What is most obscene in the UK in 2018: children living in inadequate hostels that will affect their life opportunities into adulthood; homeless people freezing on our streets; or properties standing empty while local councils hand out public money to private landlords?

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We need a new mass movement, including occupying empty properties in every UK city, in support and solidarity for those who have no home.

Making visible the number of empty properties through occupying them is an important strategy, while we must also have an honest debate about homelessness that includes talking about the conditions and practices that have helped create it.

Despite a desperate need for housing, properties across the country lie empty. The government’s own figures show that 200,000 properties have been empty for six months or more and LibDem research has revealed that 11,000 homes have been lying empty for more than 10 years.

Over 11,000 homes have stood empty for at least 10 years, data shows Read more

Local councils have powers to take over these empty properties and

return them to use as homes through empty dwelling

management orders (Edmos) but too few actually do this.

Part of the problem is that almost all local councils in the UK now rely on private landlords to house those in need of social housing. Most local authorities have multi-agency schemes and relationships with the private rented sector providing loans for deposits for recommended private landlords that accept people receiving housing benefit. Private renting is a game of two halves: landlords and letting agencies that refuse to rent to those on housing benefit, and landlords who actively use local authority incentives to fill the gaps left by a lack of council housing. Payments are offered to landlords who take on tenants put forward by the council on long-term contracts. The rent for these tenancies is paid in housing benefit claimed by the tenant. Other schemes exist for landlords who lease their properties to councils for up to five years and the local council paying the deposit.

Despite these arrangements, homes are left empty and people are left without homes and in the middle of winter, homeless people seem to become more visible. Some, including the leader of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, seem to find this obscene. But most of us acknowledge the collective damage done to a society with tents and sleeping bags on the streets, a society in which there are 130,000 children without a permanent home.



Serious questions need to be asked, not just about empty properties but also about the role that housing plays in our social and national identity.

As a nation we often argue that a health service that is available and free at the point of need is crucial for our public, collective and social good. At the same time we make the arguments that a universal education system is also an important public good for the health and wealth of the nation. Yet without a home, a place of security, a safe haven to lick our wounds, a quiet place to do homework our public health and education system can never deliver the public good we would hope for and need.

If local authorities and national governments cannot or will not put the public good - our basic human right to a safe and secure place - at the top of their agendas,then we will have to ensure ourselves that this need is met.

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We have done this before. In the summer of 1946, tens of thousands of people, mainly ex-servicemen and women and their families, moved into empty

military camps around Britain.



Throughout the autumn of 1946, families moved into empty hotel rooms and flats in London, and a show of support and anger led to the Great Sunday Squat on 8 September 1946, when about 1,500 people took over empty flats in Kensington, Pimlico and St John’s Wood.

The visibility of empty properties should be an obscenity that we should not tolerate as a society while people sleep on our streets in tents. If local authorities will not tackle the rise of empty properties it is time to show solidarity with mass occupation and bring back from 1946 the spirit of a more hopeful democracy.

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