Just been reading about convict transportation to West Africa in the late 18th century: this was between transportation to America and New South Wales. Your plight seems pathetic in comparison. Even my own housing in the eighties ( I spent months living under trees after years in a ripped up tent) is luxury in comparison to your fate.

Yes now I'm 50 living in a mansion, 6 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, huge living rooms ( could easily house 25 people) and a 18 car garage (could easily fit in another 18 stone head journalists) on five acres with 19 sheep and two goats and 9 chickens. So what?

You can come and stay with me if you want .. it'll be a long commute though and you'll have to block your door at night especially when I'm feeling randy.

@ Martin L - By your own admission, you haven't "made it", the taxpayer has given it to you. You may deserve it, but given the standard of public administration in this country, and the lack of transparency and accountability, you probably don't. Thanks for wasting the past twenty years of my taxes dolt!

Laurie I'm SO enjoying your writing, thank you!

Wondering if you've looked into housing co-operatives?

Check Diggers and Dreamers http://www.diggersanddreamers.org.uk/

Also maybe speak to the Squatter's Advisory Service http://www.squatter.org.uk/

Best of luck!

Renting out part of a property is simple, when done right. Go through a reputable letting agency, for a one-off charge, and let them handle the vetting of prospective clients, bank references mainly and also from their employer etc., and threaten to sue them if they get it wrong. Then meet them to see they are on the same wavelength as you. And if things do go suddenly 'wrong', don't mess about, phone the rozzers to throw them out, and let them be given an official warning by the plod for not buying bog paper.

The middle class people with big properties are also the people who try (and are often successful) to stop the building of the much needed new homes by their campaigns against all new housing developments.

Pennie
'I'll probably be okay eventually; with my expensive education and nice writing job''

Probably.
and
'This prospect is supposed to make me want to work harder, complain less and polish my CV to parade gloss so that I can be one of the lucky ones''

It's called 'working'. You'll get used to it.

Ooops sorry, I meant Laurie!

Just to add, I absolutely agree that housing prices are outrageous in both the ownership and rental sectors and make it near impossible for young people - especially in London to find decent accomodation.

Me? Having bheen self employed for ten years I lost everyting when the work dried up and subsequent divorce. I now live in a crummy bedsit. I'm not ashamed. That's life. I got off my arse and got a job and started again.
I appreciate that some people may not be able to do that and have to be protected. While I think that nis the thrust of your article I think it is obscured by a tinge of self pity.

Why don't you go and stay in you Dad's evidently cavernous flat for a while?

A commitment to liberty, no less than to equality, requires taking as many goods and services as possible out of the market -- that is, 'decommodifying' -- in order to free ourselves from its coercive power.

After the current economic crisis, we have to take the full measure of the constraints and compulsions imposed by the market.

Our moral indignation directed at the personal flaws of CEOs and bankers has deflected our attention from how the system works and exactly what it is that has caused the crisis.

Hi Laurie. Just wanted to say it's great to see someone writing about the politics of the housing market. It's all too rare.

Please ignore those who are arguing that you're wrong to base your politics on your experiences of inadequate and insecure housing. You're far from alone. My experiences of homelessness have been an invaluable basis for my career in housing.

Unfortunately the kind of market regulation you're proposing is even more unlikely now. What's happening instead is a backdoor redistribution of the urban poor via the Housing Benefit changes, which we've talked about before. If these changes pass as proposed, huge numbers of benefit claimants will be forced out of London. this will disporortionately affect the young, because HB is the main source of state support for young people as they deal with the low wages and unpaid internships that mark the first 5 or so years of employment in urban areas. There's definitely mileage in this for you, I think. x

Penny, it sounds like you want to be dispossessed from society because it suits your ideological stance. You desperately try to ally yourself to minority groups but actually you are not the voice of the minority. (Well, I suppose you did go to Oxbridge and only a very small minority do that...)
You may be highlighting issues that are interesting and important but it's hard to swallow because of the fundamental hypocrisy of 'choosing' to be in a certain position, when what most people genuinely struggling lack first and foremost is the luxury of choice.

Meaningless post Andrew, was George Orwell irrelevant because he went to Eton?

At last someone has noticed the elephant in the room.

The media obsession with house prices, rather than housing people has alot to answer for.

Laurie, its not just the young, its everybody working on median and below wages.

I sympathise about Turnpike Lane - a dreadful area made worse by small time Rachman style Landlords. I just left a terraced house that at its peak held 15 souls! A three bedroom three storey slum for which we were all charged an exhorbitant rent.

You write very well

First: great article. It actually reminds me of Orwell's essays, which i think was called "How The Poor Die" and was about hospitals in the '20s, in the way it opens with that kind of right-infront-of -your-nose observation that wakes you up a bit.

Two other things:

The coalition is, i think, building extra social housing. David Laws announced spending would be allocated for it when he first spoke in the Commons as Chief Secretary, and pointed this out to Dennis Skinner when Skinner got up to rant at him. I'm not suggesting it'll be enough money, and i totally agree with the sentiments of this article, but i just thought i'd point that out.

Other thing: i think the problem of housing illustrates nicely G.A. Cohen's idea of collective unfreedom, i.e. that it's not enough to have a society where everyone has the opportunity to escape misery, poverty and bad living conditions, because the freedom one has to escape that is effectively conditional on not everyone else who is in a similar position exercising that same freedom too. Cohen uses the analogy of 10 people in a room, where as soon as 1 exits, the rest are locked in. As long as no-one leaves, they're all free to leave, etc. etc.

Anyone who wants to read the paper in which he sets the idea out can do so here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?9r58wdyd8ojbkmy

Sorry, should read "reminds me of one of Orwell's essays"

@ieatdolphins

LOL, little man.

Des Demona

Patronising much?

Martin L

Anecdotes count for nothing. Just because some poor people manage to improve their situation doesn't mean that anyone and everyone can. And do you think that the thousands of hardworking people who can't afford your style of acommodation don't have a claim to have EARNED IT either? Just because you have something, doesn't mean you deserve it, and just because you don't have something, doesn't mean you don't deserve it.

"Actually, I DO think that people with spare bedrooms and empty properties should open them up to lodgers."

Not saying you're wrong...but we'll remember that when you have your des res. Will you?

EhtchTee - it's changed a bit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHne9wsjPrs&feature=fvw

Laurie, ignore inverted snobs such as Des Demona and Mad for it. Most of us just thank God that the New Statesman has found a voice, albeit somewhat posh and advantaged, for the dispossessed young.

We do not have a democracy: we are lead by a priviliged elite - for a privileged elite. Once people get that firmly in their heads, we may at last begin to create somthing we would be proud to call home in this beautiful country of ours. Perhaps we could start by removing the statues of the great and the good from Westminster or even abandoning the Palace, a victorian gothic monstrosity, as the seat of government. The next step would be the creation of a people's party to replace an adversarial system of government that yields only uniform neoliberalism and greed.

I bought my 5-bed London house in 1983 for £52K at a time when I could comfortably afford the mortgage. In its somewhat improved form, tt is now worth nearly £800K, and without very considerable parental help very, very few people in their twenties or thirties could could afford it. Surely this situation is intolerable. In any case, without decent homes for the young, our society is on a path of self-destruction

Is it too few houses, or too many people? In 1903 just over 100 years ago the UK population was 32 million, including Ireland. My late father was born that year, son of a docker. He always said, that the law of diminishing returns applies to happines.We are a very small island, only able to home feed 55% of it's population, in a world where 1000 million humans go to bed hungry every night. THERE ARE JUST TOO MANY OF US!

The Housing Problem discussed here can be summed up in one word 'privatisation.'

The free market is incapable of meeting housing demand in either numbers of homes or in quality. If anyone thinks otherwise they are ignoring the evidence of the past 30 years.

There is only one answer to the shortage of good quality affordable homes - build more council houses.

The lack of affordable housing especially in the SE is a time bomb ticking away. As has been said by many our ruling elite aren't interested because they are well housed - often many times over.

The issue of rural housing adds to the mix - who lives in the countryside? Old white rich people for the most part. Who owns almost 70% of the land in the country - 0.5% of the population.

Working class areas in inner cities are becoming higher and higher density housing areas why? so the affluent areas can enjoy there big homes with big gardens in green areas.

Any talk of social cohesion in these circumstances is tosh.

I'm pleased to see the housing issue raised but I like others feel a little disappointed it only becomes news when it comes from one of the ruling elite.

Morbo, my house is not 'worth' anything in particular, of course, but its market price (a totally different thing from 'worth') is abour £800 - I know because I am in the process of selling it to release money for my adult kids who are still living at home, in London, in their late twenties and early thirties but still in debt following years of education and training.

I don't particularly like the term 'inverted snob' either, but, for want of a better expression, it slips out sometimes . I do think those who make comments such as Des Demona made ("Its called working. You'll get used to it") are being, at the least, ungracious

I think this is this best article I've read in a while. Housing is in fact more important than welfare, health care, and education, since all of those things are virtually inaccessible to the homeless, and of ever-diminishing value to the geographically marginalised or the permanently boxed-in. As I recall it, a left-leaning journalist interviewing Margaret Thatcher once opined that, in theory, the size of the house one grows up in should not effect equality of opportunity; she berated him for his naivete and asserted that "it makes all the difference in the world". She was right! A few dozen feet squared of personal living space opens up galaxies of outlook, opportunity, and expectancy. Before even beginning to talk about banks, schools, hospitals, or playgrounds, anybody with an interest in social justice should seriously consider the ways in which private urban space is split up among the populace.