"Climbing on any sort of housing ladder seems like an impossible dream to most youngsters" writes Gill Oliver

They’re known as the ‘boomerang generation’ because they’ve left home, only to move back into their parents’ home again.

According to the Office of National Statistics, there’s been a huge rise in the number of 20 and 30-somethings still sleeping in their childhood bedrooms.

Last year, more than 3.3 million people in the UK were living with their parents.

That’s a jump of 25 per cent since records began 18 years ago.

Apparently, young men are more likely to stay living in the family home than young women, because girls tend to settle down with older blokes. Last year, almost a third of men aged 20-34 were living with their parents, compared to a fifth for women in that age group.

Some parents might quite enjoy having their grown kids back but for this ‘trapped generation’, it’s no laughing matter.

Twenty or 30 years ago, it wasn’t too hard to scrape together a small deposit and find a tiny flat to rent, or even buy.

Now, with rental prices soaring and property prices even higher, climbing onto any sort of housing ladder seems like an impossible dream to most youngsters.

The main problem is the housing bubble which has seen prices soar way out of proportion to wages.

In 1996, the average price paid by a first-time buyer for a property was 2.7 times their typical annual salary. Now, first-time buyers are looking at house prices 4.4 times their wages.

Of course, there is help out there, including the Government’s flagship Help to Buy scheme, which offers state-backed mortgages to borrowers on deposits as low as five per cent.

Unfortunately, in Oxfordshire, the average price for even a modest terraced house weighs in at £265,000.

Five per cent of that adds up to a whacking great £13,000, which is a struggle for anyone to save up, let alone someone at the start of their career and therefore earning less.

According to figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders, the number of first-time buyers hit its highest level in six years last autumn. That all sounds great until you look more closely at the detail.

As it turns out, loans to people with deposits of five per cent or less, who are likely to be from the younger generation, made up a measly two per cent of new mortgage lending over the past five years.

This means many of those benefitting from Help to Buy and the super-low interest and mortgage rates around are most likely older and already home owners.

They’re the ones cashing in on buy-to-let, or trading up to bigger family homes.

Meanwhile, hard-working 20 and 30-somethings are denied the chance to buy a home of their own.

Time and time again, experts have told not just this but previous governments that quick-fix schemes such as Help to Buy are not the answer.

What we need, especially here in Oxfordshire, is more affordable housing.

That means building more one and two-bedroom apartments and starter homes and doing it quickly.