Rehousing issue for Grenfell Towers survivors

We have relatives who live mainly in France but have a small flat near London.
I presume some people would think it would be OK for the State to requisition the London property if they have not lived in it for a while.

Requisitioning is another word for stealing someone else's property.
Whole villages were requisitioned during the war and people have never been able to return to their homes.

jane what about the requisitioning by the UK government?

Blimey they've requisitioned whole islands and chucked the entire population off.

If these empty properties are luxurious it would take ages to split them into flats , why not move those who live alone in their own three bedroomed houses into one bedroomed accommodation and move families into the houses ?

Requisitioning of Haringey homes.

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jul/05/the-ideological-battle-for-decent-housing-and-decent-politics-in-haringey

Up the revolution comrades

Remember John Prescott's Pathfinder project?

Many people were not at all happy to have their treasured homes demolished.
www.theguardian.com/society/2007/nov/09/comment.housing
There was also a tv programme about it, heartbreaking to hear their stories.

I remember it. My sister was looking forward to having her street in Hull regenerated through it.
Unfortunately when they reached the front of the queue the government stopped it, and the street was only half regenerated on the cheap.
All the houses were clad, but as they were houses not high rise blocks, they appear to be okay.
Heartbreaking to hear the problems now in their terraces.

However, my point was that it seems to be okay to have the homes of the poor requisitioned, but not those of the rich which have been empty for up to 15 years.
Why do you think that is?
My sister's house was not a social house, by the way.
They were to be moved out to another house for up to a year. Then they could have decided whether they wanted to stay where they were or move back to their previous homes, having been given extra gardens, etc.

There are areas of London where large numbers of flats and houses are unoccupied. People buy them solely for investment:

Observer 2015
"Racine [a restaurant owner who has had to sell up] is the latest victim of what some have called “lights-out London” where absentee owners push up property prices without contributing to the local economy. When Racine opened in 2002 the average price of a Knightsbridge home was £745,000; now it is £3.4m. There are an estimated 22,000 empty properties in London, partly a consequence of the city’s status as what the novelist William Gibson has called “the natural home of a sometimes slightly dodgy flight capital”. "

This has encouraged developers to build more and more of these properties, with ever-increasing prices, which has a knock-on effect for everybody else. Many people who would previously have been thought of as very well off can no longer afford to buy, or rent, in inner London. They are moving out to what were formerly affordable areas for people on average salaries - and so pushing up prices there too. So the housing market is being artificially over-heated everywhere, but particularly in the south east.

This was reported in the Guardian in 2016:

"Tens of thousands of London homes have been left uninhabited for so long they are considered “long-term vacant” with more than 1,100 of them empty for over a decade, according to data obtained by the Guardian.

"Despite a chronic shortage of housing in the capital, more than 22,000 homes have been left empty by their owners for longer than six months, data received from London boroughs in response to freedom of information requests has revealed.

"Councils looking to bring vacant properties back into use have a range of options, including levying an additional rate of council tax, helping homeowners with the cost of repairs, or even compulsory purchase orders.

"Since April 2013 councils have been able to impose a punitive “empty homes premium” of an additional 50% council tax, disincentivising homeowners from admitting that they are leaving properties empty.

"... some councils are beginning to take action against the phenomenon of “buy to leave”, whereby asset speculators buy homes with the intention of leaving them uninhabited so as to take maximum advantage of spiralling London property prices.

And this Guardian article, also from 2016:

"Freedom of information requests by Inside Housing show that of the £1bn raised since 2012 to replace right to buy, £27.3m of it has been used to buy back homes sold under right to buy.

"The government encourages the sale of council houses by offering attractive discounts to tenants, who understandably choose to buy. The council is then faced with dwindling stocks while waiting lists lengthen and homelessness spikes. So it uses its cash to buy back the homes it could not afford to lose in the first place."

So it seems councils have the power to buy properties, and some councils do exactly that. K&C has, as people must have read in the newspapers, £374 million at its disposal. It is the richest council in the country and if poorer councils can do it, then why can't K&C?

I am not going to shed any tears over people who leave their properties unoccupied for years just to inflate their already inflated wealth, at a time while thousands are effectively homeless. And you may ask why so many of these investors choose London. Some commentators have suggested it is because in many other countries it is either not allowed - or made very difficult - for non-residents to purchase property, or there is a significant financial cost to be paid to the government for doing so.

durhamjens post at 10.23.
If anyone has read it I would like to add something. John Snow, had one of the councillors from Haringey on channel 4 news a couple of days ago.
He interrogated her in depth on this subject of public/private ownership. He was very impressed by her answers and in the end admitted that it was a very good idea.

You are missing the point, petra. It seems it's okay to do it to poor residents of Haringey, but not rich non-residents of Kensington.

Which are they Jen? Landlords or non residents of their own property which they have bought

This is interesting.

www.24housing.co.uk/news/nearly-one-in-three-houses-dont-get-built-despite-being-given-go-ahead/

Nearly one in two homes in London that have been given planning permission have not been built.

Have you read what I just posted anniebach? A significant proportion of the flats and houses in central London and surrounding areas (22,000 according to figures collected) are left empty for substantial periods of time, not uncommonly several years. The report referred to "lights-out" areas in central London which are like ghost towns because so many of the properties are empty.

Why do you keep going on about landlords?

I imagine if you had nowhere - or nowhere affordable or habitable - to live and were surrounded by empty properties owned by non-residents purely in order to add to their evermore valuable financial portfolio, you might think something should be done about it.

www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2017/07/06/it-didn-t-take-long-for-sympathy-for-grenfell-survivors-to-t

Jen your link stated land lords, so I have asked about these you have chosen not to give an answer

And Jen, no I would not expect people to lose their property because I was in need of a home .

I imagine no one is answering your questiong because no one feels it is important AB - it isn't.

These are empty homes and as such are just capital assets except they are stealing the space people could use as homes, so what do you suggest we do to line up the empty homes and the homeless.

But it is important to me GG. The link stated landlords not absentee home owners, if they are landlords their property is either being rented or available to rent

ab I don't think that is necessarily the case, I imagine people who have bought property not to live in themselves cold be described as landlords, even if the property is not advertised for rent

Sorry Devongirl, I disagree , a landlord rents or leases a property, if the property is left empty then the owner of an empty property

I don't think they are landlords until they have a tenant, just as no-one is a tenant until they have a landlord.

www.opendemocracy.net/uk/laurie-macfarlane/theresa-may-has-prioritised-rights-of-absentee-landlords-over-grenfell-victims

"Private property is always and everywhere backed up by state compulsion and threat of violence. This is true whether the government continues with the status quo, or whether it decides to requisition properties in Kensington. Private property cannot exist without the apparatus of the state to protect and enforce it. This is the basic foundation of modern capitalist economies.

When conservative commentators object to Jeremy Corbyn's proposal to requisition empty properties, it is not because they disagree with state compulsion and threat of violence. What they are really objecting to is the idea that the state should intervene to advance the interests of the poor, rather than to protect the interests of the rich. "

Homes will be found for the former tenants of Grenfell without resorting to either stealing or breaking into private property!

"Controversially, local authorities have used, and attempted to use, compulsory purchase powers in order to clear London estates, as part of the process of gentrification. As I write, there is an ongoing debate about whether Southwark council can force the eight remaining leaseholders from the Aylsebury estate. It seems odd that conservative commentators are so loud on the subject of the rights of the owners of unoccupied mansions in Kensington, but so quiet about the property rights of those in working class estates who bought their homes."