Broadcaster and journalist Joan Bakewell has urged older Britons to consider downsizing to help ease the housing crisis. The Labour peer believes there's a moral and practical argument against pensioners rattling around in large homes while tens of thousands of families struggle to find accommodation. She goes so far as to say it could be seen, at best, as "short-sighted" to be hanging on in the autumn of our lives.
Instead, older so-called "empty nesters" should downsize in their own interests and those of the wider community. Sir Keir Starmer is the latest prime minister to try to remedy our poor house-building record, promising 1.5 million new homes before the next general election.
While supportive, Baroness Bakewell, 91, a former government-appointed Voice of Older People, believes space could be freed up by more people moving, rather than remaining emotionally and physically attached to increasingly impractical spaces as they age. And she knows what she is talking about, having sold her four-storey Victorian home to relocate to a nearby bungalow in readiness for what she calls "deep old age". The journey is movingly recounted in her recent memoir, The Tick of Two Clocks, and she will talk about it later this month as part of a stellar line-up at the Raworths Harrogate Literature Festival.
Her thoughts on ageing and the role of older people in a society that often ignores them, of which more shortly, deserve to be heard - by all generations. "You may become widowed or di.
