As far back as 2007, I remember more affluent peers confidently predicting that they would be clambering onto the property ladder shortly after graduation: purchasing a small flat, then upgrading to a small house before, with any luck, buying in their forties the kind of home featured in weekday evening property programmes.

Then the financial crash hit while we were in university, and finding a job, let alone a mortgage, looked increasingly unlikely. House prices rose, while wages didn’t and the dream looked more distant. Now, post-Brexit and Trump, with World War III threatening to result from Russia, Syria and the US’s sabre-rattling, trying to get onto this increasingly mythical property ladder seems fruitless, since we’re essentially living in a society that resembles Threads more closely than Notting Hill.

Now, even the Telegraph(£) is warning that so-called “housing mobility”, the ability to move from one home to another larger home, is declining. Yes, people who got into the market early, and onto the famous ladder, may be asset rich, but this benefit is offset by how much their children will have to pay to escape private renting. An increasing number of people are also paying the maximum they can on mortgages, with an increase in interest rates, or a redundancy threatening to upset the financial balancing act. Few young people now buy in most prime markets without parental help and in the areas where housing is most affordable, like Blaenau Gwent, Copeland and Port Talbot, jobs are scarce.

And that’s just the people who were ever likely to scale this ladder. The poorest never expected to be able to secure mortgages, but in the past were more likely to find a home in social housing, with security of tenure and affordable rents. That security has been attacked for decades, with council homes sold under right to buy, and now with the forced sale of high value council homes, the end of lifetime tenancies, and right to buy put on steroids: the right to buy discount has been raised to encourage sales, and government leaflets advertising the scheme are repeatedly posted through letterboxes.

The concept of the property ladder is dead for all but a small minority of young people. It needs to be replaced with a campaign for housing rights. Homelessness should not happen in a country as wealthy as Britain. Ignore Conservative chancellors and their tendency to both claim Britain is bankrupt and that an economy is akin to a household budget. The government can always find money for vanity yachts and Buckingham Palace repairs, and could borrow extremely cheaply to build homes.

Every person should have the right to housing and shelter, and if the market excludes people, the government should step in. Post-war, when millions of people faced living in slums, a national house building programme employed thousands to house millions, increasing life chances and expectancies as a result. In that era adequate housing was recognised as a basic right. Why not now?

In the years since, housing has become completely commodified: even social housing is seen as ripe for flogging at a profit. Continuing to prop up an over-inflated housing market while denying housing to people at the bottom of this rickety ladder is a recipe for vast social division.

But while traditionally, the haves have outnumbered the have nots, now very few people have the sort of housing they’d like; not in terms of wild ambition, but even to meet their basic desires. A young professional earning an above-average salary should be able to afford a mortgage on a one-bed property without help. The market is broken. A family working full-time on minimum wage should be able to afford the rent on a council home; but again, they can’t, without state help, because the employment market is broken.

The days of the housing ladder are over: what we need now is a national conversation about housing rights for all, with a government willing to remove its fingers from its ears.

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