The Intergenerational Foundation calls for tax breaks to encourage downsizing and help free up some of the estimated 25 million unused bedrooms in England.
More than half of over-65s are in homes with two or more spare bedrooms, which could be used by families, says its report based on government figures.
This report is by far the worst rubbish I've heard from a 'charity' to date, and that's probably why it's taking so much heat in the blogs at present.
It's entire conclusions and recommendations are based on the incorrect supposition that property is owned not by the individual who paid for it, but by the state on behalf of the people.
Old folk who still live in the family home where they brought up their children will have worked hard to secure that property and continued to work hard for the next twenty five years paying off the mortgage. Now it is theirs to do with as they please, it's nobody elses business how many bedrooms they have or what they do with them.
The foundation (IF) is a new group set up to campaign on financial issues, particularly those affecting younger people, such as affordable housing and job prospects.
It says that while many people are living longer and staying in what was once their family home, younger families are being squeezed into smaller properties.
The last thing we need is another campaign group. No doubt it's totally tax payer funded. These wealth sapping 'charites' are causing more financial problems to the country than any of the issues they have ever campaigned about.
Young families are not being squeezed into smaller properties. People are supposed to begin small and work their way up the property ladder. Families do not have a right to a bigger house above anyone else, particularly a generation who started at the bottom and now own a bigger house that they have worked hard for.
The only property a family has a right to is the one that they can afford and someone is willing to sell them.
"The 'housing crisis' is increasingly an issue of how our housing stock is shared between younger and older generations," said IF co-founder Angus Hanton.
Private housing stock is not shared between generations, it is sold to individuals. Younger individuals tend to start small because that is what they can afford. When they have spent a lifetime working and paying mortgages, then they will be able to sit back in a house that is their own and do with it as they please.
"The divide between the housing 'haves' and 'have nots' has moved from being one dominated by wealth or class to one dominated by age."
Surely a leftist propaganda charity would be over the moon by this? The wealthy are no longer the only people with property. The working class are now able to afford housing, and through hard work and time, are now living in decent spacious accommodation.
That's not good enough for the modern lefties, they want everything now. They don't believe in working hard to get what they want, they believe in taking it from others, in this case the older generation.
The report, entitled Hoarding of Housing, said that 37% of homes in England - about eight million - were under-occupied - meaning they had at least two unused bedrooms. This is up from 20% four decades ago.
Under-occupied may mean there are two unused bedrooms, but what defines use. We have two bedrooms that we don't sleep in. There are two main bedrooms upstairs. We chose to sleep in the smaller one because we could fit a pool table in the larger one. Is that unused? No, because that's our regular smokey drinkey.
There is also an attic bedroom. That didn't come about just from hard work to afford the house, but also hard manual graft because I converted it myself. I didn't go through all that work to benefit someone else who can't afford a house, I did it because I wanted a room to put my drum kit.
Just because my two spare rooms are not slept in, does not mean they are not used. If I had two children (perish the thought) the house would not be big enough for all of us. The pool table and the drum kit do not wander about the whole house, do not watch TV in the living room and don't own loads of clothes and stuff that require storage space.
"It is perfectly understandable that retired people cling to their home long after it has outlived its usefulness as a place to bring up a family in," said report co-author Matthew Griffiths.
Retired people are not 'clinging' to their homes. They have built up their homes over many years, probably got them just the way they like them and want to continue enjoying them as they do now.
Clinging suggests a stubborn attitude from someone who knows they are doing wrong but refuses to bow to logic.
"But there are profound social consequences of their actions which are now causing real problems in a country where new house-building is almost non-existent."
There are NO social consequences from their actions, this is just a blatant appeal to some mis-guided sense of duty to society. These houses will not be knocked down when the occupants die, they will be sold on by their dependants to the next people who want to buy them. We shouldn't be thinking about pushing old people out of their family homes just because they have outlived their usefulness to the state.
IF suggested encouraging older people to downsize by exempting over-60s from stamp duty when they sold to move to a smaller home.
They could also avoid stamp duty by doing what they are doing now and staying put. The only 'reward' they get from downsizing is a much smaller house. One in an area they are not familiar with and one that will need to be decorated from the ground up over a period of years in order to get it the way they want it.
But what the hell, we are only talking about older people. The young people with children are the only ones that matter in our Logans Run society.
The campaign group also urged the government to consider replacing council tax with "a proper land tax, to reflect the social cost of occupying housing, particularly housing that is larger than one's needs".
The social cost of occupying housing? This statement shows them up as the 'Property is theft', politics of envy hippies that they are.
Needs are irrelevant. If you have the means to occupy the property you desire then that is no business of the government or anyone else.
I don't need a pool table and a drum kit. I don't need to drive a car with a bigger engine than a one litre. I do this things because it is what I choose and I use my own money to do them. Nobodies business but my own.
Housing Minister Grant Shapps said: "Whilst this report makes interesting reading, we do not agree that people should be taxed or bullied out of their homes.
Common sense from a minister? Keep it up, please.
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