We all know that renting can be difficult. House-shares are frequently horrendous. Poor quality construction, grumpy shower queues, kitchens where you don’t make toast for fear of contamination, and toxic communal bathrooms where you daren’t leave your toothbrush are just some of the trials and tribulations that renters face. Roll on the happy day when tenants move up on to a rickety property ladder and buy a home, safe in one place and happy for decades, finally, perhaps, able to decorate or get themselves a pet.

There’s just one problem. The Resolution Foundation has warned that anyone under 35 will find it just about impossible to ever buy a home of their own. But, while you might imagine that older people are buying second homes to rent out for profit by the time they’re 50, the reality is that, despite media coverage of so-called “baby boomers” having it so good and property porn about buying a holiday home in the sun, their housing situation can be as bad as it is for young renters.

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If you think renting is tough when you’re young, it’s even worse when you’re older or elderly. Without a massive deposit, buying property when you’re over 50 is largely impossible. Retirement ages are rising and life expectancy is lengthening, which for many means a longer life experienced in poor pay or actual poverty. Tenants in their 40s or above are firmly at the bottom of the house-share pile. Older renters (even those as young as 50) also face the indignity of being offered sheltered housing.

I was once contacted anonymously by a tenant in his early 60s who was battling to find a rented home. Working for low pay, but healthy and hoping to work beyond retirement age, he did not own a house. His landlord of just a few years was selling his current place. The cost of living alone was proving prohibitive; he had been looking for months, hoping to remain in his current, not exactly high-end area, to maintain family links and contacts with friends.

But low or “reasonably” priced flats are sought after, and older people are not desirable tenants – even less so when struggling in insecure employment. Flats go to younger tenants, who must seem more attractive to letting agents blinded by cruel and inaccurate stereotypes. They wrongly picture an ageing tenant as someone with impending health needs (including dementia), potentially messing up a portfolio otherwise full of dream tenants who move out to buy, and are less likely to get ill or even die during a tenancy. In cases like these, it’s unlikely that a case for age discrimination would succeed, no matter how blatant.

How do older and impoverished prospective renters in similar situations find a guarantor (often a deal-breaking requirement)? Do they ask their parents? You might imagine that’s ridiculous, but according to my correspondent, one especially witless letting agent he encountered blithely requested exactly that.

You may be “youthful”, engaged with the world, erudite, and educated; you may possess a sharp sense of humour, like to socialise and enjoy contemporary culture and music. But it is sadly the case that healthy, prospective flat-sharers visibly in their 60s have little chance of passing rigorous vetting procedures such as speed flatmate finding sessions, or those combative group interview panels – especially when all the other applicants are in their 20s and 30s.

Many healthy older renters nurse a fear of sheltered housing, which is designed for people frailer and less independent than they are. What older healthy tenants require is never a tiny room with space for a single bed, hand-rails and a commode but no storage. What they really want is a home, a comfortable, secure, affordable home where they can stay a while (having perhaps a further 40 years left ahead of them). They might move into a care home eventually, but what they need right now is the same as everyone else – a secure place to stay.

Prospective flat-sharers in their 60s have little chance up against applicants in their 20s and 30s

But what is to be done? Well, apart from pipe dreams involving a mass programme of genuinely affordable social housing available to rent for all, including a system of long-term tenure, then an end to prejudice would be a start. As would a realisation from landlords and agents that tenants do not usually die before they get old. Healthy older people do not need and might not like sheltered housing, so here’s an alternative suggestion: what about reasonably priced student-style developments for older tenants who can’t find anywhere else?

If young people are lucky, they too will grow old – something I think we can all agree would be a good thing. But here’s a dystopian vision of the future: estates full of centenarian tenants, never chosen by younger co-sharers, moving around at the whim of greedy landlords constantly on the lookout for higher rent. Renting needs reform for everyone. First they came for the millennials. They will come for us all eventually.