Action on Empty Homes researches and analyses the latest issues and data on the nuanced subject of empty homes and underutilisation. We do this to share learning and to effectively campaign for policy changes. 

Our current key projects are: 

Critically examining emptiness and underutilsation

Action on Empty Homes publishes the most authoritative guide to empty homes data and analyses official data on emptiness and underutilisation. See our Facts and figures page for the numbers in your area - in almost a hundred local council areas at least one home in every 50 is out of use long-term and adding all vacants and second homes reveals that around 1 home in every 25 in England has nobody living in it. Around a million homes without residents.

 

Community-led Empty Homes Retrofit Feasability

This project funded by Esmee Fairbairn Foundation is a one-year feasibility study to test and evaluate the viability of community-led Retrofit Empty Homes Action Partnerships (REHAPs). Each REHAP would fully retrofit empty homes as they are renovated, deliver green work-experience skills and training and build local supply chains, which together will help drive action on climate change at the local level.

We’ll work alongside networks of partners, including community groups, local authorities, training institutions, architects, potential funders and the building trade, to explore and negotiate potential models for fully retrofitting empty homes. We know one-size won’t fit all. Through collaborations, focus groups and workshops, we’ll ‘walk through’ and test each workstream to find a range of project delivery options. The feasibility study will run in three local authority areas.

The project builds on our Community Action on Empty Homes Toolkit, a resource for local authorities and community groups which supports community-led approaches to bringing empty homes into use as affordable housing for local people. It is also informed by our partnerships with the Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN), Scottish Empty Homes Partnership and Welsh School of Architecture on our Retrofit Call to Action launched at the COP26 Fringe.

 

Housing to meet Londoners needs, not investors

Our current project on London's housing crisis aims to build a coalition for change, examining communities' development priorities. This builds on the insights of our London wealth investment in housing project about the hundred thousand plus London homes that aren't housing anyone. Our starting point was to look at London properties bought by investors, who leave them empty to store wealth or to sell-on at a profit. We then looked at other categories of empty housing and how Airbnb has sucked homes out of residential supply.  

The project is supported by Trust for London and aims to start a public conversation about how wealth investment distorts London housing delivery, creating a housing market that does not meet Londoners' housing needs. The project's publications 'Pretty Vacant' (2020) and 'Nobody's Home' (2021) have identified the role of London's dominant development model in building emptiness and locking Londoners out of access to decent affordable housing. This project running to 2024 aims to build a coalition for change

 

Partnerships and coalitions for change

The Campaign Against Empty Homes 

The Campaign Against Empty Homes is a broad coalition which grew out of our campaign against a development model which literally builds empty homes - in other words 'the wrong housing' to meet local needs. It focuses on long-term empty homes, buy to leave empty wealth investments, the growth of short-lets and developments that are building unaffordable housing as 100,000 homeless families remain stuck in insecure and often overcrowded Temporary Accommodation and 1.2million are on the social housing waiting list.

From the green belt to the greenfields and from city centres to coastal resorts, we desperately need to start building homes to meet local housing needs, not investment opportunities for Airbnb landlords and so-called 'second home' owners.

 

The Better Planning Coalition

We are an active member of the Better Planning Coalition a broad coalition of groups working together to try and ensure that the Government's Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill delivers for people, nature and climate. The Bill, which is now progressing through parliament, includes new proposals for increased taxation on second homes and empty homes. The current Bill also proposes a raft of changes to planning and replaces earlier proposals for radical Planning Reform, dropped after widespread opposition.

 

Global Empty Homes Network

We have also collaborated with colleagues in Australia and the United States to launch a Global Empty Homes Network.

If you want to financially support or get involved in any of these projects then please get in touch