Hand-painted gems to brighten meal-times

‘All power to the millennials on their own path’

How do you know someone’s a millennial? They won’t shut up about getting on the property ladder. Soaring rents and astronomical house prices have turned a run-of-the-mill right of passage into the height of human achievement.

Much has been written about the dire consequences of the housing crisis for my generation, from pressing pause on life milestones to moving away from support networks. The mental health toll has been huge while, on a more trivial level, the obsession with home ownership has been something of a fun sponge too.

It’s understandable when you consider the dearth of affordable options. Boomers and Gen Xers of an alternative persuasion get misty eyed over the squats of their youths (illegal since 2012), while plenty has been written about the disappearance of social housing.

But a new generation of young adults are starting to take matters into their own hands via creative solutions that will hopefully give low-income Londoners a way to remain in the city. Housing cooperatives, such as the one we’ve visited on pages 6 and 7, are one such idea. They’re proliferating in London, helped by technology like Kickstarter. The Rising Sun Collective are artists, musicians and students who are taking an arguably more realistic approach to matching income with living situation than the singlefamily home-ownership model millennials aspire to. More power to them. Especially if they bring their joie de vivre.