Letter to paper: “For favour of publication”: empty homes week 2011
5th December 2011
Empty Homes Week
Letter to paper: “For favour of publication”:
Dear Sir/Madam,
Selling “Empties” at discounted prices
I write in support of Architect and Channel 4 presenter George Clarke who is this week launching a campaign to bring Britain’s 350,000 long-term empty homes back into use.
This week is “Empty Homes Week” and with the spotlight now firmly on finding new ways to alleviate Britain’s pressing housing shortage Councils must accept their responsibility to offer “Empties” to prospective buyers and tenants at discounted prices. This is now a priority for government and policy makers.
House building rates are at the lowest since the 1920s yet there are tens of thousands of houses lying empty in areas where big regeneration schemes have failed. These range from entirely empty council estates in London, and whole streets of empty housing in cities in the north of England, to individual redundant school caretakers’, and park keepers’ houses.
The Government has recently said it will invest another £50 million to get empty homes into use. This funding is very welcome, but on it’s own it won’t be enough. The government says the funding is “to tackle concentrations of poor quality homes in areas of low demand” and comes on top of £100million grant fund that has also just opened for applications.
Many of these “Empties” are in need of work and in current market conditions won’t make a sufficient return for developers to buy them. The government grants won’t be enough to pay for rennovating all of them. However many of them could make fantastic homes for people who are prepared to do some work on them themselves. I am now calling on Councils to help by disposing of their own abandoned housing at discounted prices directly to people to renovate and live in as their sole home.
I’m also calling on government to allow councils to charge higher council tax on long term empty homes and for the revenue generated to be reinvested in bringing more empty homes into use.
Your readers might want to join me by writing to their Councils asking if council owned “empties” will be made available for discounted sale? It is a simple solution to a pressing problem.
David Ireland
Empty Homes Chief Executive
