Homelessness charity Crisis launch empty homes briefing paper

Homeless charity Crisis have launched their government briefing and recommendations document as part of their Make History series. Outlining the potential opportunity as a solution to housing issues that empty homes provide, this document underpins efforts made by local authorities in making best use of their existing housing stock.

The second briefing in their Make History series, the series aims to set out the charity’s manifesto for a future free from homelessness. Throughout the series, the research and recommendations set out the actions that a new Westminster Government can take to increase the supply of safe, settled and genuinely affordable housing, including by unlocking the potential of empty buildings. In addition to calling for a long-term plan to increase the supply of social rented housing, the briefing provides a detailed examination of the case for a new National Empty Homes Initiative. 

Through consultation with organisations and national agencies involved in empty homes work, and a survey of local authority empty homes practitioners, Crisis found that a new national initiative would have the potential to bring as many as 40,000 long-term empty properties back into use to tackle homelessness over the next four years.   

To achieve this, Crisis are calling on a new Government to: 

• Develop a National Empty homes Initiative to bring more long-term empty homes back into use to prevent and tackle homelessness in partnership with the Empty Homes Agency, the Empty Homes Network, Homes England, the LGA, the GLA, London Councils the NHF and Homes for Cathy; 

• Create a flexible national fund to enable councils and their partners to access both capital funding to lease or acquire and retrofit long-term empty properties and revenue funding to increase council staff capacity to bring buildings back into use. We estimate that an average of £345.5 million per year, over four years, would enable local authorities and their partner agencies to bring up to 40,000 homes back into use to tackle homelessness. 

• Unlock the potential of empty commercial buildings to deliver more good quality, well-located, genuinely affordable settled housing by adopting the recommendations of the joint inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Groups for Housing Market and Housing Delivery and Ending Homelessness. 

To view the briefing document in full, visit:

Make History: Ending Homelessness with Homes – Unlocking the potential of England’s empty buildings