Resumen de Activating vacant stock and land
More than 11 million homes lie empty across Europe: of course, not all are in the right places, but there is enough vacant housing to address homelessness1, twice over.This is a waste. Especially in cities, where low-income households are desperately searching for affordable, decent housing; and homelessness is rising. Empty homes have negative effects on neighbourhoods, leading to decay, vandalism and insecurity. Bringing empty homes into use helps neighbourhoods. Creating homes from empty properties also saves substantial amounts of material compared to building new homes and minimises the amount of land used for development. It makes environmental sense to activate vacant stock.2So why isn’t this happening (much more)?We need to distinguish involuntary vacancy from speculative vacancy. The first can be the result of various phenomena including small property owners lacking knowledge or financial means to renovate and subsequently rent out dwellings . Most of the housing solutions presented here aim to tackle this problem. The typical scheme being the transfer of empty properties to organisations which refurbish them before offering them at affordable rents , providing social assistance to vulnerable tenants. That’s the carrot approach, which works fine in many cases.What—in my personal point of view—is lacking are successful examples of the stick approach. Real estate speculation is widespread, not only in a classical form—often linked to planned urban regeneration processes—but also in a modern version, where housing is treated as a commodity – a vehicle for investment rather than a social good: the financialisation of housing.3 Governments are struggling to tackle speculative vacancy. Promoting successful examples of compulsory measures to let out empty dwellings and other initiatives could be of great use to local authorities and housing activists. Maybe an idea for a next issue of another 50 Innovative Housing Solutions?
