Habitat for Humanity Great Britain’s Empty Spaces to Homes Toolkit
Our toolkit helps local community-based organisations and charities across the UK to convert vacant, commercial spaces into good quality social housing.
On this page you can download the Empty Spaces to Homes Toolkit, find out how to join our Coalition, and more.
- According to research published by Habitat for Humanity and the Empty Homes Network in 2021, there are an estimated 7,000 commercial and business premises across England, Scotland, and Wales, currently owned by Local Authorities, which have been empty for over a year. It is estimated that these spaces have the potential to create over 19,500 residential unitsthrough the conversion of vacant office and retail space.
- This opportunity is even greater when you consider the estimated 165,000 privately-owned commercial and business premises which remain empty across Great Britain
- Habitat for Humanity GB’s Empty Spaces to Homes approach aims to demonstrate best practice, scalable solutions to the UK housing crisis that can be unlocked through the potential of empty non-residential stock.
- In Habitat for Humanity GB’s experience, housing can be the bottleneck which prevents organisations from helping the people they support to thrive, and move from crisis mode to long term independence.
- Through existing pilots in London and Warsaw, Poland, and a further project planned for Scotland, we have established a replicable model for transforming empty buildings into decent homes.
- With the learning we’ve gained, we have developed an open-source toolkit to share this model which local authorities, community groups, civil society organisations, and socially minded private sector property owners can use as a guide to transform redundant space, giving it a second life as housing.
