Should Elderly People Give Up Their Homes?

[Rob McCow]

There are thousands of people living in houses that are too big for them, right across the country. There is also a housing crisis, for whatever reason.

It seems logical that these people should give up their big homes, where perhaps they've lived their whole lives, so that the younger generation should move in. Or does it?

From The Independent:

There is, indeed, much that is important in this housing dilemma. It is true that many old people occupy larger houses than they need. Their children have grown up and left, the garden is hard to keep tidy, the stairs are beginning to be a problem. Every older person knows this, and realises that as the years go by that these matters will have to be faced. Will they downsize to smaller accommodation or move directly to the care home which is the destiny waiting for most of us? It is a sad thought and one we prefer not to face. Yet at the same time the country has an acute housing shortage and young people can't afford to buy. Lack of foresight and planning, the woeful shortage of social housing have all created the crisis. But there's spare capacity in abundance. Half of all bedrooms in homes are unoccupied, the Intergenerational Foundation reports. And so, they conclude (recommending a change in stamp duty to engineer it) why not simply rearrange the housing stock?

That may seem logical. But the human spirit isn't logical. It is a sensitive matter to give up the home where you've lived perhaps for decades, where your children have grown up, where rooms once stuffed with toys and noise are now vacant and silent. When we move out we are giving up more than a space, we are giving up memories, a sense of our own identity. The mind grows frail and needs the familiarity of things to steady our spirit. Over the years we have gathered loads of stuff – furniture, books, knick-knacks – we don't want to be rid of. We are losing our fitness, our mobility, even many of our friends. Clinging to the home we know is one way of feeling safe in a harsh world.

The Guardian:

At last we have someone new to blame for our social woes. It is not the greedy bankers or the politicians who are making our lives a misery – it is those awful wrinklies. While working families sleep six to a room, oldsters are living it up in their mansions. Or so The Intergenerational Foundation's look at the housing crisis implies.

Having spare bedrooms, previously a blameless result of children leaving home, is rebranded in the report as "hoarding" living space. And the foundation's co-founder Angus Hanton proclaims: "The divide between the housing 'haves' and 'have nots' has moved from being one dominated by wealth or class to one dominated by age."

Magnanimously, the IF does not "blame" older people for clinging to these homes when younger families need them, but just asks them to think about the "profound social consequences of their actions". In other words, it is not angry, just disappointed. And suggests dropping stamp duty to encourage older people to move.

The full report is here: http://www.if.org.uk/wp-content/uplo...port_19oct.pdf

So is this actually a much-needed way to release housing space? Or is it forcing the older generation into a trap?

[SiHart]

On the one hand, yes I can see that downsizing would be a good thing, so that the people who need bigger housing would have the chance to get what they need.

On the other hand, what a horrible wrench. Especially if it's forced on you. I don't see how they're going to make it happen. It's hardly "hoarding" if it's the place you've lived all your life, brought up your family and all that.

Perhaps we need to try and stop the sentimental attachment to bricks and mortar?

[Nyder]

Maybe rather than enforcements, financial incentives could be the way forward......

[Dino]

I'm saying no. Because while there probably are massive homes only occupied by one elderly person, this policy will be stretched out to housing estates.
When did this country get so... not so much right-wing, but I can't even swear as younger PS people can read this forum.
The biggest problem is thinking you can reason with a government nobody voted for. That's what really gets me. They didn't win enough seats. They've got no authority to do this. I'm in Gerry Adams circa 1990's land. I refuse to accept them as a legitimate government.
Imagine the things they'd try and get away with if they got a second term?

[Jon Masters]

Maybe instead of the elderly we could start with all the hereditary peers who often live in houses with tens of bedrooms, if not on estates with multiple homes and enough land to build plenty more.

Or those who can afford to live abroad for 6 months of the year for tax reasons, presumably leaving a perfectly good house empty in the UK.

Or those rich enough to own two or three extra holiday homes so they can enjoy the season at Henley and Wimbledon as well as get away to the country.

Can't think why a Tory government might be loathe to have a word with some of these people........

[Stuart Wallis]

And where would they put all the old people? hm? In residential care, so that they could burn up their kids' inheritance? or force them to live with their children, who are struggling to bring up the grandchildren with the economy the way it is? The other alternative is to build wardened shelters, such as the one my uncle Roy's in, but that's a halfway house between the residential home option, and building more housing anyway, which puts us back in square one.

Why am I reminded of Roger McGough's poem Conservative Government Unemployment Figures:

Conservative Government.
Unemployment.
Figures...