While I sympathise with Gen Y and their difficulty in accessing affordable housing, the issue is much broader and deeper. It is a social and cultural problem that is creating a greater divide between the generations. Each generation has its advantages and challenges.
Baby boomers didn’t intend to lock young people out of home ownership. To claim that all baby boomers are wealthy is a generalised statement and a stereotype. Parents generally want the best for the next generation. To see their children locked out of home ownership is not a position they envisaged for the future. While millennials have been called by some the ‘self-entitled’ generation, I feel that baby boomers are in part responsible for that attitude.
Technology also plays a significant role in this belief. Everything is instant for this generation. Perhaps this leads to a misguided belief that they are generally entitled to have what the majority of their parents had – a place of their own to call home.
However the housing situation is not what it was when baby boomers were buying their home. The increase in population means that the dream of a quarter acre block is not realistic. Reassessing what design a home now consists of is essential in paving the way for young people’s ability to acquire home ownership.
An increasing number of investors in the property market has come at young people’s expensive. Rather than housing being seen as a societal human right from which life can flourish from, it is now a tragic game of Russian roulette loaded in favour of investors.
Having a secure base from which to participate in society benefits the individual and community. The quality of life, physical and mental health and well-being are founded in the access to adequate housing. Gen Y has the same rights to access affordable housing as did baby boomers.
Disadvantage determines who benefits and who does not. Inequity will always be around: it’s the degree of the inequity and how many it affects that determines how a society will and is judged. Many baby boomers, particularly women, are not wealthy and experience poverty. They are often at risk of homelessness and face a bleak future. Disruptive life events occur and not all baby boomers are financially equipped to manage job loss, acquiring an illness or disability, financial inequity or generational gender inequity. The situation is now at crisis point for many of these women – if it is not addressed now, what does the future hold?
Playing the blame game and projecting untrue attitudes and beliefs divides the generations and is unhelpful and doesn’t benefit anyone. We can work together so that everybody’s needs are met by lobbying policy makers to ensure a sustainable future for all generations.
Penny Leemius is an advocate for Older Women Lost and a Woman Of Spirit award winner.
