There are 25 empty houses for every homeless person in the US. There are people like Bezos who own multiple $25 million dollar mansions, that sit empty 300+ days a year. There are places with housing shortages, but that is not the case nationwide. The problem is that our government cares little to ensure adequate housing for its population. It sees absolutely no issue in allowing property to be hoarded by the rich and used to strangle the poor.

[–] Pipoca@lemmy.world -1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

That's one of those things that's technically true, but quite misleading.

The number of houses you could reasonably move homeless people into tomorrow is much smaller than the number of vacant houses. Unless you suggest putting homeless people in buildings undergoing renovation, in new houses that are almost done being constructed, in houses that were sold but have the new owners moving in next week, in rental units that have been on the market for a month, or in your grandmother's house after she dies while the estate is being settled. Or into chalets on a ski hill, into seasonally occupied employee housing, etc.

The vacancy rate includes basically everything that isn't currently someone's primary residence on whichever day the census uses for their snapshot. Low vacancy rates are actually a bad thing and are bad for affordability. Very high vacancy rates are also bad, but you want there to be a decent number of vacant houses.

[–] dragonflyteaparty@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Do you have a source for all of this?

[–] Pipoca@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/index.html

You can check out https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/definitions.pdf

In particular, vacant housing is either for sale, for rent, rented or sold, for occasional use, or held off market.

Categories for held off market include forclosure, personal/family reasons (which includes e.g. units where the owner moved into assisted living or is currently living elsewhere with family), legal reasons (e.g. divorce or code violations), preparing to rent/sell, held for storage of household furniture, needs repair, currently under repair, specific use housing (e.g. dorms), extended absence (e.g. prison), abandoned/possibly condemned, and 'don't know'.

Their data tables are broken up kinda weirdly, and each table is its own sheet which is unfortunate to look at on mobile. A ton of things are reported as percents or rates, and I kinda wish they had the detailed raw numbers broken out better.

[–] BartsBigBugBag@lemmy.tf 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I might not want to put them in buildings under renovation, but those empty mansions could serve as compounds to house hundreds of people safely and securely, while having adequate space to offer necessities for transitioning back to housed life, such as on site therapy and pharmacies, and work aid centers.

[–] Pipoca@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Housing-first is a great way to deal with homelessness, because most of the problems homeless people have in rebuilding their lives are compounded by being on the street. I'm not saying we shouldn't house homeless people.

I'm saying that comparing the vacancy rate to the homeless population is ridiculous, and isn't evidence that there's no housing shortage.

Partially, that's because vacant houses aren't all habitable, or able to be sold/rented immediately. But also, it's because having some number of empty units on the market ready to be moved into is a good thing. You don't want to have to find someone who wants to move out the day you want to move in. That creates a sellers market, causing high prices.

[–] SCB@lemmy.world -5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Fun fact: homeless people can't afford mansions.

Build them places to rent.

[–] BartsBigBugBag@lemmy.tf 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Fun fact: Every mansion or luxury condo built is 100+ affordable units not being built.

We’re building at record rates in many places, but just building housing does nothing but line the pockets of developers, because they will always choose to prioritize more profitable ventures, and current methods of requiring a small single digit percentage of their units to be “affordable” aren’t cutting it.

We need to be specific in what we’re building, and who we’re building it for. People moving in from out of state with high paying jobs are often prioritized by city and county governments because they increase the tax base, but this simultaneously raises rents for all of the current residents in crises as the market is dragged up. If we’re not specifically building affordable housing for local residents within each effected community to the best of our ability, then we’re only going to exacerbate the issue further. I’ve lived through “just build more” in my state for 20 years, I know how it goes.

[–] SCB@lemmy.world -5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

If you build any housing at all, you are opening up "affordable housing" at the bottom of the totem pole. That's how buying houses works.

No one is going to build a dumpster apartment to rent on the cheap. There's no incentive there.

Let people build and the less-desirable homes will be scooped up as prices fall. It's basic supply and demand.

Your state, like mine, has probably been kneecapping development in favor of NIMBY policies for those 20 years

[–] BartsBigBugBag@lemmy.tf 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

No, they haven’t. They’ve been working hand in hand with developers to entice new money for them to tax, and ignoring the poor who only get poorer.

[–] SCB@lemmy.world -2 points 2 years ago

What does that have to do with this discussion?