Renting in your 40's and staring into the abyss

ruggedtoast

Fiona Elsted is one of the millions of people in the UK forced to turn to the private rental sector for housing. Like most renters she has been evicted by mendacious, money grabbing landlords. Her and her family have suffered from cold, damp and inadequate living spaces that cost so much in rent she is unable to save for a deposit for a mortgage.

Like many of her renting peers Fiona has a middle class, educated job and was raised to expect the rising tide of prosperity that the boomer generation before her enjoyed. In common with them she found that the much vaunted housing ladder had been pulled up before she placed her foot on the first rung.

Unlike many of them, Fiona Elsted is in her mid 40s. A university lecturer, mother, renter and prolific housing activist Elsted has brick bats for landlords and inter generational rentier profiteers. Ed Milliband was a ray of hope in the abyss, now snuffed out by the rampant neoliberalism of the Tories.


Fiona Elsted

Interviewed by The Guardian she recounts how when using The British Class Generator:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22000973

She was demoted from 'established middle class' to 'emergent service worker'. Simply for revealing she was a renter.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/may/10/generation-rent-whos-listening-private-rental-market-ed-miliband


A renter according to the BBC

More revealing still, Elsted presented a guest post on popular Internet forum, Mumsnet where, lied to by landlords and unable to keep her children in one school for more than five minutes, she laid bare her renting frustrations. She received a slew of messages in support.

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/guest_posts/2048736-Guest-post-I-know-Ill-never-own-my-home-but-does-renting-have-to-be-so-tough-on-families

Issues with my property that depress and embarrass me, I put up with because to move my children based on superficialities or inconvenience would be selfish. However, when things go wrong and a new property is required, the practical and emotional impact can be enormous and repeated.

Elsted continues to update her blog which cuts to the bone of the housing crisis. Millions of people are renting with no chance of ever owning. This ticking demographic timebomb is mooted to explode in 30 years when an army of retirees without equity to unlock, will be pushed onto the state. Bereft of the Golden Years of the boomers before them.

https://fielsted.wordpress.com/category/privately-renting-with-children/

Actually I think you may find that where the under 40s appear to have little hope, we over that age have a great deal less. Even if I am somehow given the opportunity to buy within my finances, convincing a bank to give me a mortgage could be tricky. I have an expensive family eating into my disposable income, fewer years left to work, statistically a higher probability of getting ill and let’s face it, I’m closer to dying. My earning power might be set to go down rather than up; many of us at this age are in the maintenance stage of our careers where we are just holding on to what we’ve got, not necessarily looking to promotion. Aging, amongst other things, conspiring to make homeowning an impossibility for me.

Elsted is a victim of successive government policy which for decades has been positioned to transfer wealth from the state, to private hands, and now from the poorest to the wealthiest.

Excluding artificial hotspots like Hong Kong and Dubai, British property is among the most unaffordable in the world. Simply because of government appeasement of Middle England house price obsessed NIMBYs who veto any and every new development. And it's only going to get worse.


A home for more than six months where they can own a hamster and hang a picture is all millions long for, and will never have.

System

The test is a nonsense.
I put my modest status in and it said I was elite. Fair enough, if merely owning a house is sufficient for that.

But then I pretended I was a billionaire oil sheik, renting a suite at the Dorchester. I don't visit stately homes - I own one. I obviously don't live in the ghastly pile, I lease it to an expensive boarding school.
I only know chief executives, heads of state, accountants, etc.
I go to opera - well, I feel obliged to, as I largely fund the opera company.
The highest savings bracket the quiz allows is £100,000. I carry that in my pocket for shopping trips.

So what is my class? Precariat, the lowest social category possible, because I rent my pad.

mayonnaise

But Crashy Time told us time and time again that renting in your 40's is the best thing since sliced bread? :huh:

Sapphire

I agree that property in London is ridiculously expensive. It's absurd that a situation has been allowed to develop where property is considered to be something to be traded by foreign buyers, who buy it up like sweets. I also think the situation is contributing to the destruction of our capital city, through the throwing up of utterly vile huge buildings filled with so-called 'luxury apartments' meant for buying by foreign investors, who then sit on them and don't even let them out. The oft-repeated phrase 'we are building more homes' now fills me with trepidation, since most of it appears to result in such investment property, not 'homes'. The focus by the government on property as a source of wealth is also very foolish, in my view, since it takes away focus on other parts of the economy that should be developed to create a well-balanced situation for the future.

I wish property was regarded in the same way in this country as it is in Germany and other parts of mainland Europe, and that the population hadn't been brainwashed into thinking that property owning was the main thing you should aim for in life. Such an attitude has created problems for our society. Certainly, it is quite a recent idea, since people used to rent quite happily here until quite recently.

I don't however, correlate this situation with your phrase 'Bereft of the Golden Years of the boomers before them' (or with 'NIMBY's' for that matter). It's to do with your pathological obsession with a generation that you obviously hate, despite everything others have patiently tried to explain to you. Your despised 'boomer' generation did not have it as easy as you always imply – and it appears to me that the generation after that has 'benefitted' perhaps even more from property price rises (e.g. BTL).

HappyMJ

I'm a mendacious landlord. Never heard that one before.

I know I'm money grabbing. Each month the tenant sends me money I grab that pay the interest only mortgage payment and some other expenses and pocket the change...all £50 of it....oh but I'm mendacious so you can't believe a word of that. I must pocket the lot and buy cars (I don't own one) and go on expensive foreign holidays (I go on day trips as it's all I can afford).

michaels

In our town there aren't that many family homes for rent, but you would always be able to find one in the same town and thus your kids could stay at the same school. Where is it that you have to rent so far away if you have to move that you need to send your kids to a different school?

Thrugelmir

Fiona Elsted is one of the millions of people in the UK forced to turn to the private rental sector for housing. Like most renters she has been evicted by mendacious, money grabbing landlords.

Read this far and switched off.

CLAPTON

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Fiona Elsted is one of the millions of people in the UK forced to turn to the private rental sector for housing. Like most renters she has been evicted by mendacious, money grabbing landlords. Her and her family have suffered from cold, damp and inadequate living spaces that cost so much in rent she is unable to save for a deposit for a mortgage.

Like many of her renting peers Fiona has a middle class, educated job and was raised to expect the rising tide of prosperity that the boomer generation before her enjoyed. In common with them she found that the much vaunted housing ladder had been pulled up before she placed her foot on the first rung.

Unlike many of them, Fiona Elsted is in her mid 40s. A university lecturer, mother, renter and prolific housing activist Elsted has brick bats for landlords and inter generational rentier profiteers. Ed Milliband was a ray of hope in the abyss, now snuffed out by the rampant neoliberalism of the Tories.


Fiona Elsted

Interviewed by The Guardian she recounts how when using The British Class Generator:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22000973

She was demoted from 'established middle class' to 'emergent service worker'. Simply for revealing she was a renter.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/may/10/generation-rent-whos-listening-private-rental-market-ed-miliband


A renter according to the BBC

More revealing still, Elsted presented a guest post on popular Internet forum, Mumsnet where, lied to by landlords and unable to keep her children in one school for more than five minutes, she laid bare her renting frustrations. She received a slew of messages in support.

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/guest_posts/2048736-Guest-post-I-know-Ill-never-own-my-home-but-does-renting-have-to-be-so-tough-on-families



Elsted continues to update her blog which cuts to the bone of the housing crisis. Millions of people are renting with no chance of ever owning. This ticking demographic timebomb is mooted to explode in 30 years when an army of retirees without equity to unlock, will be pushed onto the state. Bereft of the Golden Years of the boomers before them.

https://fielsted.wordpress.com/category/privately-renting-with-children/



Elsted is a victim of successive government policy which for decades has been positioned to transfer wealth from the state, to private hands, and now from the poorest to the wealthiest.

Excluding artificial hotspots like Hong Kong and Dubai, British property is among the most unaffordable in the world. Simply because of government appeasement of Middle England house price obsessed NIMBYs who veto any and every new development. And it's only going to get worse.


A home for more than six months where they can own a hamster and hang a picture is all millions long for, and will never have.

Fiona, being a uni lectrure and a guardian reader is probably a massive supporter of the EU and rejoices in the fact of 500,000 immigrants each year.
She just loves the cultural diversity they bring and she loves the green belt.
However, being innumerate and economically illiterate she doesn't understand how supply and demand affect the price of houses.

lisyloo

I'm in my mid-40's with an unspectacular career
For the last 25 years, I've bought a house and built a pension pot.
What has Fiona been doing for the past 25 years?

mayonnaise

lisyloo wrote: »

What has Fiona been doing for the past 25 years?

From her blog:

About Me

I spend a lot of time writing and talking about things I feel are unjust.

wotsthat

lisyloo wrote: »

I'm in my mid-40's with an unspectacular career
For the last 25 years, I've bought a house and built a pension pot.
What has Fiona been doing for the past 25 years?

I guess she just had other priorities.

It amazing how these things get written under the guise of 'human interest' when they don't actually cover the interesting bit which is how she arrived here.