Why having a spare room is the next battle in the wars between generations

The next battle in the generational culture wars is all about cramped flats versus spare rooms. And it’s all too easy to see why young Brits are getting hacked off, argues Helen Coffey. More in common. That’s often the phrase that gets trotted out amid the various culture wars, whipped up into a frenzy to divide and distract us from what’s really important. From drag queen storytime to whether the National Trust uses marg or butter in its scones, the number of non-issues ripe for inexplicable weaponisation never fails to amaze.

The topics that pit generation against generation can be even sillier – does the length of your socks really signify anything? Does whether or not you send Christmas cards to everyone you’ve ever met, still have a landline, or choose to upload your musings to Facebook or TikTok really define who you are as a person?. But there are some genuine lines in the sand that are hard to ignore, the latest one being space. It’s in short supply – and some demographics are more equal than others when it comes to staking their claim.

According to new data, baby boomer homeowners are enjoying ever more breathing space with bedrooms to spare, while Gen Z are being squeezed into increasingly small and expensive rental properties. And if you’re one of those under 34-year-olds currently grappling with the, at times, completely unhinged rental market in this country? You are likely to be living in increasingly cramped conditions – put aside the number of bedrooms and the total amount of physical floor space is reducing. Nearly one in five properties for rent have less than 50 square metres of floor space, the minimum required by law for two occupants. The percentage of dwellings smaller than this has grown from 15.3 per cent a decade ago to 18.6 per cent today.

But back to space. It can be something of an abstract concept – the kind of thing that you barely notice when you have enough of it, but whose absence is profoundly felt and impossible to ignore. The Covid pandemic shone a light on this discrepancy like nothing else, splitting the population into the haves and the have-nots – a divide less to do with disposable income and more to do with the tolerability of your living situation. Baby boomers safely ensconced in four-bedroom detached houses in the countryside with rambling gardens and acres of green space on the doorstep wondered what the fuss was all about when we entered lockdowns, chastising everyone else to just “keep calm and carry on”. Those of us trapped in one-bedroom flats without so much as a balcony, at the whims of landlords who could up the rent at a moment’s notice, had a markedly different experience.

Beneath all these numbers, percentages and statistics are the real people affected by the big squeeze. I still remember, at the tail-end of restrictions, searching for a room in London after breaking up with my long-term partner. Competition among renters was particularly fierce at a time when many people’s circumstances had changed, with anything half-decent or reasonably priced snapped up within days. The low point came when I was shown a “six-bedroom” flat, sold on the flexibility of its rolling monthly contract (meaning I could leave – and therefore get kicked out – at a moment’s notice. How exciting!). The other catch quickly became apparent: there was no longer a living room, the private landlords having chosen instead to convert this into the sixth bedroom to maximise profits. The only “communal” space left was the kitchen, so small there wasn’t room for a table. The “bedroom” would therefore have to serve as lounge, dining room and office when working from home, all rolled into one minuscule and deeply depressing package.

It was difficult, at the time, not to feel resentment towards the older people I knew who would attend Zoom events from their spacious home office or jump on a call from their sun-dappled gardens, answering emails while getting a tan. “The continued widening of the gulf of housing wealth between generations is deeply concerning,” Toby Whelton, from the Intergenerational Foundation, said of the think tank’s latest analysis. “If these trends of low homeownership continue for younger generations, it will mean that when younger generations reach state pension age, the majority will not enjoy the same security of owning their own home and will be forced into renting into very old age.”.

No, it’s not baby boomers’ fault that they benefited from growing up in a completely different economic landscape. No, pitting old against young does nothing to bring us together as a nation following a turbulent few decades of austerity, Brexit, coronavirus and all the rest. But Britain’s young people have good reason to be mad as hell. We may indeed have “more in common”, but wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where one of the things we all had in common was access to affordable housing?.