Identifying housing vacancy using data on registered addresses and domestic consumption

Abstract

Housing vacancy is a significant issue in developed countries’ decaying and densely populated cities. Comparisons are made between the number of ‘vacant housing’ and ‘homeless people’ stressing the existence of inequalities in access to housing. The reasons for addressing vacancy are manifold, ranging from mitigating urban blight to mobilising latent resources in tight markets. Little attention is paid to vacancy in municipal housing strategies. Still, mapping vacant units appears to be complex and resource-demanding, likely discouraging municipalities from planning further operations against vacancy. Given the lack of methodological support in the literature, this paper discusses how to identify housing vacancy units. Through a case study in Wallonia (Belgium), this paper highlights the benefits of combining visual surveys and processing data provided by utilities and registered addresses. Our results suggest that housing vacancy is underestimated through official statistics and that data mining would help mitigate the administrative burden related to identification and help to prioritise operations designed to reduce housing vacancy.

Keywords:

• Vacant housing identification
• domestic consumption
• registered address
• household-level data
• Wallonia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mathilde Flas

Mathilde Flas is a PhD student at the University of Liège’s LEMA (Local Environment Management an Analysis) laboratory. Her research focus on housing vacancy and housing affordability.

Jean-Marie Halleux

Jean-Marie Halleux is Professor at the University of Liege’s department of Geography, Scientific Director of the ECOGEO Laboratory and chair of Lepur (Research Centre on Territorial, Urban and Rural Sciences). His research areas are urban planning, urban and economic geography.

Mario Cools

Mario Cools is a professor at the Faculty of Applied Sciences of the University of Liège, where he is in charge of the research domain ‘diagnosis and analysis of transport and its externalities’ of the research unit LEMA.

Jacques Teller

Jacques Teller is a professor of urban planning at the University of Liege, where he is in chair of the LEMA (Local Environment Management and Analysis) laboratory. His research work is at the interface between urban governance and modelling of urbanization dynamics.