You wrote recently on ‘Empty homes staring at the homeless of the world’ How?
The coexistence of high property vacancy rates and severe homelessness is a paradoxical global crisis. While millions of people lack ‘sustainable shelter’, millions of homes sit empty, often in the same cities and vicinities, driven by economic, environmental, social and demographic factors rather than a lack of physical space and finance. The scale is enormous and is giving housing experts all over the world a great concern.
While an estimated 100 million people are homeless worldwide, with up to 300 million facing severe housing insecurity – mostly lack of security of tenure, about 500 million of homes sit vacant. This scarcity of homes in the midst of abundance is partly due to human nature of greed with ‘high acquisitive trait,’ and majorly due to lack of control and organisation by the governments. Human beings can be reckless without control.
In England alone, over one million homes stand empty, or one in every 25, while over 350,000 people are homeless. In USA, estimates show over 14.9 million vacant homes, with some studies calculating over 21-45 empty units for every homeless person. Japan faces a ‘ghost town’ scenario with roughly nine million abandoned homes (‘akiya’) or 14 percent of its housing stock, due to an aging population. China has numerous ghosts cities all across the country, largely unoccupied urban developments featuring high-rise apartments, empty office buildings and empty paved roads due to mass developers’ miscalculation. They are located at Inner Mongolia, Kangbashi District (Ordos), Chenggong (Yunnan), Ling Gang (near Shangai) etc.
The whole of Cairo is becoming a ghost city after the ‘massive New Cairo’ was built without proper appraisal. In Europe alone, 38 million homes were estimated to be vacant as of 2016, with countries like Cyprus, Hungary and Italy having high vacancy rates of between 12-27 percent.
In Africa, most vacant homes are the result of poverty – poverty of the pocket and of the mind. The gestation periods of home construction in Africa is the highest globally with some homes taking about 15 to 20 years to complete. Most of the houses, especially in the peri-urban areas are results of speculation. Few Africans, who are opportuned to be in charge of public fund, pilfer as much as they can to invest in real estate – a good haven for money laundry according to Transparency International (TI).
Why are these homes staying empty, while people are homeless?
The phenomenon is not a direct 1:1 match, due to several factors. These factors, which vary between different countries, include Housing adequacy: Quantitative housing adequacy is not defined as housing quantity equilibrium. It is not when 100 houses are available to 100 people, for example. There must be excess units of about 10 percent uniformly in all the locations so that householders can have choices. People should be able to choose the most convenient houses for themselves considering their place of work, children school, location to hospital and market, etc.
Affordability challenge: Empty homes are often high-end investment properties or in areas where people cannot find work (cut-out areas), rather than affordable units in high-demand areas.
Investment Speculation: Many properties are purchased as assets by foreign investors or corporations and intentionally left vacant.
Some local citizens and foreign investors buy homes to launder ill-gotten money, while those in Diaspora buy them as second homes. These beautiful properties stay vacant, while homeless people cannot access them. Condition and Cost: Long-term empty homes often need massive investment for renovations (retrofitting) to make them habitable. This phenomenon makes their owners look the other way.
Rural decline/aging populations: As seen in Japan, rural areas empty as populations shrink, leaving houses with no heirs to maintain them.
Administrative/legal hurdles: Homes can be stuck in probate, legal disputes or waiting for planning approvals or ownership certificate issues. Example is the properties of the Late lawyer, Chief Rotimi Williams. Some homes are vacant because they are off-plan houses that there is litigation between the buyers and the property developers. Others are because the developers are waiting for grant of certificates of occupancy from governments.
What are the solutions to vacant homes crises in the cities?
Governments and organisations, especially non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are working towards striking a balance between housing adequacy and empty homes. While governments are providing supports and making laws to curb excesses in housing development, organisations are advocating for ‘retrofitting’ (renovating) empty homes to provide affordable housing, noting this is more carbon-efficient and climate change-compliant than embarking on new housing starts. The vacant houses crisis is not just a housing supply, but of housing distribution and affordability, where property acts as a commodity for wealth storage rather than a basic human need. Ireland has 10th highest rate of vacant homes in the world according to an October 2021 study.
In Ireland, the 2022 Census counted 163,433 vacant homes. Japan has over 8.5 million empty properties. In Nigeria, around three million dwellings are vacant with a total cost of about N9 trillion. These are the root causes and precipe for stemming global vacant houses.
We have a global housing mismatch, not a housing shortage. This pattern of housing underutilisation, entrapment and exclusion is not unique to any particular country alone. Governments of nations where we have acute cases of vacant homes need to legislate against it. This is because vacant homes in the midst of homelessness serve as economic sabotage as well as oppression! Governments can make law that will ensure owners of vacant homes are taxed heavily than owners of occupied ones and those whose houses have been vacant for more than ten years should have their houses forfeited to the government. Demolition of excess homes by governments is imminent to ensure sustainable housing markets. Empty houses are economic wastes to the nations and drains to the purse of the communities where they are located!
Can we say it is a deliberate decision to keep some people homeless?
It is becoming interesting globally amongst housing expert, the issue of the number of empty houses which are more than the number of homeless in the world. It is now becoming clearer that our housing challenges are not due to lack of physical space or finance to construct but due to lack of proper organisation. The homeless case in America is not different from that of Nigeria or Ghana or England. Out of the 25 million housing stock in England, about 1,000,000 units are vacant. In America, about 14.9 million houses are vacant as at December 2025. The cases are worse in some countries than others.
To answer the question, I will say No. It is not a deliberate decision to keep some people homeless. It is accidental due to lack of proper organisation and coordination by the governments of the countries where there are homeless. Though, it would not be gainsaying to say that the governments are intentional in keeping the homeless on the streets concerning the fact that housing is a right of every living soul as enshrined by the United Nations Organization (UN) Article 25 of 1948 which states that: ‘Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of means of livelihood’ and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which is a landmark 1966 UN treaty – in force since 1976 – that legally binds over 170 state parties to protect rights related to work, education, health and standard of living of their citizens. All the 48 countries who voted in favour of Article 25 of 1948 and the 170 countries that international covenant of 1966 bind included a section or subsection about housing as a right in their constitutions. These countries include Nigeria. If governments cannot live up to a charter and covenant in which they are signatories, then the homeless and other stakeholders are free to say governments are deliberate in keeping the homeless in the society.
Why are prices of new homes beyond the targeted middle and low income groups?
Most of the time, the prices of the houses constructed by the private developers and the governments (local, state and federal) are beyond the poor because they are ‘economic housing’ that are built as a business against ‘social housing’ that can be afforded by the people. The only way the poor and the vulnerable in the society can be properly housed in Nigeria is through social housing, Governments must be ready to build subsidised houses for the citizens. In doing this, there must be ‘Property Identification Number’ (PIN) so that no individual can access social housing more than once.
Should governments grant incentives to NGOs to step into the role of building affordable houses for low-income Nigerians?
Governments cannot give enough incentives to NGOs to build for the low-income group because NGOs are not property developers but have the mandate to assist the citizens in all endeavours. If an NGO thinks it can assist the citizens in the area of social housing through blended finance, the NGO should make the move, meet government representatives like the Governors and Commissioners for Housing, the money-bags in the society, buoyant religious bodies and private organizations like cement manufacturers, roofing sheets manufacturers, electric cable manufacturers etc, and organise the assemblage of the social housing