The UK’s dysfunctional housing market – or more accurately, markets – is a problem affecting people of all ages. But the plight of millennials, born between the early 1980s and mid-1990s, deserves special attention. These people, now in their 20s and 30s, are far less likely than previous cohorts to be able to access a socially rented home or afford to buy one – particularly in London, Edinburgh, Oxford or any of the country’s other hotspots. Those who went to university, particularly since 2010 when tuition fees rose to £9,000 annually, have large debts. This week a parliamentary report said a chronic lack of affordable housing means that 630,000 of them are on course for an old age of homelessness.
How to turn this situation around and enable millennials to achieve a good standard of living – including secure housing tenure and the freedom this brings – is a question that should exercise not just policymakers but voters. A good society should strive for intergenerational fairness as a matter of principle, but also because we depend on younger people to look after us when we grow old. For this arrangement to break down, because earlier generations have failed to share opportunities and resources with those coming up behind them, would be deeply harmful.
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