{"id":318769,"date":"2017-07-25T00:58:57","date_gmt":"2017-07-24T23:58:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/thousands-of-empty-homes-surrounding-grenfell-tower-investigation\/"},"modified":"2017-07-25T00:58:57","modified_gmt":"2017-07-24T23:58:57","slug":"thousands-of-empty-homes-surrounding-grenfell-tower-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/thousands-of-empty-homes-surrounding-grenfell-tower-investigation\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands of empty homes surrounding Grenfell Tower \u2013 investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div>\n<p><time class=\"date date_article-header\">Published time: 24 Jul, 2017 10:21 <\/time><time class=\"date date_article-header\">Edited time: 24 Jul, 2017 10:26 <\/time><\/p>\n<p>        There are thousands of empty homes in the area of the Grenfell Tower fire which could potentially be used by the victims. Some have reportedly been vacant for up to 15 years.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article__text text  js-mediator-article\">\n<p>A Freedom of Information (FoI) request by campaigners shows that there are 1,857 empty homes in the local council\u2019s area of responsibility in west London.<\/p>\n<div class=\"arcticle__read-more read-more\">\n<p>Read more<\/p>\n<p>    <a class=\"read-more__link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rt.com\/uk\/396970-grenfell-tower-911-experts\/\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n                    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"read-more__cover\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.rt.com\/files\/2017.07\/thumbnail\/5970c16cdda4c85b168b4567.jpg\" alt=\"\u00a9 Tolga Akmen\"\/><br \/>\n    <\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p>The investigation by the \u2018<em>Who Owns England?<\/em>\u2019 blog showed there are 696 houses and flats in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea which have been empty for more than two years.<\/p>\n<p>The figures also suggest that some homes in the area have been vacant for up to a decade and a half.<\/p>\n<p>The tower fire in June killed at least 80 people and over a hundred survivors still have not been given permanent accommodation, with many of them housed in hotel rooms.<\/p>\n<p>Emma Dent Coad, Labour\u2019s recently elected Kensington MP, told the Times newspaper: \u201c<em>It is a disgrace that people are allowed to buy to leave, with no intention whatever of living in a property, just to park their money, when we have so many homeless people.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>We must have policies to stop this before even more parts of Kensington become a luxury ghost town.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Investigations into the causes of the fire and precisely who died in it are still underway.<\/p>\n<p>It was announced Thursday that US experts who investigated the World Trade Center\u2019s 9\/11 terrorist attack have been asked to help police identify victims of the Grenfell Tower disaster.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3LGHEq8Mhpo?ecver=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Craig Mackey said that it could take until the end of the year to gather evidence from the 15 tonnes of debris on each of the building\u2019s 24 floors.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>The people we are taking advice from are some of the people who worked on 9\/11 and the fall of the towers. It is an extraordinary size of crime scene and extraordinarily complex,<\/em>\u201d he said, according to the Guardian.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/uk\/397311-grenfell-empty-houses-families\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=RSS\">RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Published time: 24 Jul, 2017 10:21 Edited time: 24 Jul, 2017 10:26 There are thousands of empty homes in the area of the Grenfell Tower fire which could potentially be used by the victims. Some have reportedly been vacant for up to 15 years. A Freedom of Information (FoI) request by campaigners shows that there [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":318241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-318769","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}