There are almost 720,000 empty homes in England. And many more on social housing waiting lists - so why aren't we better using one to help solve the other, and is it a case of a missed opportunity?
No one thinks we shouldn’t utilise existing homes. Literally any strategy does so, including the existing, failing paradigm and anything along the scale to full state-ownership of all property would of course involve existing homes.
But the mooted upsides to the (vague) suggestion to ‘use empty homes’ are massively outweighed by the downsides: there aren’t enough of them; they’re usually ‘empty’ for a perfectly good reason (e.g., dilapidation); you simply must have some empty homes, under any system, in order to meet people’s needs; it’s difficult to create incentives that don’t already exist in the current system. Etc. And there’s the opportunity cost of time spent trying to make work a policy that cannot work! Governments don’t have infinite time so it’s vital that they focus on good policies.
No one thinks we shouldn’t utilise existing homes. Literally any strategy does so, including the existing, failing paradigm and anything along the scale to full state-ownership of all property would of course involve existing homes.
But the mooted upsides to the (vague) suggestion to ‘use empty homes’ are massively outweighed by the downsides: there aren’t enough of them; they’re usually ‘empty’ for a perfectly good reason (e.g., dilapidation); you simply must have some empty homes, under any system, in order to meet people’s needs; it’s difficult to create incentives that don’t already exist in the current system. Etc. And there’s the opportunity cost of time spent trying to make work a policy that cannot work! Governments don’t have infinite time so it’s vital that they focus on good policies.