{"id":6898,"date":"2013-12-09T18:26:34","date_gmt":"2013-12-09T18:26:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ihbconline.co.uk\/newsachive\/?p=6898"},"modified":"2013-12-09T18:26:34","modified_gmt":"2013-12-09T18:26:34","slug":"research-use-empty-homes-to-tackle-housing-shortage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=6898","title":{"rendered":"Research: Use empty homes to tackle housing shortage"},"content":{"rendered":"

A reintroduction of homesteading \u2013 where empty homes are sold at a discount to people who then renovate them \u2013 could help bring some of England\u2019s 710,000 empty homes back into use, new research finds, as a homesteading revival could help turn vacant properties into useful homes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The charity Empty Homes writes:
\n<\/span>To coincide with National Empty Homes Week (25th\u00a0<\/sup>\u2013 29th November), new research has been released looking at ways of bringing some of England\u2019s 710,000 empty homes back into affordable use.<\/p>\n

Independent research, undertaken by researchers at the University of Sheffield, but in collaboration with the charity\u00a0Empty Homes<\/i>, looked at how the number of empty homes in England could be reduced through a scheme known as homesteading.<\/p>\n

Homesteading, is a process where empty homes are sold at a discount to people who renovate them to create their own homes. The concept was popular in the 1970\u2019s and the 1980\u2019s but has fallen almost entirely out of use over the last 20 years.<\/p>\n

Due to the shortage of housing stock in the UK, the charity\u00a0Empty<\/i>\u00a0Homes<\/i>, believes that the time is now right for a national homesteading program to be introduced so that the process can help unlock some apparently intractable empty homes problems.<\/p>\n

In particular, homesteading could make a real difference in the North of England where local authorities continue to hold a significant number of empty properties as a result of the housing market renewal programme\u00a0\u00a0(see Editors\u2019 Note 1).\u00a0\u00a0These houses would have been demolished but the demise of the programme meant that they were spared as local authorities no longer had the funds to demolish them.\u00a0\u00a0With little public money available to bring them back into use, homesteading could offer local authorities a positive and sensible way forward in dealing with these empty properties.<\/p>\n

Does Homesteading work? Yes. In 2012, the charity\u00a0Empty Homes<\/i>\u00a0helped Stoke City Council develop a homesteading programme for two areas of the city where houses had previously been acquired for clearance. The \u2018Houses for \u00a31\u2019 programme was launched in early 2013, allowing people to buy houses for \u00a31 on condition they renovated them and lived in them as their sole home.<\/p>\n

The programme made 35 houses available for sale, and proved incredibly popular with several thousand applications being received from prospective purchasers.<\/p>\n

Similar schemes inspired by the Stoke programme have subsequently been launched in both Liverpool and Oldham.<\/p>\n

Key findings from the research<\/span><\/p>\n

The research found that homesteading:<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0was simple to understand for local government officials, the media and the wider public.<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0was being undertaken by a small but growing number of enthusiastic local authorities, social landlords and practitioners.<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0was the subject of massive local demand.<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0provided social landlords with an affordable and high-profile means of bringing empty properties back into use to meet local housing needs.<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0provided opportunities for relatively low-income households to become home-owners.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The researchers identified a number of common characteristics that contributed to the success of existing homesteading schemes.\u00a0\u00a0These included:<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0the championing of homesteading by energetic and enthusiastic local government officers.<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0a pool of publicly-owned empty properties that had been acquired as a result of the now defunct housing market renewal programme<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0a learning approach that included a willingness to innovate, take risks, develop creative approaches and learn from mistakes.<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0a political commitment to bringing empty homes back into use .<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0the careful selection of properties suitable for homesteading in terms of their structural condition and location.<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0the availability of grant funding.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Key recommendations from the report:<\/span><\/p>\n

Policy-makers should consider the following:<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Further encouragement of homesteading via the government\u2019s Empty Homes funding with explicit targets for homesteading in each local authority area, i.e.\u00a0\u00a0a pre-determined percentage of empty homes should be brought back into use via homesteading.<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Publication of national guidance on homesteading for elected members, local authority officers, mortgage-lenders and prospective homesteaders, incorporating case studies and best practice advice.<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The completion of further research to:<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0better understand the profiles and motivations of actual and potential homesteaders<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0evaluate the effectiveness of current homesteading schemes and understand the geography of homesteading, its potential for stabilizing communities and the possible risks of gentrification<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0better understand the role of crowd-sourcing in the reporting of empty homes and the identification of their owners<\/p>\n

David Ireland OBE, Chief Executive of Empty Homes, said: \u2018We know that Homesteading works.\u00a0\u00a0There is a clear demand from prospective homeowners for empty homes and this research shows that there are many things which policy makers can take on board which will enable a major expansion in the scale of homesteading in the UK.<\/p>\n

\u2018We hope that this research will provide the spring-board to enable thousands of empty properties to be brought back into affordable use.\u00a0\u00a0We will continue to push for a national homesteading programme to be introduced.\u2019<\/p>\n

Lee Crookes and Win Greenhalgh, authors of the report, said: \u2018There are over 710,000 empty properties in England alone and with over 1.2 million people on housing waiting lists throughout England, it makes total economic and social sense to introduce a scheme such as homesteading into the \u2018housing toolbox\u2019 of local authorities.\u00a0\u00a0All the research shows that homesteading works \u2013 it is now down to policy makers and politicians to support and extend the use of homesteading as part of their broader efforts to tackle the problem of empty homes.\u2019<\/p>\n

For Empty Homes see<\/span>:\u00a0http:\/\/www.emptyhomes.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Read the Press Release at<\/span>: LINK<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A reintroduction of homesteading \u2013 where empty homes are sold at a discount to people who then renovate them \u2013 could help bring some of England\u2019s 710,000 empty homes back into use, new research finds, as a homesteading revival could … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sector-newsblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6899,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6898\/revisions\/6899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}