# Vacant House Characteristics by Use Area and Their Application to Sustainable Community
## 1 Introduction  
Vacant houses have emerged as a modern social issue and become a chronic problem in large cities as well as rural and provincial small- and medium-sized cities. Vacant houses threaten cities' social and economic stability, accelerate urban decline, and may lead to a vicious cycle of increased vacant houses. Data from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport show an upward trend in vacant houses: 104.2% in 2019, 104.8% in 2020, and 103.3% in 2021 [1]. Further, the vacant houses mainly occur in old downtown areas [1]. The Population and Housing Census by Statistics Korea shows that the number of vacant houses nationwide in 2019 was about 1,518,000, an increase of about 980,000 compared to the year before, accounting for about 8.4% of all housing [2]. Given that this trend is expected to continue, the estimated vacancy rate in Korea is expected to reach 13% in 2025 [3]. The increased rate of vacant houses is high in small- and medium-sized cities; this should be understood from the same perspective as the issue of local extinction [4]. After the metropolitan area, Gyeongsangnam-do has the second largest number of vacant houses in the country. Excluding unsold houses for sale, old and defective townhouses in Gyeongsangnam-do include 1394 houses in Goseong-gun, 1278 in Tongyeong-si, 1250 in Changwon-si, and 1180 in Jinju-si. Many factors underlie the emergence of vacant houses. [PERSON] [5] argued that poor socio-economic or housing market conditions lead to vacant houses in areas with high-poverty rates and long-term absenteeism from the workplace. [PERSON] [6] identified housing oversupply and low demand as causes of vacancy. In the past, people were indifferent to the vacant house problem because they saw it as one of the many physical symbols of urban decline and similar problems [7]. At present, many cities worldwide have been unable to break the vicious cycle of urban decline in a way that presupposes development and growth and are experiencing difficulties in solving various problems [8]. Decline related tocontinuous urban stagnation causes decreased regional population, long-term economic recession, and changes in the physical environment of an urban space [9; 10]. Vacant house occurrence cannot be attributed to any single cause; it should be viewed in combination with population, economy, and social conditions to facilitate an understanding of the wider vacancy problem [11]. Because vacant houses occur in almost all regions in Korea, there is currently an urgent need to investigate the causes underlying vacant houses and to find potential solutions to alleviate the problem of vacant houses [12]. Central and local governments have worked to improve vacant house management policies and systems. The 1994 Agricultural and Fishing Villages Improvement Act and the 1995 Act on the Promotion of Amelioration of Housing in Agricultural and Fishing Villages supported the use and management of vacant houses in rural areas. However, with the increase in the number of vacant houses and their spread to urban areas, the relevant law was amended into the Building Act in 2016. The Act on Special Cases Concerning Unoccupied House or Small-Scale Housing Improvement (hereinafter referred to as the Vacant Houses Act) was enacted in 2017, which led to vacant house ordinances in each local government. The Vacant Houses Act was the first law to systematically establish an empty house management system; additionally, it has policy significance because it recognizes vacant houses as an urban problem and seeks to manage them in an efficient manner. However, since the law focuses on implementing small-scale housing maintenance projects through demolition, there is a limit to fundamentally solving vacant houses [13]. Consequently, several problems have been identified, including reactive and passive policy responses and difficulties with the systematic management of densely populated regions with vacant houses.