STUDENT SHOUT: The broken housing market must be fixed

Tom Bonnett says the housing market makes is broken

A report from the Resolution Foundation released last month stated that one in three UK millennials will never own a home.

As a 19-year-old venturing into the adult world, I’m sure you can agree that may come as quite daunting.

The report also stated that the number of children growing up in privately rented households has tripled from 600,000 in 2003 to 1.8 million in 2016, and it continues to rise.

Our generation have been born into a time of prosperity, a time where the same amount of technology in my iPhone landed Neil Armstrong on the moon.

Yet I may not ever own a home. The housing market is out of control and has gone too far to be fixed. Where have we heard that before?

Official figures showed that, in 2016, no less than 292,000 people moved out of London because of the extortionate housing market in our capital.

This is not right, nor is it logical for our capital city to be uninhabitable because of the cost.

Landlords, of course, strongly oppose any talk of rent controls.

They know that they have the power right now, and they know that the demand for accomodation is so high that they can continue to increase the cost of renting at an alarming rate.

They also know that rent controls would worsen the situation because landlords would only take on the tenants with the most money, while lower-income families will be turned away.

For millenials such as myself, the future of the housing market looks bleak, and it is only going to get worse.

It is not right that people who live and work in the UK their entire lives may never be in a financial position to purchase a property and climb onto the ladder.

It’s time to pack up our belongings and move out of this housing market for good.