Why are there over 5,400 empty homes in Southwark?

This post is by Guy Shrubsole and Anna Powell-Smith. 

Last summer, we worked with the Guardian to reveal the billionaire, offshore owners of some of the 1,652 empty homes in Kensington & Chelsea. This week, we’ve launched endemptyhomes.org, a mini-campaign targeting London council candidates ahead of the May 3^rd local elections, urging them to pledge to double council tax on empty properties if elected. At the time of writing, scores of candidates have already pledged – please visit the site to see if your candidates have done so and contact them if they haven’t!

In the process of setting up the campaign, we were surprised to find that the borough one of us lives in, Southwark, has the most empty homes of any London borough – a staggering 5,418, as of Nov 2017, with 1,035 empty for more than two years (‘long-term empty homes’). We decided…