“Young People Need To Be Realistic About Housing” Says Retiree Living In ‘Workers Cottage’ 15 Minutes From ‘Central Business District’

CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT

Young people need to ditch this expectation that they should be able to live near all of the jobs and opportunities, according to the owner of a mostly vacant 5-bedroom home 15 minutes from the CBD.

Howard Hockey (68) hasn’t worked since he sold his chartered accountancy firm and client list to some multinational conglomerate in 2015.

His wife Hazel (68) has never worked and never really had to, because back in the day a single income was enough to pay off a mortgage on both their refurbished workers cottage and the beach house at Kingscliff.

They’ve got a couple other flats that they’ve negatively geared in the university suburbs, and the usual share portfolio that could be expected for investors their age that had the genius foresight to invest in Qantas and Commbank when they were both privatised.

But this doesn’t mean they’ve had it easy. Sure, university was free – but did you know the cash rate went to 17% for a month or so in 1989.

Between yearly trips to Europe and occasionally flying to Newcastle to reluctantly look after their grandkids for a week, they mostly spend their time enjoying urban life.

The term Baby boomers is used to describe people born during the demographic post–World War II baby boom, approximately between the years 1946 and 1964. This includes people who are currently between 58 and 88 years old.

The Australian Baby Boomers have been criticised for attempting to turn the nation’s metropolitan centres into perpetual retirement villages – with younger generations citing the lack of nightlife in capital cities, and the Boomer-centric property bubble edging them out of the same opportunities offered to their parents.

Howard disagrees with this characterisation wholeheartedly. He says young people need to get realistic about housing.

“Why do they NEED to live near the central business district?” he scowls.

“Seriously. Decentralisation has got to be part of the conversation. It blows my mind that we’ve got this state government talking about destroying the character of our suburb by building more housing”

“This was not what I had in mind when I bought this place for 34,000 dollars in the eighties.”

“I am a caucasian post-war Australian. I have never made a compromise in my entire life and I’m not going to start now!”