‘It’s become a lot more like a share house’: when adult children stay in the parental home

With a garage and storage (and sky-high rents for equivalent space), there’s ‘no real reason’ to leave the family house just yet, Ben says. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian

Multicoloured climbing holds dot the ceiling of Ben’s workshop in the garage adjoining his home. Tools are stacked in plastic boxes in floor-to-ceiling cupboards and his mountaineering and ice climbing gear fills every spare space. The workshop and its ample storage are among the reasons the 23-year-old architecture student remains in his parent’s home well past the age that previous generations may have moved out. There is, he says, “no real reason” to leave.

“I know with the rent situation that I wouldn’t be able to afford a place that has a garage I could put a workshop in. It’s just not possible.”