Bringing empty homes back into use would solve the housing crisis
Bringing empty homes back into use would solve the housing crisis and make it unnecessary for Labour to build new ones, the BBC has found.
There are slightly fewer than 700,000 empty homes in England alone, with 261, 471 classed as “long-term” empty, meaning nobody has lived there for six months or more.
Bringing them back into use would solve the housing crisis, meaning the Labour government would not have to build – or rather, encourage private developers to build – the 1.5 million homes it has promised to provide.
And local councils have powers to do this – in particular, to prevent them becoming magnets for vandalism and vermin, and therefore threats to environmental health.
If they use Empty Dwelling Management Orders to take over and repair run-down private properties that have been vacant for at least two years, they can rent it out for up to seven years to recover costs.
But many councils don’t bother. There is no legal requirement to do so, and many local authorities plead poverty – that they are facing bankruptcy due to years of Tory underfunding.
And bringing empty dwellings back into use is a work-intensive undertaking.
But it seems to This Writer that such work would more than pay for itself, providing much-needed income for councils that need it. We are looking at a consequence of politically-motivated short-sightedness; they could have invested in a policy that would have raised money, but they chose not to.
This is not to say that cash-strapped councils should be criticised for their poverty; government under-funding is unforgivable.
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I am amazed that this is still a problem.
Well done though for reporting on it.