Baby boomers are hoarding big homes at the expense of the young | Phillip Inman | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Baby boomers are hoarding big homes at the expense of the young | Phillip Inman | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

A report that says there are 25m unoccupied bedrooms in England alone should make anybody who cares about the prospects for younger people sit up and think.

A situation where there are more than 400,000 empty homes is bad enough, but 25 million empty bedrooms? That's in a different league.

The report documents how a process of death and renewal is not happening after a dramatic rise in life expectancy and a refusal by many older people to downsize when their children have grown up and gone. This epidemic of house squatting by the over-55s is the main reason there are so many family homes with only one or two people rattling around in them.

The Intergenerational Foundation – set up to campaign on financial issues, particularly those affecting younger people – is concerned that the tax and benefit systems do little to discourage people retaining homes larger than they need.