(To York Councillors 27th March 2025)

A teenage wedding and planning policy

(Try listening to Chuck Berry‘s A Teenage Wedding before continuing.)

An embarrassing admission. I found myself actually sobbing listening to Chuck Berry’s You never can tell on Youtube. After playing several different versions – and crying at them all – I switched to Dire Straights, Queen, and even Bob Dylan and the crying stopped. It’s taken me a day or two to unpick this embarrassing reaction.

A teenage wedding

Chuck Berry’s song, written in 1964, full of optimism, started “It was a teenage wedding and the old folks wished them well” but now weddings for the young are much rarer. 

The Office of National Ststistics shows there were hardly any teenage weddings in 2022 compared to 1960. In the 1960s the most weddings were in the age range 20-24. Now, the most weddings are in the age range 30-34.

Housing the youngsters

Chuck Berry sings…

They furnished off an apartment with a two room Roebuck sale.

These teenagers in 1964 could afford somewhere cheap to live and buy a little furniture. Since then, the cost of setting up home has vastly increased. In real terms houses are now six times more expensive than in the 1960s.

Jobs and disposable income

       Chuck Berry continues…

The coolerator was crammed with TV dinners and ginger ale
But when Pierre found work, the little money comin' worked out well

They had a hi-fi phono, boy, did they let it blastc
Seven hundred little records, all rock, rhythm, and jazz..

In The Rise of the Youth Market, Bill Osgerby wrote 

"buoyant levels of youth employment throughout the 1950s and 
early  1960s brought a steady growth in young people's earnings."

He also wrote 

"The wage packets of British youngsters were certainly not bulging but, compared to earlier generations, young people's levels of disposable income were tangibly enhanced. "

The old folks

 It was a teenage wedding and the old folks wished them well.          

Wishing them well isn’t enough as Gary Stevenson writes in Vox Political

Your parents think you can afford to buy a house because they could afford to buy theirs – so they sell theirs to pay for care in their twilight years. 

Meanwhile, you can’t afford to buy a house because they have become much more expensive and your generation is poorer than theirs.

Finale

Chuck Berry’s vision was of a time which was a poorer but optimistic. That’s gone. That’s why I cried. I am now consoled by the anger and bitterness of Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone.

How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.

Chuck Berry’s optimism has gone.

York Councillors, you have just passed a Local Plan that allows for far too few new homes. This will keep the price of houses too high for the youngsters. The time for optimism has gone. That is why I turn up the volume when I listen to Bob Dylan.

A comment from a friend.

Not sure less teenage weddings is a bad thing! Girls choice of careers in the 60’s was teacher, secretary or nurse and not much else and they usually were expected to give up work when married. Women these days want a career so marry later.

There are thousands of houses being built round here, although probably not enough starter homes. They must be affordable by someone though - as they wouldn’t be being built.

My reply…

Teenage wedding - point taken.

House prices are made from cost of building + land value.

Land vaue is mostly the value of the permission to build.

Land is cheap, planning permission is very, very valuable.

By restricting planning permission we increase its value,
take from the poor and young to increase the value of 
the assets of the affluent and old.

P.S. Do look at A car-free plan for Greater York.