affordable housing

Empty homes does not feature in the Mayor's introduction to this Housing Strategy, nor in Government's repsonse to the strategy, although rough sleeping is highlighted in both.  However, the Strategy does containe extensive reference to empty homes (36 mentions counted).  Section 2.3 contains the Mayoral vision to "deliver anf maintain a reduction in the number of long-term empty and derelict buildings - transforming these into homes for Londoners".

The key objective is to reduce the number of long-term empty dwellings to 1% or less of dwelling stock.  The current figure is 1.1% - so a reduction of 0.1% overall - or perhaps more usefully a 9% reduction in the total number of long-term empties. It will be interesting to see whether the figures are derived from CTB or HSSA returns and what the un-rounded figures are.

Interestingly, the audit of empty homes being co-ordinated by the London sub-regions is of homes empty for more than 1 year - a perhaps more practically useful defintion of a long-tem empty home. (NAEPP monitoring guidelines currently refer to 3 periods - under 6 months, 6 months to 2 years, and over 2 years.)

Boris seems to have gone native on EDMOs: "Where other measures fail, the Mayor encourages boroughs to use their powers of enforcement through legal sanctions, including the use of Compulsory Purchase Orders and EDMOs."  Boris obviously grasps what bringing longer-term empty homes back into use involves.

This 30-page document is of relevance to all empty homes practitioners not just those in London. There are many good (London-based) best-practice examples and case studies.

Jointly produced with the IdEA, this 28-page guide is probably the best overview of empty homes work for the local authority practitioner currently available.

This is the government's position at the beginning of the 3-year HPDG funding programme.  (There was further consultation after this for years 2 and 3 of the programme).

Links to the HCA Capital Funding Guide web-page for Temporary Social Housing Grant

Thanks to Graham Everett for drawing our attention to this useful Briefing paper which has links to other resources and organisations involved in empty homes work, including short-life bodies and co-ops as well as RSLs.

This is the first edition of A NAEPP Briefing paper that describes the results of an analysis of the published policies of the main political parties in respect of empty homes in the build-up to the 2010 General Election.  It was pubilshed Novermber 2009 and has since been updated. .