Mortgage-free baby boomers ‘should not block’ new housing

BABY boomers who have paid off their mortgages should not try to block the construction of new homes for younger generations, Communities Secretary Sajid Javid has said.

The Bromsgrove Conservative MP said the shortage of affordable homes for young people is creating a “rootless generation” who drift between rented properties.

He said: “They don’t want the world handed to them on a plate. They want simple fairness, moral justice, the opportunity to play by the same rules enjoyed by those who came before them.

“Without affordable, secure, safe housing we risk creating a rootless generation, drifting from one shortterm tenancy to the next, never stay- ing long enough to play a role in their community.”

And he said he rejected the resistance to new development which came mostly from “baby boomers who have long since paid off their own mortgage” who claim that housing problems were caused by an “over-entitled” millennial generation spending their cash on “nights out and smashed avocados” rather than saving for a home.

He added that housing targets could be achieved without “ruining vast tracts of beautiful countryside” by concreting over fields.

Last year he sparked outrage in Sutton Coldfield when he backed the city council’s plan to release green belt land for the development of 6,000 homes at Langley.

There was strong local resistance and the town’s Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell hit out at Mr Javid for backing the ‘wholly unnecessary plans’. Mr Javid was speaking as government figures showed 217,350 new homes were added to the English housing stock in 2016/17 – 27,700 up on the previous year.

Charity Shelter, which estimates that 250,000 new homes are needed each year to tackle the crisis, said the numbers fell “woefully short” of what was required and said not even a fifth of new homes are affordable.

The figures came as the government announced housing association debt was being taken off the balance sheet, in an accounting change Mr Javid believes will give a stable investment environment to fund new homes. The Home Builders Federation said the figures showed the industry was well on track to “smash” the target of building a million new homes. There have also been calls for the Chancellor to lift borrowing limits on councils to allow them to build more homes.