‘It’s hard not to feel like a failure’: Meet the Homeagainers ‘the cost of living kids’ forced to move back in with mum and dad

Leaving home and making your own way was once a given, but those aged between 18 and 29 and still living with their parents is now at its highest since the 1940s. Olivia Petter catches up with three women ‘priced out of their own lives’ to discover how it feels to miss out on the grown-up milestones that other generations took for granted

‘I feel like I don’t have a private life because my parents know what I’m doing from when I wake to when I go to sleep,’ says Milly, who has been unable to move out of her parent’s home due to financial reasons (iStock)

Ellie* was reticent at first. A 31-year-old, successful entrepreneur who’d built a business from the ground up, she was hardly looking forward to the prospect of returning home to live with mum and dad. “My landlord put the rent up by £300 a month and it just didn’t seem worth staying for a shared house,” she recalls.

So, she packed up and moved to the other side of London; back into the room she grew up in. “I feel pretty trapped,” she says, noting how her parents are constantly around, surveilling her every move like when she was a teenager. “My world just suddenly seems very small. The only other time I felt like that was when I last lived here at 23 and I escaped that by leaving the country. Maybe that’s what I need to do this time.”

The trouble is, Ellie can’t afford to leave the country. She can barely afford to leave her parents’ house or maintain the co-working space she rents out because even that has upped its monthly price by 10 per cent. Essentially, like many other single, city-dwelling millennials, Ellie is slowly being priced out of her life. And it’s not clear when, or if, she’ll be able to buy her way back in.