Thousands of council homes empty

15 May 2011 Last updated at 04:56 ET The details were obtained by BBC One's The Politics Show London through Freedom of Information requests

More than 6,000 council homes have been left unoccupied in London, figures from the 33 local authorities have shown.

Nearly a third were empty because they needed repairs and more than 2,300 have been without tenants for over a year.

Last year, there were more than 360,000 households on council waiting lists for new homes, or 11% of all households in London, the research found.

The details were obtained by BBC One's The Politics Show London through Freedom of Information requests.

Continue reading the main story  6,249 properties currently unoccupied in London2,062 homes are empty because of their poor state of repair2,343 have been empty for more than a year

Source: FoI requests to London's 33 local authorities

"If you're somebody on the housing waiting list and then you learn there are all these empty properties, it's devastating news," said government housing minister Grant Shapps.

"It's no use to anybody having these council houses lay empty.

"I think the councils need to make sure they're doing everything possible to bring them back into use, and really quickly too."

One council with 500 empty properties, Labour-run Camden in north London, admitted it had a "very pressing problem".

But Julian Fulbrook, a Labour councillor, said the authority was "determined to bring these homes back into use as quickly as possible".

The government has given the borough ￡55m to repair properties which have been damaged or require work.

"This is very good news for us - but of course the government are taking away ￡40m from us," Mr Fulbrook said, referring to the cuts the council is making to all of its services.

"It's a bit like a game of snakes and ladders - we go up, we go down."

Chicago News Cooperative: Group Homes to Nurture At-Risk Youths

“Our neighborhood needs to take care of these kids,” said Father Wellems, who has helped hundreds of young people avoid gangs and tried to improve their family lives as the priest of Holy Cross-Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish and executive director of Boys Town Chicago, a local outpost of the nearly century-old organization dedicated to youth services.

The neighborhood has one of Chicago’s largest Latino communities, rooted in traditional Mexican values of church and family. But it is also plagued by poverty, and the pull of gangs, which offer the safety and structure that some families lack, is overwhelming.

Now Father Wellems has another way to address the problem. After years of work, including winning the support of Mayor Richard M. Daley and persuading the city to issue $2 million in bonds, Father Wellems plans to develop a cluster of five group homes intended to serve at-risk children and their parents in Back of the Yards.

With a residential layout and two live-in social workers as “parents,” each home will strive to mimic a nurturing family environment while striking a balance between education, observation and privacy.

“It gives every child a sense of pause and a way to reboot,” said Tim McCormick, who heads SOS Children’s Villages Illinois, which has two other clusters of group homes in the state. In April, SOS Villages signed on as the developer for the group homes in Back of the Yards.

The homes are part of a broader state and national effort to keep child welfare cases out of the courts by focusing on the early assessment of youths and strengthening families through counseling and outreach services.

In Illinois, a state initiative has moved children out of the family court system with adoptions, guardianships and family reunifications, in addition to reaching out to families before a domestic crisis occurs that could result in a formal investigation. The program has been remarkably successful. In 1997, more than 52,000 children were in state care. In 2011 the number is 15,625, according to a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

In managing a smaller child-welfare system, officials say, there is an opportunity to support ventures like Father Wellems’s that focus social services on each child and family and strengthen family dynamics.

Last June, Father Wellems approached Mr. Daley to ask for a small amount of land where he could build a long-term residential facility. To Father Wellems’s surprise and delight, Mr. Daley briskly circled two full blocks of city-owned land beginning at 50th and Throop Streets.

It has taken nearly a year to get this far, but if all goes as planned, Father Wellems said, he will consider the homes his lifetime achievement. Construction is expected to begin by the end of the year.

“It’s like coming up to a base camp and it’s beautiful,” he said. “You can see the peaks and you have a vision of the mountain, but it still has to be climbed.”

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