Surprise, surprise, there’s even more bad news for British millennials. And yep, you guessed it – we’re talking housing.
We’ve been labelled Generation Rent and learnt that it’ll take us 24 years to save for a deposit to buy a house. And as the housing crisis rumbles on and prospects continue to feel dreary, a new report reveals that before millennials hit the age of 30, £53,000 will have come out of each of our pockets to keep a rented roof over our heads.
As young people continue to struggle in the face of soaring rent prices and waning numbers of actual homeowners (they do exist, somewhere), a report by the thinktank Resolution Foundation shows just how drastic the economic contrast has become between generations.
They found that the baby boomer generation - people born between 1946 and 1965 - would typically have paid £9000 (in today’s money) on rent by the time they reached their 30th birthdays.
That’s a whole £44,000 less than what millennials are expected to spend in the coming years which, quite naturally, is pretty fucking difficult to get your head around.
Laura Gardiner, senior policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation, told the Guardian: 'The nation’s housing crisis is perhaps the most visible example of growing inequality between generations. Young people today are paying a heavy price for decades of falling homeownership.'
You can be forgiven for wanting to crawl under a rock, call it home and never return to the real world. Because trying to make it as a bona fide adult as a millennial in today’s economic climate, feels really unattainable.
The report brought together findings from an 18-month investigation into intergenerational fairness, and depressingly found that as time has gone on, not only have younger generations been spending more on rent, but baby boomers are the ones benefiting from the rental market as the most likely generation to be landlords.
So where’s the light at the end of the tunnel, you ask? Honestly, it feels a long way off. For far too long prices have been rising while not enough houses have been built, and quite simply we need those two factors to make significant U-turns as it’ll only get more and more difficult for young people to afford their own homes.
Gardiner added: 'Britain’s continuing failure to build enough homes means that, unless we change course, the struggle of young people to own their home is only going to get worse.
'The good news is that older generations are just as concerned about young people’s struggle to own their home, and support for housebuilding is growing across all age groups.'
Let’s hope that support quickly turns into action. 24 years saving for a deposit while spending £53,000 on rent aren’t realities any of us should be facing.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.