Campaign Action
Of England’s 710,000 empty homes nearly half of them are long-term empty. That’s enough homes to house a million people. Whilst some homes are empty for transactional reasons (e.g they are being refurbished, are for sale or to let) the rest are to some extent stuck. A significant minority of them have been totally abandoned.
Not only that, these same properties cause huge problems for people who live around them. Empty property attracts petty crime, fly tipping, vandalism and occasionally arson. Areas with high numbers of empty homes can easily fall into a spiral of decline. With less customers living nearby, shops and services close leading to further decline.
Ignoring the potential of empty homes to meet housing supply is a costly environmental mistake. Whilst Britain needs more homes, they don’t all have to be built form scratch. Creating them from empty property saves substantial amounts of embodied carbon dioxide over building new houses, and minimises the amount of land used for development. With house building rates at thier lowest levels since the 1920s there are few other viable ways of providing housing now anyway.
Empty Homes believes that with unprecedented housing need, and unfolding environmental crises, the waste of empty homes cannot be allowed to continue.
During 2013 we will be pursuing our “grass roots” campaign to give communities a stronger chance of getting empty homes inthier neighbourhoods back into us. The campaign calles for
Campaign for a Right to Reclaim
Our proposal would give communities a fighting chance to get abandoned property back into use. We will campaign for this right to be introduced
Get George Clarke’s Empty Homes Manifesto implemented
Presenter of the Great British Property Scandal George Clarke has proposed a 12 point plan to avoid the costly mistakes of the past and stop regeneration programmes creating more empty homes. We will press government to get into action
Full Of Promise
We promised to support local campaigns and intiatives to bring empty homes into sue. Over the next year we aim for the campaign to help bring 356 empty homes back into use through pledges of peoples time, and action on empty homes.
To find out more click on the titles above or use the navigation on the left for more information on our empty homes campaigns.
