Housing crisis creates 'jilted generation'

By Rowena Mason

A "jilted generation" of children born since the turn of the century will have to live with their parents for longer, and will struggle to afford their own homes, a report has warned. 

Experts from the National Housing Federation (NHF) believe that almost four million adults will not have moved out of their parents' homes by 2020, as property prices and rents will be increasingly unaffordable. 

The group said the UK is facing a worsening housing crisis that will be solved only if Britain builds more homes to accommodate its growing population. 

It said George Osborne's measures to boost the property market by offering cheap loans to buyers were simply a "sticking plaster". 

The Chancellor's Help to Buy scheme could simply create another house–price bubble unless more was done to increase the supply of new homes, the NHF said. 

The report said the current "jilted generation" struggling to afford their own homes were born in the Eighties. 

However, it warned of a second such generation, born between 2001 and 2011, that will add to the country's problems. 

The shortage of affordable housing will mean 3.7million young people living with their parents in 2020, an increase of 700,000, it said. 

"Young people are stuck in a vicious cycle: because we aren't building enough homes, house prices continue to rise," the report added. 

Mark Prisk, the housing minister, said the NHF report did not "take proper account of the range of measures we've put in place to create a bigger and better private rented sector". - money@telegraph.co.uk