Britain does not have a housing crisis but an empty homes crisis

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Thousands of homes in Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire left empty, the Gazette reported on November 24, 2017.

Despite concerns about the lack of housing in the area, almost 3,000 homes are registered as being unoccupied and while the number of empty homes has fallen since 2010 Gloucestershire saw a rise over the last 12 months. Figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government show that there were 2,464 homes in Gloucestershire left empty and 321 in South Gloucestershire.

Well, that is just in Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire. It can be safely assumed that the figure in other counties, towns and cities across Britain would, no doubt, show similar numbers or much greater ones even as, no doubt, would be the case in London.

Britain does not have any housing shortage. The crisis is that of homes being left empty, and that for a number of reasons, but none of the reasons is valid enough when we have homeless individuals and families.

If, in fact, all the homes left empty for the various nefarious reasons would be added together we could, as has been estimated some time back, house our homeless population several times over and that is not even counting those properties that, with very little work, could be turned into perfectly good homes.

There is no need to build more homes; we already have them. We just need to occupy them.

There will, without doubt, now people be popping up out of the woodwork saying that that may all be fine and good but that those homes are in the wrong place and not where people work or want to work.

But that would be rather disingenuous for where the new “affordable” homes are to be build jobs are also not close at hand either in the main which, again, means commuting. That is also true for the proposed – though it has gone rather quiet about it – new garden cities, once called eco-towns.

We do not need such, whether eco-towns or the other, but we need to refurbish old homes and building to be suitable and we must bring the empty homes back into use. If need be those homes – and other suitable buildings for self-conversion – must be taken over by whatever organization or the state and have people put in them.

Alas, we could not possibly do that as that would not give the Tory donor house builders any profits and that just cannot be allowed to happen now, can it. And no profits for the Tory donors would mean fewer and lower donations to the Tories.

© 2017