In 1980, when Corina Poore, 36 years old and pregnant, first opened the door to a derelict house in New Cross Gate, south-east London, the estate agent refused to step in with her.

Inside were dead cats, dog excrement and filthy mattresses. Pigeons flew in through holes in the roof and there was no indoor toilet. The intense rotting smell was overwhelming.

Still, Corina decided this was her dream home. It was spacious, the £24,000 price was affordable and she was sure that everything was fixable.

After taking out a mortgage, she received a grant of £3,500 from Lewisham council, her local authority, which paid for fixing the ceiling.

"At that point, £3,500 was quite a healthy amount, which I desperately needed," recalls Corina.

Some 45 years on, her Victorian four-storey house is worth roughly £1m - something Corina, a semi-retired film and TV critic who got in touch through Your Voice, Your BBC News, could never have afforded otherwise.

However, times have changed.

Lewisham Council has continued to offer grants to the owners of empty homes for improvements - some for as much as £20,000 - but the uptake is low.

Just 22 grants were awarded in the borough in the last five years - despite it having 2,253 empty homes. A spokesperson for Lewisham Council said that, in addition to the grants, it is working "to make sure homes aren't allowed to remain empty or become derelict in our borough".

At present, however, 775 have been empty for longer than six months. Meanwhile, there is a national housing shortage, with rising homelessness and long social housing waiting lists.

As of October 2024, there were almost 720,000 empty homes in England, according to the government.

On the face of it, bringing these empty properties back into use would make up a significant chunk of the 1.5m homes that the Labour government wants to add to the country's housing stock by the end of its term.

But so far that isn't happening enough. The question is why, and given it could, in theory, be a sensible solution to two growing problems, is this a case of a missed opportunity - or is the issue more complex still?

Not all empty homes are in the dire state of repair that Corina's once was. But roughly 265,000 of them in England have been vacant for longer than six months and are classified by the government as long-term empty (LTE). (Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have different housing policies, as housing is a devolved matter in the UK.)

Fixing these would also have a significant effect on the communities around them, as long-term empty properties can attract anti-social behaviour and in some cases reduce an area's value.

Ann Devereaux, of St Werburgh's in Bristol, says that after the property next to her home fell vacant, it became a "magnet" for crime.

"It makes me feel scared when I leave my house or come in at night," she added.

The........

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