When we talk about the rental crisis, we tend to focus on the plight of younger generations, forced back into parental homes or languishing in house shares.
But, despite tension between the generations, we shouldn’t assume that baby boomers are a homogenous group of mortgage-free homeowners (and buy-to-let landlords) either.
In fact, Hamptons analysis of the English Housing Survey shows the number of private tenants aged 65 or over is set to double to over one million households within a decade.
This is the start of what Hamptons call the “gradual unwinding of the large increase in home ownership rates after the Second World War”.
In common with all tenants, retirement age renters live at the whims of their landlord in insecure homes and with rent rises always a looming threat. If they do have to move, they face the same crushing competition for a home as the rest of us.
Younger tenants can at least hope for better pay to cushion the blow of rent rises and they might still hope to escape renting altogether, if they find a partner or move to a different region.
Older renters are unlikely to have the same flexibility and will either be forced to work well past retirement age or somehow cushion rent rises (up 12.9 per cent this year in London) from their pensions.
As it currently operates, the rental market is storing up disasters for tenants from cradle to grave. Attempts at reform are halting – we must make it urgent and concrete.
