Don’t blame oldies like me if you can’t buy property

Michael Gove, the Housing Secretary, is very worried that young people who can’t afford to get on the property ladder will lose their faith in democracy unless something is done to help them.

Not that young people are renowned for their enthusiasm for the democratic process, it’s oldies like me who vote.

But it appears we are the villains of the current housing crisis. Our generation bought our houses when mortgages were affordable and property was comparatively cheap.

So the current shortage, with so many young people having to bunk down in their parents’ spare room, is basically our fault.

We are too mean to pay stamp duty. We have too much clutter to fit anywhere smaller. We little old people are rattling around in huge family homes because we’re too selfish to move. What a load of ageist rubbish that is. For years we oldies have been falsely accused of “bed- blocking” because older people stay put in hospital beds even when they are well enough to be discharged.

In fact, that is because their homes are too unsafe to let them go back. Now we’re accused of “house-blocking” when the truth is that millions of older people would love to move to smaller, safer homes, if there were any.

But there aren’t. Or not enough. We are terribly bad in this country at creating attractive retirement homes, the way they do in America and Australia.

It’s not a new problem. Back in 2017, the think tank Demos reported a couple of surveys which showed that millions of older people would like to downsize if only they could find smaller, safer homes.

The report estimates that “between a third and a quarter of older people in Britain are interested in downsizing generally, and a quarter are interested in retirement housing specifically – this equates to at least 2.95m people aged over 65. Yet there are only 720,000 of such properties in England and Wales”.

That was in 2017. There are even more older people today as the population ages, with what one Government minister charmingly called “the graph of doom”. That’s us.

So it’s in everyone’s interest to build nice, safe, comfortable homes for us, ones that are cheaper and easier to manage.

I’m not pretending for a moment that downsizing is easy. When I downsized a few years ago, a professional declutterer hired by my anxious children opened a cupboard and said: “Esther, why have you got 250 vases?” To which I replied: “You can never have enough vases.” Between us we got it down to six, but they started breeding again in my new flat, and I suppose I’ve got about 20 vases now.

Actually, in pursuit of journalistic accuracy I’ve just counted them, and I have 52. Which is handy, one for each week. I just hope I never have to downsize again.

So, Michael Gove, I agree that our young people must be looked after properly, but so must the old.

First-time buyers are important, but so are last- time buyers. Instead of blaming us, helping us to downsize and stay comfortable and safe would save the NHS a fortune, and free up our old family homes for new families to enjoy.

And would anyone like a vase?