OWNERS of hundreds of empty homes are being targeted in a bid to slash the housing waiting list.
There are well over 3,000 empty properties in Calderdale – and a record 9,000 people needing accommodation.
Now Calderdale Council has written to 800 owners urging them to bring their vacant homes back into use.
Fewer than a third of the empty houses and flats are for sale or to let and one in 10 owners say that a lack of cash is hampering their efforts to carry out essential repairs.
Regeneration and development panel chairman Barry Collins said they wanted to find ways to help those searching for a home and to reuse empty properties which can become a magnet for crime and anti-social behaviour.
"Money has been set aside to develop an empty homes strategy and we are starting to gather the information needed to do that," he said.
Research has shown that most of the empty properties are in central Halifax and the upper Calder Valley.
One large house in Halifax has been empty and boarded up since 1995, another at Southowram for 14 years, and there are clusters of empty properties in Heptonstall and Upper Parkinson Lane, Halifax.
At Valley Mill, Elland Wood Bottom, there are 27 apartments classed as long term empties. Sixteen are owned by an investment company and have not been used since they were built between November 2005 and January 2007.
Councillors are studying the figures as part of a review of council tax discounts.
Owners of properties which have been vacant for six months or more, and owners of second homes, get a 50 per cent discount on their council tax which councillors are considering scrapping.
The council's community services director, Kersten England, said: "Reducing the 50 per cent council tax discount should encourage owners to rent or sell properties, as it will cost them more to keep them unoccupied."
There are believed to be just over 200 second homes in Calderdale registered for council out of a total of about 90,000.
Pennine Housing 2000 owns three empty tower blocks – a total of 300 flats – at Crib Lane, Halifax, and is deciding how to redevelop them.
Communications manager Howard Keal, said: "We have relatively few properties which have been unoccupied more than six months and we are in negotiations with developers on long term proposals for regenerating the Crib Lane area."
Councillor Collins (Lab, Illingworth and Mixenden) said the panel would be asked tonight to consider changing discount rules.
The full article contains 432 words and appears in Evening Courier newspaper.
