"Patronizing" News Anchor is Out of Touch with the Current Housing Market for Millennials

via vaaju

Brace yourself, because here comes yet another conversation about the laziness and ineptitude of millennials from the generation before us. Tuesday morning Sky News anchor Jayne Secker is live in conversation with recently evicted tenant Kirsty Archer. What was meant to be a discussion of the London housing market from the perspective of a young renter turned into an off-topic lecture by someone out of touch with the realities of surviving today's living costs.

“According to Homes and Property, London is now the most expensive place to rent in Europe, and the fourth most expensive place to rent in the entire world.” states The Independent. When Archer discusses the difficulties young people face in finding a place to live in London due to rent prices and the “No Fault” eviction law, Secker responded that her situation is more likely due to young people not being “equipped with the necessary skills to rent.” Secker discloses that she herself is a private landlord, and continues with examples of her tenants who had no clue how to “change a lightbulb” or turn on a boiler for heat. Seckler rationalized that because of these two sole instances that: "you very often find that the younger tenants don't really know how to do a great deal in homes."

….What?

Watch the video below:

Not only is her response patronizing AS HELL, but her lack of empathy is astounding. Just because in Seckler's subjective opinion, our generation does not seem to have the “skills to rent,” does not mean we cannot learn them. It also should not be the determining factor on whether or not we are deserving of basic shelter. If this is the argument Secker chooses to make, she is failing to recognize that individuals of her generation had no clue how to download or convert a PDF, connect to wifi, use Facetime, make and then post on a social media account without the help of a millenial with those "necessary skills" to use technology. Just look at the hot mess that was Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony at Capitol Hill last year, where he was asked questions that put a spotlight on the age and technology gap. Namely that Senate had no idea how to regulate a company and ultimately understand a digital era because they had no clue about how it actually works.

Now, this is not the sequel to RENT where (absurdly) the tenants just refused to pay their rent. It is that we actually cannot afford to. According to Business Insider, millennials face financial problems far greater than the generation before us. This includes: “ student loan debt, inflating living costs, unexpected expenses, and needing to save more for life milestones.” Like owning a home and not just renting it Ms. Seckler. While wages for our generation has indeed increased, it “hasn't kept up with inflating living costs," reports Student Loan Hero.

Seckler has since apologized after facing immediate online backlash; and for that we should move on. Why? Well because bickering amongst ourselves won’t change the housing market. This is a similar conversation I saw in a meme regarding paying fast food workers $15/hour, the same price as paramedics. The focus should not be that fast food workers and paramedics do not deserve the same liveable wage because of their skill sets-- the conversation should be shifted to discuss that how ambulance and fast food corporations receive BILLIONS of dollars, yet can only afford to only pay their workers >$15/hour.

THAT is the real problem.