Habitat for Humanity Great Britain, a charity focused on long-term poverty alleviation through affordable social housing, has partnered with savings and investment company M&G to create the Empty Spaces Coalition.
The cross-sector, public-private coalition will seek to find and pilot solutions within the built environment to address critical housing shortages which lead to homelessness across Europe.
The coalition brings together businesses and organisations from the public and the private sector with the aim to unlock vacant, unused spaces that can be added to the supply of housing.
Providing decent accommodation to those in need helps to nurture stabilised environments in poorer areas so that people can grow and reconnect with society, resulting in stronger communities and local economies.
Through a diverse pool of public and private businesses and organisations, the Empty Spaces Coalition will be able to tap into the different areas of expertise to work towards putting an end to the housing crisis by repurposing empty spaces and helping create communities around them.
The Empty Spaces Coalition will take a multi-faceted approach to reducing homelessness in the UK by:
- Converting empty and vacant spaces of little commercial interest to property developers or local governments into good quality accommodation for vulnerable communities facing homelessness
- Galvanising investment from the local private sector and other donors to support the funding of these conversions.
- Conduct research that will help local governments and associations tackle the issue in a more efficient way
- Creating opportunities on site for skills training and confidence building helping young college students (and potentially other disadvantaged or unemployed groups) to become more work ready
- Using the growing demand for corporate volunteering from an increasingly socially minded private sector to subsidise part of the costs with these projects. M&G’s leadership here will inspire action from peers
Tum Kazunga, CEO at Habitat for Humanity Great Britain, said: “This coalition will be a huge step in our fight against housing poverty in the UK and across Europe.
“This is an issue that has been exacerbated by the economic impact of COVID-19 resulting in a high number of job losses, loss in income and an inability to rent. 70,000 households became homeless since the pandemic began in the UK.
“By joining our efforts into resolving this crisis, we hope to bring more affordable homes for communities in need and to create new opportunities for businesses, local authorities and NGO’s to increase their presence in specific projects.”
The Empty Spaces Coalition signed up a number of leading organisations to help the cause, including companies such as DLB Law and Lloyds of London, and organisations, associations and public partners such as Empty Homes Network and London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.
Alex Greaves, head of UK & Euro Living at M&G Real Estate, adds: “As one of the UK’s most active residential property investors we are always looking for different ways to play our part in alleviating the UK’s housing crisis.
“The launch of The Empty Spaces Coalition is a vital step towards creating safe environments for those who desperately need it.
“We are delighted to partner with Habitat for Humanity GB to spearhead this coalition and we hope to inspire other organisations to join us in providing the knowledge and expertise to get these projects underway.”
Earlier this year, Habitat and Humanity GB and M&G released a research paper highlighting that vacant commercial premises in the UK could provide up to 200,000 homes for the vulnerable.
The research revealed that circa 19,500 homes could be created in the UK from vacant local authority owned space and a further 165,000 empty privately-owned commercial and business premises could also create additional housing supply.
Image: kan_chana/Shutterstock
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