There was a time, not so long ago, when becoming independent was a natural part of the transition to adulthood. With more or less difficulty, a stable job and a reasonable salary allowed paying rent or facing a mortgage. Today that idea has collapsed. In large cities, and especially painfully in València — the scenario I know and suffer best — accessing housing has become a chimera. The housing crisis has completely altered social dynamics to the point of reducing our children’s options to three outcomes, all revealing a deeply deteriorated system.
The first should be the logical one: becoming independent through one’s own work. But the current labor market, marked by precariousness and wages unable to keep up with prices, no longer allows it. When the average rent in València devours more than half of a young person’s salary, the numbers simply don’t add up. The second way is through a mortgage, although here another wall appears: gathering the prior savings that banks require for the down payment. That 20% or 30% of the property’s value is unattainable for someone already trapped in abusive rent. And that is when parents come into play, becoming emotional and financial guarantors for their children. The third way, the quietest and perhaps the harshest, is to directly wait for the inheritance: waiting for the grandparents’ apartment, sooner or later, to pass into the hands of the next generation.
Of these three paths, the ones most repeated today are the second and the third. And that reveals an uncomfortable reality: it is the middle-class families — leaving aside high incomes, who play a different game — that are assuming the role that the market and administrations have abandoned. Lifetime donations, guarantees, housing transfers, or early inheritances have become the only safety net for thousands of young people who otherwise would have no chance of accessing their own roof.
The social and economic problem generated by this situation is enormous because it turns inheritance into the main factor of future inequality. The place where one is born again marks the life horizon. And what happens to those who have no family assets to hold on to? Well, they are condemned to permanent precariousness. Trapped for years in shared apartments, delaying life projects and, in many cases, even sentimental separations because becoming independent separately is impossible. The alternative is to move to the outskirts in search of lower prices, although even that no longer works: the contagion effect has also driven up housing costs in much of the metropolitan area of València.
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And what happens to those who have no family assets to hold on to? Well, they are condemned to permanent precariousness. Trapped for years in shared apartments, delaying life projects…
I am not talking about macroeconomic theories or abstract statistics. I am talking about everyday scenes that anyone can find in their building or family. Parents who withdraw a rental apartment from the market that supplemented their income to give it to a child. Families who sadly sell the vacation home where several generations grew up to help pay a down payment. Grandparents whose house changes hands quickly as soon as the need for a nursing home arises.
And the most disturbing thing is that all these decisions are almost lived as victories. As reliefs. Young people who have that support are considered lucky. Having a family with assets has become the only transgenerational lifeline that works. The final question, therefore, is inevitable: if our children’s independence increasingly depends on death, inheritance, or the patrimonial sacrifice of their parents and grandparents, what kind of society are we building for the future?
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