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Building houses to solve the housing crisis implies that the crisis was caused by a lack of homes. Every single one of the 2 million houses would be picked up by a property firm or a Chinese millionaire just the way it has been happening for the last ten years. What you really need is legislation, but what you are getting is more food for the hounds.

Aren't there currently more empty homes than homeless in the US? Like, by a decent margin, too? I think that statistic is getting a bit dated, but I also don't expect it to have improved. What we really need is to treat homes as homes, as essentials for life, instead of as investments. But, of course, that'd cost rich people money instead of giving them a way to make even more money, so we can't do that. I'm sure some towns and cities could benefit from more homes, but the core of the problem is societal, not material.

The US had 3.1m houses sitting empty in 2023

property hoarding is a crime against humanity and should be treated as such, imho. Houses are for living in, not speculation.

I don't think the US needs more single family homes, I think we need more, or at least more affordable, multifamily housing. Suburbs are expensive, inefficient, and bad for the environment. What we need to be doing is bringing down the cost of housing in cities, as well as making cities as pedestrian friendly as possible, with walking and biking infrastructure, and public transportation.

But whatever will poor Blackrock do with their real estate portfolio??

Yeah but also charge less than $200k for a 3b 2b with a 2 car garage.

Maybe just redistribute some wealth? The richest nation in the world can afford to home everyone. Homelessness is a policy decision.

Equity firms own 1.6 million homes in the US (both single family and multi family units).

Just saying, that would get us most of the way there.

Nope. Just need to force all landlords to sell. Make tax on rent ruinous. Tax additional homes. Make it illegal for corporations to own residential property.

Cool, landlords can buy all of these up too!

And how many empty houses are there already?

The systems in place are broken. I work 12hr days, with overtime. Credit score over 750. And there is no chance I can afford a house in my area.

Property hoarding could be solved by quadrupling propert taxes on any home that isn't a primary residence of the property owner.

There are enough homes to house everyone, supply isn't the problem, greed is.

Or maybe billion dollar companies should be forced to sell so the average person can buy them

or better yet, overcome neoliberalism, the cursed legacy of Ronald Reagan

"An influx of immigrants in the country also isn't helping the housing affordability equation as it has in the past."

Go fuck yourself business insider. The ol' "America is full" bit is it? The Great Enemy: the poor immigrant who is going to steal your piss poor paying job, but somehow also "steals" your super fucking overpriced house that even natural born citizens with full time jobs can't afford.

Get fucked.

Building those houses means current homeowners would miss out on hundreds of thousands of dollars when they eventually sell their homes.

If you were to ask most politicians to describe their constituents, they would said 'married, kids, two cars, and a house with a mortgage'. That's who they are looking after, that's their priority. You are not considered a real person or a focus unless you fall into the above description.

This bubble will be disastrous beyond imagination once it bursts.

I actually think the best solution would be the government to build a bunch of extra housing and crash the rental market with a two pronged supply approach:

1. sell housing to first time home buyers at 50% off under the condition they don't resale for 5 years and the government gets any value gains over the sale price for 10 years.

2. triple the existing public housing stock while slashing requirements to get into public housing

"The US needs to reclaim 2 million houses from firms to revive the American dream of homeownership"

Fixed. The housing exists, it's just bought up so you can't have it because they want more profit.

Also fck HOAs and the horse they road in on.

That won't fix shit, that's 2 million homes that corporations will buy up to jack the rent up. Shit should be illegal.