There was, unsurprisingly, a lot of judginess being thrown around recently when an actual judge ruled in favour of Mark and Christina Rotondo, who wanted to boot their 30-year-old son Michael out of their New York home.
Big boy panties: put 'em on, #MichaelRotondo. Your parents have had the right to boot your ass since you were 18. https://t.co/xUhwATJYaR
— BL_Abba (@BL_Abba) June 1, 2018
The results of a survey published in The Sydney Morning Herald reveal that being a 30-year-old still living at the family home isn’t so unusual, and you’d better believe it if you’re living in a cash-draining capital city like Sydney or Melbourne.
The survey, by banking and insurance comparison site Mozo, used Australian Bureau of Statistics data to calculate that one in three adults under 35 live at home.
And apparently, these freeloaders are costing their folks a lump sum of $12.2 billion per year.
60 per cent of young adults aged 19-34 don’t pay rent, 75 per cent don’t contribute to household bills, and almost three out of four kids can’t afford to move out of home.
So listen here, young people. It’s probably time you dig out your money bags from your secret stash, Uncle $crooge style. Go get yourself one of the plentiful, very reasonably priced properties, say in Sydney, with your deposit that’s just there because you’ve been mooching off your parents. Just stop being selfish and all kidultish ok?
Yeah, alright.
It may sound like living on Easy Street to some but I’ll take a wild stab and guess that there’s plenty of offspring who’d much rather not live at home – no offense to the kind parents who happily have them. There’s a lot to be said for financial independence and yes, even all the bill, rent and mortgage stress that comes with it.
It simply isn’t an option for many.
So what’s the solution? An innovative initiative in Hong Kong could prove instructive. Now, bear with me, it involves concrete water pipes. You’d be living in one. But in a funkily retro-fitted one with a very snug 100 square feet of living space. Kind of like a modern Hobbiton crib?
It’s called OPod “tube housing” – the brainchild of architect James Law, designed to provide young adults in Hong Kong with affordable housing. The city has been ranked the least affordable for housing eight years running in the Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey according to Business Insider Australia.
The OPod prototype
Law hopes the idea can roll out globally, telling the outlet: “If we can work with governments, and even private landowners and manufacturers, we could very cheaply build the O-Pods, and we could rent them out very cheaply to young people who are struggling to afford housing.”
That sounds like hope to me.
Because something more needs to be done to help young Australians afford housing (and by proxy, free up their parents because obviously it’s about them too and they shouldn’t be taken for granted).
Kind of like a McConaissance – a helping hand from Failure to Launch to True Detective and Dallas Buyer’s Club but without the morose, traumatised memes. Although the existentialism might come in handy.
