Britain’s nimby homeowners: do you really want your children living with you for ever?
S ometimes a crisis best reveals itself in the small things. A pile of laundry, that by now you didn’t imagine you would still be doing; the sound of the front door opening in the early hours and adult footsteps creaking up the stairs.
Living with frustrated twentysomething children who should probably have flown the nest long ago, but can’t afford to move out, is increasingly the norm for middle-aged parents. The Office for National Statistics confirmed this week that for the first time the majority of 20- to 24-year-olds in England and Wales are still living under the parental roof, with the number of so-called adult children up 14% in a decade.
Grown adulthood, in the sense of being able to stand on your own two feet, or bringing a date home without having to make awkward introductions to your dad, is taking longer and longer to achieve.
Much as some may secretly enjoy having the kids around a bit longer, there is nothing like coming home in late middle age to a ransacked fridge and a pile of massive trainers in the hall to drive home the fact that home ownership among the under-35s has virtually halved since the 1980s. It’s harder to ignore a housing crisis when its consequences have breakfast with you every morning, yet Britain is failing to build – quite literally – on what should be a source of instinctive sympathy for the young and priced-out.
After years of Tory MPs warning that rural housebuilding was killing support for the Conservative party, last week’s local election drubbing has brought it home to some that notbuilding is killing them too, albeit more slowly. Support for the Tories is at an extinction-level 15% among under-25s and what were once safe seats in Surrey, Kent or Oxfordshire are turning marginal,
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