STRUGGLING UNDER-25s MUST LIVE WITH MUM AND DAD, SAYS NEW GOVERNMENT PROPOSAL
Graduates who are unemployed – or earning wages so low they are unable to afford private sector rents – are to be stripped of their housing benefit, if new proposals are accepted. Struggling under-25s must instead live with their parents, even if that’s in an area where there are few opportunities to develop their career.
Currently there are just over 380,000 housing benefit claimants under 25, including many graduates who are either jobless or doing jobs that are so low-paid they are unable to support themselves.
The proposal came shortly before concerns were raised that a huge number of young people are trapped doing ‘precarious’ low-paid, part-time or casual work because so few employers are offering decent jobs that pay proper wages.
A freedom of information request by the Guardian revealed that more than 2,000 jobs currently being advertised by job centres were for “zero hour” or “as and when” contracts, which readers of Graduate Fog have been complaining about for some time. These are jobs – often in the retail sector – which offer no regular or guaranteed hours, but which often require employees to be available at short notice any day of the week, and at virtually any time, effectively ruling out other part-time work due to their irregular hours.
In response to this news, Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC, called for the government to stop pretending the youth unemployment crisis was under control make it a priority to help with the creation of “proper jobs paying decent wages.”
The idea for cutting housing benefit for young people was floated by Number 10 earlier last week but is yet to be developed into a concrete proposal. It was announced just before a speech on Thursday in which David Cameron praised recent changes to the benefits system as “the most radical, long-term reform” in the UK for a generation. A Downing Street source said: “We are always looking at ways to change the welfare system to reward hard work and make work pay.”
But there are concerns that going home to live with their parents may not be practical for many young people.
A graduate from Bath Spa university who only wanted to be known by her first name Sarah, told the Guardian that claiming housing benefits had stopped her from declaring herself homeless as living with her parents just wasn’t an option.
Three years ago, she was working 12 hours a week in a shop for minimum wage and was supported by housing benefits to live in a shared flat whilst looking for full time work in the South West. Sarah explained:
“Being given the chance to live separately was invaluable – it saved my life. If I had been told that receiving housing benefit was not an option, I don’t know what I would have done.”
Matt Griffith of campaigning group Priced Out told the Guardian:
“The proposal is targeting the least politically vocal group of recipients in an attempt to claw back savings. They will also be part of the age group that faces the worst housing offer in living memory.”
It has also been pointed out that this proposal appears to conflict directly with another recent proposal, that families who depend on benefits and find themselves with a ‘spare’ room should be forced to downsize. In other words, by the time graduates finish university, their parents may have been relocated to a smaller property, meaning they no longer have a ‘home’ to return to.
Graduate Fog shares these concerns that young people – already being disproportionately impacted by the unemployment crisis – are once again being targeted for cost-cutting, on account of being the least likely to vote. We also have questions about the practical implications of these proposals. Now that many supposedly ‘graduate’ roles do not pay enough for people to live on – like the Queen’s internship at Buckingham Palace – bright, hard-working young people have no choice but to remain dependent on either the state (in the form of housing benefit) or their parents (in asking to be put up for free).
Hey, here’s an idea – why doesn’t the government start putting pressure on businesses to pay young workers a salary you can actually live on, so you can pay your own rent?
*DO YOU RELY ON HOUSING BENEFIT?
Is it fair that unemployed or low-earning under-25s should be expected to live at home with their parents? Are graduate salaries too low to live on? Are young people being unfairly targeted for cost-cutting – or will these measures encourage you to look harder for well-paid work?
what will happen to the young people from the care system who went to uni will they be expeceted to move where
Matthew hits the nail on the head. While this measure will no doubt tackle (what Cameron seems to think is the reality) the lazy claimants who scrounge off Mum and Dad while not working and claiming benefits, it’s ignoring the existence of people like Sarah, people who come from backgrounds that can’t support them either, or come from backgrounds that they need to get away from.
This government seems to think all young people are feckless with no responsibilities and no ties of any sort to the area they live in. Having ‘got on our bikes’ to find work, we are now being told this is wrong, and actually we should be living with our parents. Except, of course, were we to actually do this then we would be condemned for ‘sponging’ and ‘relying on the Bank of Mum and Dad’.
I am under 25, and married… if we should fall on hard times, should we ‘go back’ to live with my parents or with his parents? Or is Cameron wanting to split up married couples now?!
I thought you became an adult at 18, is the age of legal adulthood going to go up too? Will the parents continue to receive child benefit until their “children” reach 25?
This kind of thing bugs me. Us twentysomethings are either adults or we’re not and I don’t like how we are expected to take on the responsibilities of adulthood but not receive any of the privileges. There are plenty of “feckless” young people out there but does it not occur to the government that if we don’t have the basics such as a stable job and place to live then its no wonder that we are finding it harder to start worthwhile lives of our own.
^ Agreed many times over. It’s just ridiculous. How can they keep pushing back the age at which you aren’t considered dependent on your parents anymore? Should we start basing child benefit on the income of parents’ parents? It’s bad enough that maintenance loans for university are based on parental income… If you’re an adult you’re an adult and your parents’ income should have no bearing on what benefits, rights or privileges you receive. Unfortunately the world’s unfair and some people will receive more help from their parents than others, but that doesn’t mean any parents who can help should be expected to. For one thing, it’s not like our parents were told that they’d have to support their children until 25 when they had us. My parents did not sign up to 25 years of being forced to support me. It’s unfair on them as well as us.
I’m 22, and I have Asperger’s Syndrome. My mother neglected me from when I was very young and my father bullied me most of my life. However, I consider myself very lucky in one aspect. I have a future husband (also an Aspie), aged 30, who was willing to take me away from my parents’ home and look after me.
My parents bullied me into going to university. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have gone otherwise, I would have done, but not directly after acquiring my A levels. My plan was to do some work for one year in my hometown, save some money, then do a degree at a city nearby so I could stay at home and study. My parents were having none of it. To cut a long story short, I backed down in tears and went to a university where I had to stay in the halls a few months after being awarded my results.
Now, I don’t want to make it sound as if anyone else had an easier time of it than me. I regularly read Graduate Fog and everyones’ storys sadden me. I just hope you won’t be offended when I ask you to imagine me. An autistic adult who had only ever been to school, college and relatives’ houses, shoved into the halls of a city I had never even visited before by parents who could afford to help me out but wouldn’t. Incidently, because they could afford to help me out, my student loan was means tested and because I am not physically disabled, I wasn’t elligible for a penny in disabilty benefit either.
Fast forward three years later, I had a good degree (a 2:1), I had met my future husband and my parents were proud that I had acheived all this by myself. However, as soon as the lease on my room in the halls expired, I had to move back in with them, and they carried on tormenting me just as before. I rarely saw my mother, she was too busy wrapped up in her own world. However, my dad still bullied me. I had worked, during the summer, in a charity shop, I carried on with this and my dad found an “unpaid position” for a publisher advertised in the local paper. When I said I didn’t want any more unpaid work, I was shouted down yet again. My parents had complete autonomy over me.
I took up the position and I can honestly say, every day I thought about killing myself. I went there to train as a publisher. Instead, I found myself doing all the menial jobs (licking envelopes, licking stamps, making tea, cleaning the loo at one point) for no pay. To make it worse, I was treated with utter contempt by my colleagues.
I only got out of that desperate situation when my fiance saw how depressed I was and rented a flat in his home town and moved me in there with him. If he hadn’t, I can’t honestly say I would be alive right now. My mum is talking about retiring in two years’ time (she’s fifty). She’s more concerned with herself than making sure her only child (who is autistic) is stable and happy. The only person who looks after me is my fiance.
As I say, I don’t wish to belittle anyone else’s story. Every single was is very sad, but I hope no one is offended by mine. I am unable to claim ANY form of benefit because I’ve never paid National Insurance (which is not my fault, but why should the peeps at the jobcentre give a damn about that?). I’m applying for jobs and getting nowhere. I sometimes think, if my fiance ever broke off our engagement and I couldn’t get any housing benefit or anything, I would have to move back with my parents. In all honesty, I’d jump in front of a train first.
Why can’t the politicians see, there are shades of grey? Not just people whose parents can afford to help them and those who can’t, but those who have parents like mine. Those who can help, but choose not to, those who are irreconcilably estranged from their parents and even those whose parents have died.
I’m surprised the graduate suicide rate isn’t higher. I honestly do not know how those who congregate under the Westminster clock tower live with those graduates’ deaths on their conscience.
It all comes down to students foreseeing that if they stay in rented accommodation after they finish at uni then they can get their accommodation paid for under housing benefit if unemployed or working only a few hours per week. If they move back home then they are stuck there if unemployed or only doing a few hours per week hence they lose independance perhaps for a quite a number of years. Once they have moved back home I think they would be blocked from moving back out as housing benefit people would argue that they already have accommodation so not entitled to receive housing benefit. The more students that catch onto this the more don’t move back home after uni as they can keep their independence on housing benefit as a freebie. The problem with this is that it costs a lot of money and with the gov in £900 billion of debt is it really something that can be allowed to continue.
My concern would be if the country headed to bankruptcy it would be too big too save like Greece. Essentially, the gov would then have no funds to pay for any kinds of welfare state (no credit, not enough tax revenue) and a lot of people would suffer badly. The welfare state is something I support and I think needs to be preserved for the sake of all of us when we fall on hard times. This can only be done if we are realistic about the essentials we need, that its a safety net not a way to obtain a certain way of living. This means there is not enough tax money to be spent on ‘invaluable’ experiences, if you want an invaluable experience you have to pay for it, that’s what you do as an adult.
At the ended of the day anyone can claim living at home is not an option if it suits them, many will say that if they just prefer living independantly albeit dependant on housing benefit. It’s why you cannot allow grey areas as its all to easy for people to move into those grey areas for their own interests. I know of people that sleep on the couch of there parents place in the living room if there is no spare room. Sometimes in life you just have to accept short term unhappyness and work towards a brighter future, its part of life. There is still support around, homeless hostels, foyer system for young people from problem families for those in difficult situations. I myself have been unemployed in the past living at home with parents, although I did not look to claim housing benefit it was taken as matter of fact that I would not be allowed to claim when applying for JSA over the phone. Why? My parents still had accomodation costs to cover, electricity, water, council tax, etc. I had pais NI stamp at various periods so why should it be taken for granted that I could not claim housing benefit yet someone who did not move back home when uni finished could? just seemed a little unfair.
Its not the only area teh gov should be cutting back on, the Royal Family, Business Grants, etc all need to be asked whether we should be paying any moey to these. I just think that the money paid into NI can only go so far and as a result we have to be realistic about what it can pay for so that we can all benefit from keeping the welfare state intact into the future.
Given that rent is considerably more expensive in many cases than mortgage payments, given that a lot of parents are completely screwing their retirement up to help their kids and given that these kids will almost certainly not be in a position to help them since they start from a position of debt I fail to see how this is in any way a good idea.
The other issue is that people in full time work whether they’re under 25 or not should not need housing benefit. Rents should be a lot lower.