A generation of young people feel like “failures” as they can’t realise the “impossible dream” of buying their own home, a new MP has said.
Labour’s Laura Pidcock said affording the deposit for her first home is “out of reach”, even on her £76,000 MP salary, due to debt from university.
The North West Durham MP, who rents a property in the private sector, said she “would love a council house” but “there aren’t enough”.
Speaking to Radio 4′s Week in Westminster, the 29-year-old said: “There’s a whole generation, and I include myself in this, of young people who will never be able to afford the deposit to actually buy a home, not just in London - I know that is completely out of reach for thousands of people - but in North West Durham too.
“You’ve got really high rents in the private sector comparable to earnings and therefore it is an impossible dream that we are told that we have got to aspire to. And it is impossible.
“It is leaving people feeling dissatisfied. like they’re failures, like they have been left behind, that their parents generation did much better than them and I think we need to shift our perception of social housing and make it somewhere actually that we want to live.
“I would love to be in a council house. I would love that. I would love in my home community, in the area where I represent, to be in a council house but it’s impossible, there aren’t enough.”
Pidcock said that despite her considerable salary, she cannot afford to buy a home.
She said: “So I’m in the private rented sector because - and I know I’m a newly-elected MP - because even on an MP’s salary, I have debt from university, I have money owed to parents and things like that.
“Because their pension pots aren’t much - my mam is a WASPI woman - they are incapable of being able to lend me a deposit to buy a home.”
The MP has previously told HuffPost UK that MPs who are also landlords have a “conflict of interest” when it comes to voting on housing regulations for tenants.
She said allowing them to vote on housing legislation left the door open for a “stitch up”, adding: “I think that anyone who is a landlord should not be able to vote on legislation affecting landlords, it is a complete conflict of interest.
“Of course they won’t vote for further protections for people in their homes and will try to get a way with as little regulation as possible, as they perceive that this will affect their profits.”