How digital innovation can help solve the challenges posed by empty housing

On June 25 Veronica spoke at a Scottish Empty Homes Partnership workshop on ‘Mapping, data, communities & empty homes’. It was a great opportunity to hear about different initiatives and digital tools developed to support the re-use of empty buildings, with the primary aim to tackle chronic housing shortages across Scotland and beyond. 

Speakers included representatives from Land Hero, South of Scotland Community Housing (SOSCH), Grand Bequest, Habitat for Humanity Great Britain, Scottish Futures Trust.

Topics discussed included: the link between infrastructure development and inclusive growth and sustainability; transforming empty and derelict buildings into ESG impact investments; how to release development sites from complicated utility constraints; the complexity of submitting information to brownfield registers; and the importance of communities and engaging those communities in action and decision-making.

The discussion highlighted the power of communities in relation to tackling challenging scenarios around the re-use of empty properties. Unlike developers, communities care and have a lot of knowledge about and connections to empty buildings in their area. They also experience first hand the potential economic and social benefits of bringing vacant buildings back into use, particularly when this translates into the creation of new affordable homes that meet specific local needs. 

Veronica was invited to talk about the collaborative project that saw Diagonal working closely with Rachel Whale, Scottish Borders Council’s Empty Homes Officer, for a period of over 6 months, starting in June 2023. This was in the context of Diagonal’s involvement in a Civtech Scotland tech accelerator programme as part of which we collaborated with a number of Local Authority Officers and other stakeholders to develop and build Skyline, our recently launched place baseline assessment tool. Veronica gave a demonstration of Skyline explaining how, adopting a data-driven approach to understanding the context of a place, at building level,can help unpick some of the reasons behind a prevalence of empty homes in a given location. Skyline can also help to understand the potential impact of introducing change in a village, town, city, such as introducing amenities in currently under-provided areas. Veronica also showed how Skyline can help those planning and making decisions about vacant sites explore how its scenario planning feature could help in their work by offering fast visualisations of the impact for change on homes and businesses.

You can view the whole recording here.