Empty Homes

For the year of 2023, Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index (which ranks countries by experts’ views of possible corruption in public services) placed the UK at its lowest position since research was revamped in 2012. 

Previously ranked between 8th and 11th most transparent country in the world from 2012 to 2021, the UK then tumbled to 18th in 2022 before slithering off to joint-20th in 2023. Hell knows where we are now.

In the 1970s, the UK was one of the most equal of rich countries. Today, it is only second to the US as the most unequal, and therefore cruelest, rich country in the world. So much for the Land of The Free. By grotesque punitive state action, taken to the most vulnerable by way of sanction, penalty, fine, rent hike, utility price shock, routine surplus charges (horribly coined as The Poverty Premium), mass unemployment and the blasted ULEZ, the UK has become the Land of The Fee. 

Today, the most expensive costs for councils are those attached to vulnerable children, young families and the homeless - people with nothing. Regarded as such, they are kicked from doss house to squalid bedsit to rat-infested hostel, and then perhaps, finally, a mould-infested flat to call ‘the forever home’. 

After well over a decade of 40% budget cuts, councils have been stroked and rubbed to comply with the jumble sale scrum that is Whitehall, leaving them bereft of imagination, ambition, spirit and even will, while charitable organisations, groups and individuals do their best to bring order to the lunacy of lawgivers. 

Due to the nature of this severely depressive state, the gutless government will now allow councils to sell off yet more of their property and assets in order to fund the £4 billion deficit that was withheld from them. Crafty foxes. Candy from a baby. 

The latest £2.6 billion ‘overspend’ on asylum seeker hotels - another viciously divisive homelessness issue - would have paid for two-thirds of that, but it will now go to hotel proprietors, lawyers, landowners and consultants.

So who are the UK’s councils and therefore we (the people that pay for those councils to exist) in debt to? Where does all that money wobble off to and why is there such a dire housing shortage? Why are rents soaring and why are there so many homeless people? Why is there no constructive work for young people and no respectable provision for the elderly?

The answer is simple: Companies have taken over countries, and they’re holding entire economies to ransom. The animals have taken over the zoo. Just look at shareholders withholding funds for crucial infrastructure at Thames Water. 

Ever since the eighties, Britain has raucously sold its soul to big business, whose only purpose is profit at its most lucrative.

There have always been whispering tricksters and dodgy statesmen, but the two hands around the leathery old neck of what was once Great Britain are those same hands that, only forty years ago, began to finger their way to an obscene fortune; the left hand of the property market and the right hand of private investment in public services.

These two very firm hands are slowly strangling the life out of us, while extracting assets with little judders to the neck. Eye-popping profits and mouthwatering fraud abound as the two solid bankers hold sway over the shameful mess. Statesmen take swipes and cuts while Whitehall pleads ignorance. Outsourcing? What’s that? 

To any western government, property market bouyancy is not only crucial for voter support. It’s absolutely essential for the maintenance and acceleration of personal wealth, a must in the capitalist bible, but while that was relevant for the last generation, today’s ordinary young person, even with a very good degree, cannot  earnestly imagine owning a property without assuming the life of a workaholic hermit for a gruelling fifteen years stretch, effectively cancelling life’s little pleasures to then be chained to a mortgage for a further thirty years. The joys indeed. 

Inequality, the benchmark for state cruelty, is now nailed, screwed and glued into the structural foundation of Britain’s public services to the tune of £125 billion a year. That would pay for all education in the UK (£116 billion) but instead, your government spends your money making sure that the divide between the rich and the poor grows or at least stays put. 

Bullish house prices depend on a shortage of housing stock, the basic ‘supply and demand’ principle; apples and bananas. By keeping supply low, demand and therefore prices remain dependably high. Once the relatively few own the vast majority of the decent property, as is the case today, councils, having sold off two-thirds of their own stock over the last forty years, are forced to hobble about town sucking up to landlords like out-of-work labourers on the sponge for a spot of work. Desperate to accommodate their most vulnerable and troubled inhabitants - the homeless, the physically and mentally help-dependent, young families, prison and care leavers - deals are done and the game groans on.

As a buffer against sufferance for taking charge of those in desperate need, a landlord will require an inflated rent, even when only the worst of his properties is offered to the council, bait for favour. Consequently, poor living conditions persist and the council picks up the pieces while the landlord pockets a very healthy rent. 

Once this exchange is repeated over decades and centuries, the council becomes the faithful skivvy of the landlord and to hell with homelessness (from which the low-life landlord benefits by way of exploitation). When I say ‘landlord’ I also mean ‘bank’. 

My solution to this disgusting old problem is simple. 

To greatly reduce homelessness and almost eradicate council waiting lists, a law could be passed for the compulsory purchasing or letting of all flats and houses that have been empty for more than nine years. Under the Empty Home law, those properties would then be let to individuals for free for a period of nine years. This would include flats above shops and disused shops, which are many. Some have not been used or lived in for decades. There are an estimated three million properties nationally that come under this category. 

If the owner of an empty property chose not to join the project, that person or bank would be required under law to sell the property by auction or private sale in order to make a just return. If a property was not sold within six months from the date of council intervention, the council would automatically buy it at two-thirds of market value, in order to offer it as a tenancy, free of charge, made available for use within six months from its purchase, allowing each empty property’s intervention a maximum one-year turnaround from empty to purposeful. 

Granted, many properties would be sold to the highest bidder on the open market but even if a third, one million, were purchased and let to tenants by councils, the need for new housing stock would be almost eradicated. Make full use of stock, then develop where necessary around the traditional landscape. Many of the long-term empty properties are council-owned and would automatically join the project. Church-owned property caretakers would be encouraged to join the project. 

For a nine-year assured tenancy, free of rent, tenants would be required to pay bills and council tax. Basic provisions for electricity, central heating and insulation would be arranged by the council. Most empty properties would have utilities in place already. General improvement to the above and to decoration would be made before the tenancy began. The average tenant would have been on a council’s waiting list for many years, most likely spent in squalid temporary accommodation at great expense to the council (a 7 square metre room at a hostel costs at least £1000 a month in rent per person).

Much like a homeowner, upon entry, each tenant would then be responsible for maintaining all aspects of the property. Basic furnishings and white goods would be provided and, for nine years, that person would have a secure place to live, perhaps for the first time ever. A chance, and a very convenient life-saver for the government, this law would redefine the purpose of local authority, providing real jobs too. 

Just imagine the savings for the state. General standards of community living would undoubtedly increase, relieving the health, education and police services, to name but a few of those constantly stretched. 

As ‘empty houses’ are essentially dead stock in the property market, their use as part of the tenancy project wouldn’t necessarily encroach on the private housing market, so prices may be excused for remaining stable. They may even flourish with better general standards of living, although flooding the market with extra homes may cause stagnation to prices.

But by purchasing a million homes, council housing waiting lists would be eased to a minimum within three to four years, almost making homelessness a thing of the past (I do not believe that homelessness can be completely eradicated, even with the best intention).

The only person, or entity, that might think they had been hard done by with this Empty Homes law would be the owner of an empty property, but if they hadn’t been bothered to let or sell it in nine years plus, why worry? If a landlord chose to join the project, their property would be brought up to a good standard by the council and maintained by the tenant, much better than letting it rot. Also, their own philanthropic kindness could be regaled within the community at given gatherings as the actions of a living deity. And what applause! Excellent behaviour, and with genuine thanks. It is not unlikely that a fair few landlords would end up donating their properties to the tenancy project as a gesture of goodwill. Perhaps. 

Away from housing and onto the terrible plight of vulnerable children and that of children’s services, Rishi’s wife has already got her mitts on the blighters with contracts worth billions. 

Vulnerable children, many treated like asylum seekers, are now one of the most valuable private investment schemes in today’s grubby public services market. It’s boom time for the bankers but the sector’s gone bust. It’s been on its knees for years, and now, with Rishi’s help, children’s services are in such appalling tatters that we should accept being consumed by private bodies, much like council stock. 

Those private firms already in charge of children’s services made a whopping £300 million profit last year, and that’s after the big boys squirreled away their haul. While councils like Hastings crumble into the sea, sweeping the homeless off the beach in their wake, shareholders rub their hands in warm drawing rooms. 

During these vile times, there is no place for the children lost in the rubble of western democracy, little pinballs smacked around the dirty, noisy machine till they drop into the void, only to be spat out again for another go, if they’re lucky.

Like a fox outside a chicken coop, private investment has encircled the state in order to plunder stock at children’s services. Demand in the sector is expected to rise for the foreseeable future, especially after the appalling trauma children have suffered in recent years (see Raac, Covid, temporary housing, illiteracy, alienation, PTSD, mould infection, starvation). One in four UK children lives in absolute poverty. 

Profits for the private sector from children’s services alone will probably quadruple within five years, by which time most if not all children’s services will have been sold off. 

In this grave new world , heads of council will be left like chained dogs at their own gate, unleashed twice daily for ten minutes to sniff at their bank master’s coattails and look up mournfully while those masters anxiously tap their feet, waiting for their sack of gold from the taxpayer, investors quietly appeased by the scheme. Leaving a few old sausages for the dogs, their master retreats. 

Pushing kids off cliffs or just jostling them around the country (displacement justifies a higher cost per child), the game rattles on and only the bank wins.

But, what if the government gradually bought back children’s services from the private sector? By paying a reasonable yearly dividend, without initially buying back shares, it could then transform the services to strengthen transparency and eradicate corruption (organised waste), making it a public entity for the benefit of the children it serves. By getting rid of the pesky termites at the bottom of the pirates’ main mast, the ship would be sturdy again.

By concurrently instructing councils to purchase empty properties, or at least secure a sale for their availability, there would be decent homes for children and young families in dire need. In ten years, having saved many billions from poor temporary housing and general waste, the bankers’ private investment scheme for children’s services would have stabilised adequately to buy back all shares compulsorily and at a fair price to all concerned. At that time, we would no longer be required to bear any relations with the private sector. 

Another important measure, though not an easy one to implement, would be the dismissal of parliament and the formation of a decentralization program throughout the UK, making local councils solely responsible for their own governance within their county. Every known taxed pound earned within a county would be retrieved by that same governing county and made available for use within each of its councils. Each county would provide its own energy through wind farms, preferably on land to save on maintenance costs, for use within that county. Information technology systems (not Horizon) could easily manage each county’s finances, all viewable by the public. 

Westminster and all its property and assets could then be shared equally among the counties. At that time, we could make good use of central government buildings. Personally, I vote (and I have never voted, apart from in the EU referendum) for the Houses of Parliament to be turned into the world’s greatest dance arena, for all types of music.

But hurry! Fail we may, sail we must! ‘Companies before countries’ is the call of the wild and the wolves are fast approaching.