Citizen social science in practice: the case of the Empty Houses Project
The Empty Houses Project needs citizens’ observations of houses that no one is living in, or which may have been left empty, to try to spot national trends in home usage, and to find out which homes could be brought back into use. Such information is often difficult to capture and isn’t fully reflected in official statistics.
600,000 residential homes are thought to be unoccupied in the UK, and current data shows that the North of England tends to have a larger proportion of unused residential properties than the South. However, this data is based on Government statistics, which do not show patterns of houses which are underutilised – such as rarely used second homes – or merely appear to be empty.
The Empty Houses Project is a form of citizen social science that explores the generation of tangible approaches to an incredibly complex situation that is the current UK housing crisis.
Image credits
Header image: Photo by Robin Jonathan Deutsch on Unsplash
Icon image: Photo by Nolan Issac | Unsplash | Empty House - Leeg Huis