How Many Empty Homes?

The level of vacant Housing Executive stock was below the Audit Commission’s benchmark of 2%. At March 2008 we have 1,150 empty homes which represented 1.27 % of our housing stock of 90,607. A year earlier there were 1,323 empty Housing Executive properties representing 1.44% of our housing stock.

We put in place a number of measures to address the problem of vacant homes in the public and private sectors throughout the province. These include estate strategies involving improvement, sale and/or selective demolition; urban renewal programmes in private areas involving improvement, replacement or a combination; grant aid including group repair schemes in some private areas exhibiting signs of decline; marketing, community safety and anti-blight measures in public sector estates including use of alarm systems, the appointment of neighbourhood wardens and other security measures; and more intensive management including the implementation of a concierge service.

What we are doing

We have put a number of measures in place to address this problem. These include:

• Estate strategies which involve improvement, sale and/or selective demolition
• Urban renewal programmes in private areas involving improvement, replacement or a combination of the two
• Grant aid including group repair schemes in some private areas
• Marketing, community safety and anti-blight measures in public sector estates, including use of alarm systems, the appointment of neighbourhood wardens and other security measures
• More intensive management such as the implementation of concierge services where neccessary