Grotty Little Town

Swindon never feels like a place that’s at ease with itself. Even its most famous son Andy Partridge described it as a grotty little town. Ok that was nearly 30 years ago and only a few old codgers like me (fondly) remember XTC anymore.

But today’s big story in the local rag seems to suggest not much has changed. A young family living in an overcrowded Swindon council flat point out, quite reasonably, that whilst they are denied a bigger council flat, thousands of homes lie empty across the town. Instead of debating this obvious injustice, the readers’ comments take a less than charitable view of the families motives.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m very much in favour of linking social housing and employment in a positive way to encourage families back into work. But you can hardly blame this family for the failing social housing allocation system and a dysfunctional housing market. I can’t help feeling that a few CPOs aren’t really going to help much either. Who says the council will be a better landlord than the current private owners -that looks suspiciously like an empty council house in the photo.

Instead of getting all personal and blaming everybody let me suggest something more constructive. In Leeds a self-help housing cooperative called Canopy offers families like this one in Swindon the accommodation they need. But it’s no hand out. To earn a place to live, residents volunteer to renovate empty derelict buildings. The process allows residents to develop new building skills and also to develop their future house in the way they want it. Surely a much more positive solution than anything suggested by the people of Swindon.

What’s The Truth About The £200 million Empty Homes Fund?

Many people seem to be under the impression that the government has launched a fund to enable councils and housing associations to buy up empty homes. Nice idea, but unfortunately untrue. Housing Minister Iain Wright, explained earlier in the week that what had happened was that the Housing Corporation had granted an extra £200 million to help housing associations buy property from developers. Amazingly despite this, two days later we find here the deputy Prime Minister. Standing in for Gordon Brown on Friday coming out with the empty homes fund line again. Although as Vince Cable pointed out on Friday, £200 million wouldn’t make much difference anyway, and he rightly called for a larger fund that would allow housing associations to buy more empty homes. The Times summarised his point with this telling graphic.

Empty Homes Up Again

Last month we reported that numbers of empty homes had gone up for the first time in 9 years. My prediction then was that this was the start of a trend rather than a blip. Some people disagreed. Well sorry to say told you so. But here is the latest information from 6months later released today in a PQ
Number of empty homes in England October 2006: 748,159
Number of empty homes in England October 2007: 762,635The anoraks might spot that both these figures are greater than the 693,000 we reported last month. The reason is these figures are taken directly from council tax records, the 693,000 is a sum of every council’s own figures.

Copper theft from empty homes

Don’t get me wrong I’m all for recycling metals; especially copper. Smelting copper from its raw state requires a horrific amount of energy, more than any other metal. Copper ore it seems is only to be found in beautiful remote parts of Chile, Peru, and Zambia that I’d rather weren’t torn to pieces with open cast mining operations. If that weren’t enough it’s running out anyway This guy reckons there’s only 26 years worth left. So with China’s economic boom demanding huge supplies of the stuff it’s little surprise that it’s trading at record prices; $8,500 a tonne, earlier this month. I was not shocked to hear that the only person with enough money to pay £40 million for a Monet this week was a copper dealer. What’s this got to do with empty homes? Well it seems that, abandoned homes have become the easiest place for the less scrupulous dealers to source the metal. This story is just one of many reporting the problem in the United States, and I’ve heard of cases in the UK too. What this of course does is hugely bump up the costs of refurbishing the property and store up future demand for the metal when all the stolen pipes need to be replaced when the property market turns up again. The moral of the story for property owners is surely don’t allow your property to become empty. Accepting a lower rent may be hard to swallow, but the alternative could be a lot more expensive.

Empty Homes spread West Nile Virus

For years I have been talking about the harmful effects that empty homes have on communities, but I have never thought of this one before. Happily for us West Nile Virus has never been identified in the UK, and in any case I doubt that many empty homes here have swimming pools. If I’m wrong perhaps we will need to start breeding Pac-man fish!

Consequences

If I was going to choose a media outlet for the virtues of short life housing co-ops The John Gaunt show on Talk Sport radio probably wasn’t it. But that was what I tried to do this week. John Gaunt or “Gaunty” as I was invited to call to him, was, it turns out, not particularly interested in the merits of housing cooperatives. He was rather more exercised by this article in the Daily Mail. “You” he barked “know nothing. Why can’t I buy as many homes as I want and leave them empty without busy bodies like you telling me what to do?”
“You can do what ever you want “ I suggested “ but there are consequences to what you do, leaving a property empty has effects on neighboring property and frankly is a pretty poor business model for investment”
“Consequences!” He yelled “you said consequences, you’re threatening me!” “This is a free country I’ll do whatever I like without communists like you telling me what I can and can’t do!”

I must confess to not being a regular listener to Gaunty’s previous broadcasts. If I had I might have realsied that his particular style was not one for exploring subtleties and weighted arguments.

I checked out the Daily Mail story and found it to be true, at least in the case of Camden. There is a link to the Squatters Advisory Service on their website, and they have been brave enough not to cave in and take it down. I can’t say I feel quite as outraged by this as The Daily Mail, their readers or “Gaunty” It is after all an option open to people looking for housing, even if it is one with rather one-sided benefits.
What does worry me however, is that Camden, like most councils, offer a list of options which are heavy on social housing and very light on any form of self help for people in housing need.

Housing Coops and property guardian companies provide short-term housing out of property that is temporarily empty. They offer an alternative form of housing that does make use of empty property, provide benefits for the owner and provides homes for those in housing need without creating a dependency for social housing. I can’t understand why it is not more widely promoted by councils. Even “Guanty” as he cut me off muttered, “actually I agree with him”

Empty homes petition

My thanks to Charles Bazlinton for starting the empty homes petition on the No. 10 E-petition site. I’d urge and encourage you to sign up.

Why the Government must do something about Britain’s empty properties

My thanks again to Anne Ashworth for another excellent opinion piece in the Times: see here

Good news but is the government still missing the point on empty homes?

Government announcements on empty homes are like buses you wait ages for one then four turn up at once. So it was with last week’s comprehensive spending review. The chancellor announced four changes, three of which will undoubtedly help return more of England’s 670,000 empty dwellings into homes and one that highlights why the government is still missing the point.

Firstly the good news: anachronistic VAT rules that deem building a new house is zero rated but refurbishing empty homes is charged 17.5% have been amended. Now works to renovate homes empty for two years or more will be charged at 5% VAT (Down from three years). A small tweak perhaps, but it will make it more cost effective to bring about 100,000 empty homes back into use. In a property market governed by profit margins this is bound to have a positive effect.
Secondly the government is to review council tax discounts for empty homes. Currently homes are exempt from council tax for up to twelve months after they become empty. Many then enjoy a 50% discount for as long as they remain unoccupied. Councils can remove the discount but only about half have done so. We calculate that half a million empty homes receive a discount or are exempt from council tax. A public subsidy for keeping homes empty,

Thirdly the government is to include reused empty homes within the new housing and planning delivery grant. Reusing empty homes creates new housing just as well as building new homes but with reduced environmental impact and less land take. In our view rewarding council’s for bringing empty homes back into use will help increase housing supply.

So why is the government still missing the point? For that we need to look at the fourth and less welcome announcement. The government has removed the requirement for local authorities to report the number of empty homes they have returned to use. Their claim that the move reduces the bureaucracy and burdens on local authorities would be more plausible had they not introduced a whole raft of new indicators on building new homes at the same time. It rather begs the question how will the government reward councils for bringing empty homes back into use if it no longer wants to know what they are doing about it? On a wider level it also illustrates their thinking. They have listened and responded to ideas that will help, but on a political level they still don’t appear to accept that getting more homes back into use will increase the numbers of available homes. It’s a shame. The government is introducing measures that really could help but appears blind to their potential.

Conservative calls for extending EDMOs

Last year the Conservatives were calling for the abolition of EDMOs, today a prospective Conservative candidate, Lee Martin, is calling for them to be extended to housing associations. He makes the point that local Sunderland housing association gentoo (no capital letter) has 1253 empty homes.

No we don’t say gentoo. Only “640 are gearing up to be demolished to enable gentoo to continue to provide homes for the future". Not sure I understand the logic, but this is not the first time this blog has reported problems of empty homes hanging around waiting to be demolished in Sunderland see this from last year.

Interesting idea on the EDMOs though. What bothers me is how this could actually work. The local authority would take over management of the property. The problem is they got rid of their property management function when they transferred their housing stock. The logical solution is that they could get the new stock transfer housing association to do it on their behalf. Who are they? gentoo.

Gentoo in case you were wondering is the new name for Sunderland Housing Group. Of all the strange names rebranded housing associations have given themselves this must be the worst. According to this the word comes either from a derogatory term for Hindus or a species of penguin.