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Based on currently available numbers, there are about 31 vacant housing units for every homeless person in the U.S.
If we had any sense, there would be crazy high taxes on unoccupied housing. There could be short term exceptions for things like remodeling and finding tenants. But it should be prohibitively expensive to sit on empty houses and apartments while people struggle to find affordable housing.
Take it a step further - decommodify all housing.
There is no valid reason why a handful of people should be allowed to own more than they could ever use, specifically so they can use the surplus to extort massive profits from others just trying to survive.
Housing is a human right, it's time we demand it be treated as such.
I like the idea and I've advocated for it in the past. There's one problem though- what about people who need to rent? Someone needs to own that property.
That is a manufactured problem.
How do you deal with it for now?
Social housing.
Government owned is the best we can do (and it has been done relatively successfully in the past) but just like all other housing, it has ended up being commodified for profit, because our governments are capitalist, and will always prioritise profit over anything else, which is why it'd only ever be a superficial solution.
In the long run?
Abolish capitalism and its artificial scarcity and commodification of all human rights (not only housing but food, water, healthcare..).
I'm an anarchist, in the future I want there is no money, so renting isn't a thing, people have their own homes, and I suppose there will be communal property that would act as housing for people who for whatever reason aren't there for the long term, and who would contribute whatever they were able to the maintenance and upkeep of the residence and/or community, but there really should be no need for anyone to "rent", because no one will "own", and permanent secure and stable housing wouldn't be out of anyone's reach.
Owner has to live on the property. If you want to rent out the basement or build a suite no problem, you are adding to the number of places available to live.
The person who lives in it should own it. Just give it to them for free.
why would anyone want to work horrible jobs with horrible working conditions if their needs are met? that would mean employers would need to treat their employees with respect and all working arrangements would need to be mutually beneficial instead of one side consenting under duress.
I have a family member that has empty houses. It's immoral, and severely fucked up. He doesn't give a shit and thinks he's earned the right. He treats them like stocks so far as I can tell.
Important note here: the US homeless count is woefully inadequate to actually get a realistic number. They use the PIT count, which is a
count of sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons carried out on one night in the last 10 calendar days of January or at such other time as required by HUD.
So if you're unsheltered and not spotted, or manage to sleep with a friend because it's fucking freezing, or your shelter is not official, or maybe you're homeless from March to Oktober, or any of a hundred other reasons, you're not getting counted.
The actual problem is MUCH bigger than the official numbers make it look.
That doesn't mean there aren't still way more empty homes than homeless, just that there are more homeless.
Is the problem 30x worse than it looks? Cus, it'd still be covered then...
Not to mention that there are homeless couples and families that would share a house.
I fucking hope not.
But but but these houses don't have... Batman slaps Robin It's not sleeping in the elements and it's an address to put on a job application.
And research shows it would be cheaper to give each of them a house... Instead of spending on programs that don't work
I'm as leftist as they come and yes I could Google it myself but I wonder if you have specific examples of research that you've seen that you'd be willing to find again and share
I've found some here:
https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housing-help-solutions
What really boggles my mind is how many mosty vacant "vacation" homes people have here in Florida. You can drive along some coasts or barrier islands, and most of the big houses along there are totally vacant for a large part of the year.
Not to speak of how they are in a prime spot for being trashed by a hurricane, and taking up space for what could be a public beach or park.
Forget ethics and all that. Just economically, it seems incredibly inefficient. It's like building five star hotels along volcano rims, then leaving them mostly empty.
There are 126M homes in the US. The average American moves 11 times per life, or maybe once every 8 years. That means 1/8 of homes, or 15.75M homes, might be "vacant" just to support people shuffling around. That's not real vacancy.
I realize I pulled these numbers from my butt, but so did the original image. Either way, it hopefully shows that we need way more houses built in areas people can live, and it's not as simple as sticking homeless in existing housing.
Yes, and
You may disagree with some of these existing (especially 1), but still vacant =/= homeless people can or want to move in tomorrow
damaged and unfit housing
This one can not be overstated. I drive past many of these on my way to work every day. Many of them are damaged and unfit because someone died, and no one wants to move out to bumfuck nowhere, even if the house is cheap. So they just rot. Even when I lived in Chicago, there were always houses that had just been allowed to fall apart through lack of maintenance, houses that had become too expensive to either repair, or demolish and re-build.
abandon capitalism, adopt resource based communities
I love how the verdict is FALSE, then goes on to explain that the problem is MUCH bigger than the post implied LMAOOOO
Alright, question. If market prices are supposedly driven by supply-and-demand, and the supply is nearly 30 times the demand, why are housing prices so fucking high?
Because a house today is worth less than a house years from now (probably). Housing is seen as an investment instead of a human need, so you can hold a bunch of them like tickets in the hopes that you can sell them for more later.
The same reason groceries are.
Stats like that ignore the fact that they are polling "empty homes" nationally, but the homeless population is majority in densely populated cities, not where those empty homes are. So even if they were given these homes for free, they'd have to be relocated, too.
It would be interesting to see if the housing units and homeless people are in the same place. My money is that there would be enough to house everyone.
Can't find the chart now. But last census found lots of rural areas in fly-over states have surplus housing.
Like West Virginia had iirc something like 8-10% surplus. Not going to find many people willing to leave cities to move out to West Virginia or Northern Louisiana/Southern Arkansas. People leaving those places are why cities have housing shortages.
Looking at the vacancy data:
https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf
... it seems as though the vast majority of vacant homes are rentals looking for tenants, rather than rich peoples second homes.
Make of that what you will.
the vast majority of vacant homes are rentals looking for tenants, rather than rich peoples second homes.
They're the same picture.
So who owns these rental homes but is living elsewhere? Perhaps rich people looking to make cash on their second homes while they dont use them?
But just carefully, don't give them a home! Make them work for it! What if you just give them a home and they sell it to buy drug? Or what if they just use drugs in the home.
Man if I was young again, I would buy a home to have lots of sex in it. I mean that's what we did with our first home. Why wouldn't a homeless person just use it for drugs...right?
If you give them homes they'll become dependent on shelter, next they might try jobs
One time I saw a guy who was clearly doing totally fine at a job. I swear, he even smelled good. Imagine if ever kid in town had a job! What would we do? It's illegal for kids to work, you know! What message are we sending our kids if guys are just given houses and allowed to work at a job!