Housing Shortage or just Under-Utilisation

And on a related topic to the previous post, there are at least two houses quite close to me that have been purchased by developers and extended to their limits, but remain unoccupied. Clearly a Poll Tax would not exactly help with this.

Here’s something sent in by Dopeyf.

Governments of all colours have an obsession with house building when they should be concentrating on utilising the existing housing stock properly.

In case no one has noticed, they stopped building “land” some millions of years ago, you simply cannot expect to continue to build residences without losing open green spaces, and badly needed farmland ( ignoring the crazy antics the EU).

Up until the early/late sixties shops were invariably built with substantial accommodation above them. Now, large retail parks with no attached accommodation are the norm, a huge under-utilisation of space. The obvious answer - every new supermarket must provide accommodation above it.

In the last decade there have been many large regeneration schemes that have involved emptying homes in preparation for refurbishment or demolition. In the last three years falling house prices, restrictions on borrowing money and reduced government funding have caused many of these schemes to stall or even be abandoned. This has led to large areas of many social housing estates standing empty. In addition some regeneration schemes have taken the same approach to privately owned housing. Some of these have led to large numbers of homes standing empty. There are also many developments of new flats in towns and cities that have high vacancy rates. Some are owned by investors who may be waiting for rental prices to pick up, other flats were never sold, and others are incomplete, the development having been abandoned.

At October 2010 (the latest available) some 737,000 (yes nearly ¾ million) homes were long term empty.This does not include housing owned by Government Agencies such as M.O.D and NHS, which will not reveal the extent of empty homes they own.

Being a little flippant this does not include 2nd homes, Blackpool B&Bs and hotels during the winter. Why should owners receive Council Tax reductions for keeping empty houses?

With much less effort, money and time, and aggravation to residents trying to object to yet another block of flats, bringing these homes back into use is a quicker and cheaper way of solving a substantial part of the housing shortage.

According to Tim Dickens, via Twitter, there was a "Big row going on about housing in Area 4 Committee" this very evening. I don't suppose they resolved anything ... But ...