ROOF Blog

A £13 million manor house looking out across one of Paris’ most exclusive squares has become France’s most desirable squat. The vast 17th-century property boasts listed rooms with period painted wooden beams and panelling and a spectacular view over the Place des Vosges. It has not been lived in for more than 40 years. The squatters broke into the property to draw attention to the plight of low-paid workers unable to afford housing while countless properties are left vacant. They belong to a group called ‘Black Thursday’, created by four students appalled at the sky-high rents they were required to pay for even the smallest properties. They want more social housing, which has a waiting list of 1.2 million people, and have the support of local Green and Left-wing politicians.

Thirty years ago this month – on 20 December 2023 – the new Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher published its housing bill, changing the social face of Britain with one of the most popular political promises in history: the Right to Buy.

Today the repercussions are still being felt. This year the number of council houses sold off passed the two million mark; so too did the numbers of people across Britain on waiting lists for a council house, up almost 10 per cent in a year.

Some inner-city areas would need decades to clear their backlog.

With house building all but stopped in a recession that has seen repossessions and unemployment rise, there is a crisis in Britain’s homes, and the finger of blame is pointed firmly at that ‘social revolution’ of 1979.

One in four English local authorities would take more than 10 years to house everyone on their council housing waiting list, it was revealed today.

Shelter says a total of 82 authorities would take between a decade and 33 years to clear their waiting lists, or until 2019 to 2042.

With the national waiting list reaching almost 1.8 million households, but only just over 270,000 homes let nationally last year, the average time for all councils to end their lists would be almost seven years.

Of the 355 local authorities, Barnet, in North West London, would take the longest to house everyone on its waiting list at more than 33 years, followed by Redbridge in East London at more than 32 years, and Brent on 25 years.

Shelter has blamed the severe shortage of affordable homes, and has called on political parties to make housing a top election priority.

One million homes are expected to be empty in the UK this year, despite 1.8 million Britons being on the waiting list for social housing. In 2008, there were more empty properties in the north-west of England than anywhere else in the country, with 129,073 houses lying vacant, says the charity the Empty Homes Agency. It is not illegal to leave a property empty, but the government has various ways to discourage it. Where the owner ignores calls to put the property to use, a local authority can make a compulsory purchase order under Housing Act powers. This means it will buy the property at the market rate and sell it on again or convert it into social housing. At the same time, however, the law encourages the practice of leaving properties empty by offering a council tax exemption on any dwellings that are vacant for up to six months.