A number of factors have been blamed for increasingly unaffordable city homes. One black sheep gaining considerable city attention worldwide is the use of housing exclusively as short term quasi-hotel rooms, a practice associated with such wildly successful ventures as Airbnb.
Another more puzzling concern is the number of dwellings that remain empty in a city from month to month, even year to year. Are they investment homes, and too much trouble to rent out? Second homes owned by the wealthy, or by foreign owners complying with national residency requirements? One thought: by encouraging owners to place this housing on the market, whether for sale or rental, might help to stabilize municipal housing prices, or even make them more affordable.
This problem has caught the attention of Vancouver, Canada which last fall once again was at or near the top of the list of least affordable cities in North America. Read about it in the georgia straight: Vancouver beats Manhattan and San Francisco for least affordable housing in North America, study finds.
Recently, Vancouver has attempted to shake some life into its large number of empty dwellings by imposing an Empty Homes Tax.
The Scottish Commission on Housing and Wellbeing has been studying the problem and has now released a final report, detailing ways that a municipality can utilize some of these empty, unavailable dwellings. Read more about this study and download the final report via Scottish Housing News: Blog: The key to unlocking our empty homes
