Empty homes are one of the most visible signs of the UK’s housing crisis. “They’re the most obvious example of what’s wrong, which is that there is empty housing in places where people are having to live on the streets or in appalling temporary accommodation at vast public expense,” says Chris Bailey, campaign manager for the charity Action on Empty Homes.
More than 268,000 homes in England are classed by the government as long-term empty, which means they’ve been unoccupied for more than six months. This represents a 19% year-on-year rise. Meanwhile, more than a million families are on waiting lists for local authority housing.
Will McMahon, director of Action on Empty Homes, says the issue really hit him during his time as deputy director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, when he campaigned for community use of the Holloway prison site after the jail’s closure. “There was a battle over whether the north London site should be sold to a developer who would build properties that end up being buy-to-leave [bought by investors who leave them empty to store wealth or to sell on at a profit], or whether something with genuinely affordable rents for local people should be built,” he says.
The site was eventually sold to the Peabody housing association, which has pledged to make 60% of the 1,000 homes planned for the site affordable. The campaign sparked “an epiphanic moment” for McMahon – it became clear to him that addressing the housing problem was key to sorting out a number of society’s ills. This realisation led him to join Action on Empty Homes and begin attempting to bring 30,000 unused properties in London back into circulation. “If you’ve come from criminal justice and other policy areas, you do not grasp how key this is,” he says.
Empty homes lie idle across the UK for different reasons, says his colleague Bailey, but broadly speaking “it’s because an owner doesn’t want to rent or sell”. Bailey, who has spent many years working on housing and community-led regeneration, adds: “[I’ve seen] the impact of investment and development on housing in this country, and the way the housing market has changed.”
One of the key issues is second homes. According to the charity’s 2019 Empty Homes in England report, local authority officers who’ve investigated the second homes phenomenon have found that a significant number of property owners have numerous empty and long-term unused properties that are declared for council tax purposes as “second homes”. This means they’re not recorded as long-term empty in government statistics or subject to the council tax increases that kick in once a property has been empty for two years.
“The second home definition is really unhelpful, because you can have as many second homes as you like, and you don’t have to use them as second homes,” says Bailey.
In 2019, as part of its London Buy to Leave project, Action on Empty Homes held a series of public consultation events to discuss what the Greater London Authority and the government should be doing to stop investors buying properties and leaving them empty. The project also looked at other categories of under-utilised property in London, including homes used primarily for Airbnb rental – a growing problem in urban and rural areas.
No matter where they are in the UK, empty properties distort local housing markets, and they’re a magnet for crime and vandalism, with the taxpayer ultimately footing the bill for the costs borne by the fire brigade, police and other local services.
Despite the large rise in vacant properties in London and the south-east, the region with the highest proportion is the north-east, where one in every 60 homes is long-term empty. In fact, nearly nine in every 10 local authorities (88%) nationally experienced year-on-year rises in 2020, with the rise topping 50% in 35 areas, ranging from Stoke to Southwark. If this rate of increase continues, Action on Empty Homes predicts that more than half a million homes will be long-term empty by 2024.
Together with the mutual Nationwide Building Society, it has called for central government to establish a £185m Empty Homes Fund to provide the investment needed to bring 15,000 homes back into use. This would follow on from the 2010-2015 coalition government’s empty homes programme, which revitalised more than 9,000 vacant properties thanks to investment of £216m, but which ended in 2015.
“It’s very rare that you get an example of social policy where you put the money in, the results come out, and everybody goes: ‘Well that works,’” says McMahon. “And then to go: ‘Right, well we won’t do that again …’” He gives an incredulous laugh that sums up the farcical nature of such a shortsighted decision.
The reintroduction of large-scale targeted funding would enable local authorities, social landlords and community-based organisations to buy or lease empty properties to refurbish them, and in doing so support local businesses such as small builders. It should also encourage wider community-based regeneration approaches to address the underlying causes of the problem.
‘Taking action at a local level is something that is empowering for communities, and it has also been shown to work,’ says Bailey
Last year, Action on Empty Homes launched a global network with similar organisations in the US and Australia in light of the challenge posed by the Covid-19 crisis, with many countries facing an increase in homelessness and an increase in empty homes. “It is imperative governments look to the long term and prevent a surge of evictions and repossessions,” McMahon said when the network was launched. “The housing market must be protected from speculative purchases of distressed assets from global players.”
In addition, at the height of the first wave of the pandemic, the organisation called on local authorities to insist that owners of empty homes offer them for use by health workers and other key staff so that they could live closer to their places of work.
Action on Empty Homes is developing a toolkit for local authorities and community groups that will support community-led approaches to bringing empty homes into use as affordable housing. “Taking action at a local level is something that is empowering for communities, and it has been shown to work,” says Bailey, a passionate advocate for community-based solutions to the housing crisis.
“The main thing that’s wrong is that we’re building the wrong housing at the wrong price for the wrong people, and the government and the housing industry have heavily bought into that model. In terms of tax incentives, we prioritise the building of the new over the renovation of old.”
That may be true today, but thanks to the campaigning work of Action on Empty Homes, a new model might emerge in future – one that focuses on ensuring the houses we’ve already built are affordable homes, and not just empty symbols of the housing crisis.
Building a future
Nationwide Building Society is working with charitable organisations to support local housing and build a better society. Find out more
