Britains in housing crisis:
Britain’s young families pay more to live in smaller homes, further from jobs and with less
security than their parents’ generation, who instead reap profits from the country’s housing shortage, according to a report released Wednesday.
Today’s 30-year-olds spend a record share of their income — almost a quarter — on housing costs, according to the study by British think tank The Resolution Foundation, which analysed more than 50 years of data. The report compared different generations’ experiences of housing and found that a half-century of mounting rents and property prices in Britain has drained the living standards of millennials, while enriching older homeowners.
Those aged between 25 and 34 are half as likely to own their home as their parents
were at the same age, and spend on average six percent more of their income on housing, the report said. “Britain’s housing catastrophe has been 50 years in the making but while its effects are widespread it is millennials who are truly at the sharp end,” said Lindsay Judge, senior policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation. “The big danger today is that young people are having to settle for lower quality, longer commutes and less security in order to afford a place to live, despite spending a record share of their income of housing,” Judge said in a statement.
Britain’s restrictive planning regulations, along with steadily rising demand from new households, foreign investment and years of rampant property speculation, have kept the housing market on a tear for the past two decades.