic accommodation, putting off life decisions.
Then on here you get this casual comnenting like "you won't get much in X for £800k".
People who were just born atbthe right time or inherited rich way beyond necessity. Probably caused Brexit and a lot of the hate towards immigrants too.

First, I disagree. YABU.
Second, my home town is not hell.
HTH.

Disagree away. I have lived in many places and Croydon was by far the worst. I hated it every single day I was there and couldn't wait to leave

Well I agree that it is more difficult these days for people to buy property as early as they could in the past.

However I have to say YABU for your ridiculous and blanket assumption that all people "of a certain age" are responsible for Brexit and hate towards immigrants. DH and I are in our 60s and I have siblings in their 70s. We were all at least as appalled as you could ever be by Brexit and definitely have no grudge against immigrants.So quit with the stupid stereotypes.

And, incidentally, my parents never owned their own house. They lived in council property all their lives and I am sure they didn't feel this ruined their lives.

They lived in council property all their lives and I am sure they didn't feel this ruined their lives.

But there is a huge lack of social housing now.

I agree with you OP in that high housing costs have damaged growth, disproportionately impacted the young, contributed to lower birth rates. However Croydon is borough with some nice bits & some awful bits.

Well obviously it’s more difficult. My first house was less than 3 times my wage.

That same house is now at least ten times the average wage.

As with everything it depends on where you live. I don’t feel like you at all. Where I am house prices are fine and achievable, and my life doesn’t feel ruined by any means.

My brother lives in south croyden. I visited and thought it was quite nice.

Homelessness is a dreadful problem.

To blame people of a certain age is entirely unreasonable. People live with the hand they’re dealt. 61 and 67, we voted to remain and welcome immigrants who want to build a life in the UK.
HTH.

I read it as OP suggesting the housing crisis was a massive factor in Brexit and attitudes to immigrants (not any particular age group).

100% agree op.
And I'm a big, big winner from this, so much so I'll be able to give my own kids a house each.
The private sector has completely and utterly failed to provide decent and affordable housing for the population (very predictable, their sole motive is profit). Its long past time the government stepped in and acted on providing housing itself. What we need is an absolute massive council house building programme prioritising working people as council housing did originally. Unfortunately it's not going to happen because the very nicely housed vigorously and determinedly object to every planning application going especially 'those sort'.

Actually, the only thing I disagree about is your hate on Croydon, Croydon it just fine and if its the worst place you've ever been you obviously haven't travelled much.

I here you Op. I work full time self employed, can only afford to rent. I'll be well and truly fucked when I retire. No rich parents so no inheritance forthcoming.

The worst thing Thatcher did was the Right to Buy council houses

It's complicated. It's not just as simple as saying "well, there's a housing crisis". We need to look at the reasons behind it.

The "crisis" is a manufactured one. It didn't just happen, we designed it that way. Take the Renters Rights Bill, that has done more to accelerate the housing crisis than Dodgy Dave with his six buy to let's ever did. That piece of legislation will make millions of us homeless. But that's what we want, it must be, because none of us fought against it.

Also, here in the UK we have a pathological obsession with independence. We believe that you're not an adult unless you're living on your own. That's not how the rest of the world does things. And we don't have enough houses to provide individual homes to every child. Multi generational living needs to become normalised. Not just something that exists within certain cultures or demographics. That would also go a long way towards solving the day care crisis we have for working parents.

We have also allowed the population to increase to levels that our current economy can't support. This puts even more pressure on housing stock.

To compound the issues, we have also spent the past twenty years telling young people that unless they have a degree and work in an office somewhere, they have failed in life. Manual work was/is seen as beneath people.

A plumber? . . . . Not my son!

So not only do we not have enough houses, we don't have enough people who are qualified to build them anyway.

First thing we need to do is get rid of the stupid legislation around renting property. If someone is happy to rent your garden shed, that should be their decision. Not something the government has any say in. Back in the 90s and 2000s, students up and down the length of this country rented all sorts of weird and wonderful places. They were cheap and easy to find. There was nothing wrong with that system. It kept prices affordable.

The population growth means that we can never of course go back to really cheap rents, even if every potting shed and granny flat in the country were rented out, there still wouldn't be enough places.

We have to start somewhere though. Wj

Actually I do blame people in my own age cohort ie older.
We're the ones under occupying three and four bed houses, both council and private. And more importantly, we're the ones objecting to building and using our vote to stop it.

Right to buy wasn't bad. It should have come with much less of a discount though and an obligation for the council to replace one for one. As it was, it was a plan by Thatcher to rid the government of housing responsibilities.

Builders round us are having no trouble selling huge swathes of 3 and 4 bedroom houses for massive prices (£500,00ish) so the market is there and somehow people are managing to purchase these.

I agree that it's ruined lives, there are a lot of young professionals who would be capable of raising great and productive families but won't be able to due to most of the housing market being inaccessible to them. Rent is often higher than a mortgage too due to the crisis, so it's a vicious cycle.
However, even though on the surface you'd think homeowners are laughing, the reality is everyone suffers when crises like this happen. For example, you could comfortably own your own home and be able to afford the things you want in life, but you can't escape having to depend on others. An example is getting ill and needing a stay in hospital. Do people really think nurses are going to be doing their best work when living in houseshares and having to use food banks to feed and clothe their kids (if they even have any)? Do they think police officers are going to give a shit when they're extremely stressed by the job and barely making ends meet? When many people suffer, everyone suffers, that's the thing about society.

Absolutely agree. Dh and I have decent salaries. But I have zero chance of ever being able to live in the area I grew up in. Yet my parents could afford it on one salary (mum was sahm). Three beds, two bathrooms.

I'm in a different, much cheaper, area. Yet still I can't afford a three bed, so my kids are sharing.

It's madness.

And I have to work full time. I didn't even take a full year off with either maternity leaves. I'm constantly at the edge of burnout.

Fine and achievable for who? A couple? A single person with a huge deposit l? It’s almost unheard of to buy a house these days in an OK area with OK amenities with OK travel links and employment opportunities for less than £100k.

There are too many people on this small island. Hopefully the falling birth rate and stricter immigration laws will correct that. Then there’ll be enough housing for everyone and the prices will drop. It’ll take a while though.

Right to buy was a complete disaster and should have been stopped years ago. Also, the change to council housing being allocated based entirely on need rather than a range of factors has been a problem - saw a teacher in London on here once saying that she can’t get a council property near the school she works at as she has a job, so she pays a fortune in private rent and has a gruelling commute, but the unemployed parents of the kids she teaches get housed locally as their need is greater than hers - I’d never really thought about that before, the fact she was working had gone against her. We need to allocate council housing to low paid and essential workers again.

That statement makes no sense. Croydon is 87 square kilometres large and spans a diverse area. It hosts one of London's largest nature reserves, for example, as well as diverse residential areas across the more affluent Crystal Palace, Coulsdon and Purley areas to traditionally working class areas such as Selhurst and more diverse areas such as Croydon centre and Thornton Heath. There's no way you lived in all of it, or probably visited all of it.

Well said! I was feeling sympathetic towards the OP until I read that last part.

I'm a big disagreer on this one. What I see these days us people aren't happy with the "starter" option. They want the 5 bed + media room, 5 acre block as their first home. On top of that they deserve to holiday multiple times per year and travel overseas regularly as, you know, life is about experiences and all that.

If sights were adjusted to more realistic goals, things may be more achievable.

People have always needed multiple incomes / jobs to get where they want to be. It has never fallen on their plates.

Maybe ask yourself why some of these people without parental support are able to do what you want to do. What are they doing differently to you? Where are their priorities different to yours.

It all comes down to choices. You can choose to holiday or you can choose to use that money for something else.