With the crisis of capitalism hitting young people the hardest in terms of employment and wages, it is not surprising that new data from Legal & General shows that 25% of all mortgage transactions made this year will only be possible thanks to parental help. The average contribution made by parents towards their child’s house purchase is a massive £17,500, amounting to £5bn a year in total.
This is the product of a housing crisis caused by naked profit-seeking on the part of landowners and developers. While precarious jobs, unemployment and low pay prevail, there is an enormous need for new houses to be built. The only reason good jobs in construction and development are not created, and houses are not built is because the provision of cheap accommodation is not profitable for the capitalist class, particularly in a period of economic crisis and uncertainty.
A huge number of young people do not have parents who can afford to contribute £17,500 towards a house. These people are being condemned to a lifetime of insecurity at the hands of parasitic landlords. A whole generation of young people is being locked out of a future by capitalism.
As pensions are being cut and the threat of privatisation looms over the NHS many parents will soon find themselves in desperate need of whatever savings they have if they are to survive comfortably. Family as a source of revenue will soon be cut off for young people. Capitalism is knocking our generation to the ground and kicking our crutches out from underneath us as we try to get up.
In fact the only way to fight for our future is alongside each other, using mass action like demonstrations and strikes to attack the parasites who are exploiting us and robbing us of job and domestic stability. We need to argue for a massive programme of genuinely affordable house-building. This should be paid for by the largest construction companies and landlords. If they refuse to pay for such a programme then we should carry it out for them, using their vast wealth, on their behalf. They might argue that they have the right to do what they want with all the money they have extracted from exploiting the hard work of everyone else. We argue that the right of the majority of people to live in comfort trumps the right of the 1% to amass vast wealth at our expense.
Ultimately this is a political question of challenging the capitalist system as a whole. If we are going to truly change society we have to organise and fight for socialist policies.
