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.