More than 11 million homes are empty across Europe, research published today has shown.
According to Inside Housing:
The research, published by the Guardian newspaper, shows there are enough empty homes across the continent to house all of Europe’s homeless people twice over.
There are 3.4 million empty homes in Spain, more than 2 million in each of France and Italy, 1.8 million in Germany and 700,000 in the UK.
David Ireland, chief executive of Empty Homes, said: ‘Homes are built for people to live in, if they’re not being lived in then something has gone seriously wrong with the housing market.’
Earlier this month, councils called for changes to the ‘overly complex and bureaucratic’ compulsory purchase order system to start bringing 700,000 empty homes back into use.