“House-hoarder”? Careful, that’s my granny

This was not a good week to be old. The Intergenerational Foundation launched a report in the House of Commons declaring that people in their sixties whose children have left home are “house –hoarding” and should be made to “downsize” into something more appropriate for their age.

This has troubled me all week for a number of reasons. Putting aside the impractical, if not outrageous, assertion that the Government should be able to prescribe how people live in their homes, the strong whiff of intergenerational  envy is  worrying.

There is no doubt that we have an acute housing crisis in the UK. This has been caused by a number of factors including the failure over many years to build enough housing, especially affordable homes.  Rocketing house prices  have made it very difficult for our young people to get on the housing ladder.

At the same time, we have a care crisis building. Strapped councils are no longer going to be able to offer care for all our older people once their assets are spent, the ones the Intergenerational Foundation think should be downsizing.

So before we encourage older people to sell the large family home, is it not worth looking at the bigger intergenerational picture?   

Those large, supposedly half empty, family homes are often now refuges for adult children trying to save up for their own homes (and sometimes the collateral for such homes)  or places where the grandchildren are looked after whilst their parents work to pay mortgages.

Other families are contemplating moving in together to share the care of the children and the elderly.  Instant annexes such as iHus can now be installed to add separate accommodation in the usually larger gardens of the old family house.

Schemes such as Homeshare Eden encourage older people to rent out spare bedrooms to cash-strapped students who can provide them with companionship and some help around the home in return for a reduced rent.

These “house- hoarding” baby boomers are our friends, our parents and our grandparents – who may need our care. If we are to tackle the housing (and care) crisis, we should look for real intergenerational solutions – not one generation evicting another.