More than 25,000 homes are standing empty in Greater Manchester – despite 100,000 people being on the waiting list for housing.
The M.E.N can reveal today that there are 8,139 unused properties in Manchester alone.
Hotspots include the city-centre – which has 564 empty properties – and deprived wards in east Manchester. There are 522 empty homes in Bradford ward and 455 in Ancoats and Clayton.
Salford has 6,000 empty properties, Bolton 2,414, and Oldham 2,110 – including 1,791 privately-owned. Tameside has 1,859, Bury 1,453 and Trafford 1,302. Wigan and Rochdale were unable to supply figures.
The empty-property ‘mountain’ includes both private and public-sector homes.
Comment: Empty homes are an affront to fairness
Recent figures showed just over 100,000 people on the waiting list for homes across Greater Manchester.
Adebola Laditan, 32, lives on Meech Street, Bradford, with son Tommy, five, and baby daughter Anjola.
She said: "The area feels really empty and I’m scared to go out at night."
Michael McDonagh, 23, lives on nearby Dunston Street, said: "It’s like a ghost town sometimes." Coun Paul Andrews said: "We are doing everything we can to bring these properties back into use – with options including legal action. We are also offering advice to owners so they understand the range of options available to bring the property back into life."
Vanessa Dixon, of housing charity Shelter, said: "Our housing advice service sees people everyday whose lives are affected by Manchester’s shortage of affordable homes.
"Bringing empty homes back into use is a good start, if only part of the solution."
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Having known property owners stung by having DSS tenants (rent unpaid, place trashed, furnishings stolen, locks changed) I can understand some private owners taking a 'twice shy' approach.
In those cases the authorities also start shrugging shoulders when the owners want some form of justice, so not exactly making it look like a good opportunity.
And be interesting to see the breakdown of numbers between public and private ownership of those empty housing. Decent private housing, even those run by tenancy agents in the spirit of Rachman, tends to get snapped up. Boxy, thin-walled, hastily and shoddily build 'apartments' are usually avoided. So it may be much of the empty housing are the kind of glorified tenement flats not fit for habitation.
Id rather sleep rough than have a 'home' on Elysian Street, it looks something off the film east is east.
I ma not clear why there are - according to your report - almost 400 empty homes in Oldham which are not privately owned? The Council does not own houses to let now (the stock was transferred to an RSL last month) so I can only assume that these empty homes are owned by various housing associations and may be, in fact, simply be voids waiting to be re-allocated or perhaps they are are houses bought for re-development?
I think that, in general, the Government should consider giving all local authorities the power to make quick CPO's for the site-value on neglected properties which have been empty a long time so that they can either be urenoveted by their Housing Dept or sold on to a housing association. It is shocking that homes can be left to rot in this way.
There is more than 25,000 homes standing empty in Manchester.
Your forgetting about the houses and flats that are just getting used for giro drops and the tenant is living elsewhere with their partners. The council and DHSS should clamp down on this and make the tenant produce some kind of updated Utilities bill where they can prove they are living in the premises.
This would save millions of pounds in local government. Its because of fraudsters like these people carry out and they get the DHSS to pay their rent that day centres, library, and other facilities has to close down.
According to the MCC webiste empty properties, which are deemed fit for habitation, are exempt from council tax for 6 months, then only liable to half the normal rate.
If this was altered to say, half the normal rate for 3 months, then double for six and keep increasing every 6 months after it would provide a much greater incentive for property holders not to keep empty properties.
Given that councils generally subsidise people who keep properties empty, by exempting them from Council Tax, or allowing them to pay it at reduced rates, it shouldn't be a surprise.
Elysian Street should be a lovely place to live, It faces a very good park with football and tennis facilities. It has great access to both Manchester and Ashton. Such a shame that the Landlords/Councils and above all the residents do not appreciate How nice a place it could be to live.
They're not all homeless, they're not all needy: 100,000 people, waiting for a council house handout. That's the scandal.
Indeed why 'buy into a speculative bubble' to try and get a home to live in, when you could simply never work a day in your life and just get Mr Taxpayer to give you a house for pennies a week.