this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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A Boring Dystopia
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Homelessness is a housing affordability issue. Build more housing, fix ya zoning, make unemployment and Medicaid easier to get.
There's a population with long term homelessness due to mental health issues and we should be trying to help them too, but to the extent the issue is increasing it's due to marginal situations like someone losing their job or having a medical emergency.
There are faster and more affordable solutions than "build more housing" or trying to convert commercially zoned property into residential and all the retrofitting that entails. Also, unemployment is at historic lows right now. You are right, though, homelessness is an affordability issue, and housing prices going up over 50% in the last 5 years (and 100% in the last 15) has more to do with it than anything else. Housing is being bought up by massive investment firms like Blackrock, creating scarcity in the market and thus driving up housing costs. These firms have long term aspirations to create a culture of renters, adding to our subscription-based economy and eliminating home ownership which has historically been the pathway to wealth for normal people. Governments could easily step in to address the issue by raising taxes on any entity's 5th, 6th, 200th, etc residential property and make hoarding homes a bad investment. Those properties would be dumped like any other losing stock on a spreadsheet, and you could use the windfall from those taxes to create affordable financing for normal people's first or even second homes. Unfortunately, at least in the US, the government officials in charge of making such a decision are financed by the very institutions profiting from the status quo.
I’d just critique:
Which definition of “unemployment” are you referring to though?
Im asumming youre referring to the one the whitehouse likes to use, where they count minimum wage part time work as employed, and dont count people who gave up looking for work as unemployed.
Labor participation rates are improved but still relatively low lttps://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
Yeah that's the one I was referring to in response to OP, but measure it by whichever indicator you want (federal unemployment numbers, jobs growth, help wanted listing, increasing pay rates, union contract negotiation outcomes). 'Unemployment' (nor underemployment, nor labor participation) is not currently indicative as the causation for the housing affordability problem.
Or relatively high, depending on which period you're comparing it to (high compared to 50's, low compared to 90's).
Build more housing does nothing when companies and those outside the country buy them up...
I don't care if companies own houses, they rent out those houses so the amount of housing is still increasing.
Same for "those outside the country" unless you mean like billionaires buying housing units and not living in them and not renting them out, but that is not a big enough part of the market to matter.
15 percent of the market is big enough to matter. https://slate.com/business/2021/06/blackrock-invitation-houses-investment-firms-real-estate.html
Corporations bought 15% of homes sold in that quarter, they don't own 15% of the homes. The total owned is much less, I think it's 2% combined. But regardless, that does not impact HOUSING, it impacts home buying. Separate issue.
If 100 people need somewhere to live, and there are 98 houses, 2 people will not have housing. Now imagine a corporation buys 10 houses and rents them out to 10 of the people. Still exactly 2 people without housing. I care more about helping the people who do not have places to live.
It is more than you think.
https://www.billtrack50.com/blog/investment-firms-and-home-buying/#:~:text=According%20to%20data%20reported%20by,%2D2021%2C%20why%20is%20this%3F
Urbanization and multi-use buildings, change office buildings to residential buildings and enact working from home more.
High speed rail.