Tensions rise between family members, because of infantilised boomeranging young adults moping in their childhood bedrooms or because parents resent the expectation to pay for their child to get on the ladder or to support them as they save when they. It even causes problems between friends, with those with lower-paying jobs, less wealthy or less generous parents envying pals with better luck.
The problem has been allowed to get so big it’s hard to see how it can meaningfully tackled. But even though I can’t imagine how that will happen, I’m certain it will be because the people directly affected are coming to an age where they will start voting en masse and they will not tolerate any more fudges. No more fobbing renters off with shared ownership or forcing people to buy overpriced new build homes.
To tackle it, it needs to be acknowledged that it’s not a problem of just sky-high house prices anymore. It’s also about how much money is being taken out of young people’s pay packets stopping them from saving. If you take into account student loans, graduates earning just over £26,000 are seeing 40 p out of every £1 taken up by repayments and tax.
That is the same rate of tax that high flying lawyers and bankers pay. Meanwhile rent has never been more expensive and has gone up by 20 per cent in one year alone. The answer will involve stopping using younger workers to pay for voting bribes for older retirees and proper housing policies that involve prices going down, which will cause pain for existing home owners.
If politicians continue ducking the issue, it will become the new Brexit as an issue that divides the country and a symbol of intergenerational wealth inequality. Get it right and younger people can look out of buses and start allowing themselves the luxury of thinking they may, one day, own the homes they see.