It’s by design
Is that more houses that are unoccupied in the long-term or just unoccupied in general?
You’d also need to forcibly move the homeless population away from areas that have lots of homeless but no homes, to places with lots of homes but relatively few homeless. That means depopulating Los Angeles of homeless and instead moving them to… Maine, or Vermont, or Alaska, where there are lots of homes but nobody living in them.
Empty houses are relatively spread out pretty evenly. As in there are always more empty houses than homeless people.
There’s an average of 38 empty houses per homeless person in the US. California has the lowest ratio and it is still 6 empty houses per homeless person.
Mississippi has the highest ratio with 205 empty houses per homeless person.
Again, is it empty because it’s just sitting there, fully habitable and just accruing value, or is it empty because it’s under renovation, or in-between purchases so someone up the chain is buying and the house is sitting vacant while it’s being sold, but not for long enough for anyone else to be living there? Or currently sitting in legal limbo where a large number of people inherit a house and can’t all agree to sell it? I don’t know about the US but I know Malta has that problem where there needs to be consensus among all members of the estate before a property can be sold, so it sits empty, potentially for years.
When I worked in a rural county housing came in 3 forms: retirees who fully owned, rental tenants with absentee landlords (usually the children of deceases retirees), and then vacant homes.
Many were vacant for varieties of reasons. Some because they were vacation homes. Others because they were in some stage of the market (repair, and renovation). Others were empty nest situations and the owners lived abroad or out of state all winter/summer. (A lot of RV snowbirds) But then most prime real estate (lakefront properties) were just occupied a few weeks at a time by a rotating group of extended family and friends.
What was becoming a problem at the time (within the last decade) were the latter category becoming airBnBs and private equity investments because of their inherent value.
And those drive up the costs everywhere else, making everyone and everything clamp down because you can only take advantage of investment bubbles by leveraging debt, which is not a strategy people in need of housing csn make.
Which perpetuates the feedback loop.
There are a surpluss of houses in the us, because private equity is hoarding it. The total number of vacant houses has gone up every year since 2009.
Clearly there isnt a population explosion making the housing supply tight and overall empty houses that becoming occupied are being replaced with the now empty house they just moved out of.
And the empty house to homeless person ratio has been trending up for nearly 2 decades.
Why are people in those places? Would those reasons change if they were offered a home by someone fucking credible? Where do they prefer to live? Have you bothered to fucking ask? Im actually in los angeles, have skme good will with some clusters of unhoused people, please let me kniw if you want somebody to do that.
Maybe don’t jump straight to coercion cruelty and ‘depopulation’.
Like, offer the fucking houses. See who takes em,who doesn’t. Ask why, then work on that anf keep the offer up. Zero fucking ‘forcible’ ‘depopulation’ fucking required. Fucking liberals i swear to fuck, do you people just get off on the coercion?
Like, fuck, when i want children to eat better, my first thought isn’t ‘cut off their hands so it’s harder for them to get junk food, zip tie them to a board, and put a tube down their throats. Shock them if they struggle.’ Call me fucking crazy, but I try to fry up some broccoli or make an appealing salad or some shit before I reach for the machete and feeding tube.
Why should someone get to choose exactly where they want to live when they have nowhere to live currently? Not even the Soviet Union gave you that option. You were given an apartment, but you didn’t get to choose where it was, you got an apartment where there was one available and where your job was. In the case of the unemployed, you technically also got an apartment, but that was because you couldn’t legally be unemployed and were forced to work regardless.
So it’s not a ‘liberal’ thing to forcibly move people to where there’s housing, it’s actually a Communist thing.
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Maybe you can say that again with fewer personal insults and strawmanning?
I won’t engage with your anger-filled tirade about libs because it comes across as someone completely unhinged and I’m sure you’re just hungry or something and so irrationally angry.
If you have 10k houses in mississippi and 10k houses in maine and 10k people to distribute them to, some of each category in carying degrees of urban/rural, why assign people choices they might not find optimal?
I’m not saying you shouldn’t get any kind of preference, but if you’re literally on the street, you go where you’re put if there’s no space. You don’t get to just stay on the street until you get exactly the house you want. If there’s only space in Maine or Vermont, you pick Maine or Vermont, you don’t get to say “Los Angeles or nothing!” and stay on the street. If you need medical help, you’ll get that, if you need addiction support, you’ll get that, but sleeping on the street is not an option you get to pick.
An alternative is the Chinese Hukou system, which isn’t great, but it does give you at least some control, but it’s not the best system out there because changing your hometown is actually pretty difficult. So if you like your hometown, you’ll have social housing in that town, but good luck moving to any other town like Beijing. If you’re homeless on the streets of Beijing and you’re found to be from Nanjing, you’re being booted back to Nanjing.
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You seem incapable of actually talking without going into a seizure of strawmanning and insults. There’s no point talking to you at all. Blocked.
Good idea.
I have a few suggestions to alleviate this.
Bear in mind that I find it OK, or even desirable, for people to invest, and have some properties to rent to support them in their later years.
1- build public housing, with a rent equivalent to something like 40% of minimum wage. Building should done in random areas, to prevent ghettos from appearing.
2- tax the fuck out of vacant houses.
3- tax house ownership, by individuals or corps, progressively, to discourage accumulation and speculation.
Have 1 house? 0%, 2->10%, 5->15%, and so on, so that having more than let’s say, 10 units stops making sense.
3- tax productive empty land (developpable, housing/comercial/agri) like empty homes, to make speculation and accumulation non attractive.
Thare are many more, I’m sure but these protect private property, investment, would lower prices, make housing accesible, while normalizing the sector.
This is democratic socialism. Allow capitalism, but keeping extremes in check, while providing a safety net.
This is democratic socialism. Allow capitalism, but keeping extremes in check, while providing a safety net.
I see americans saying this fairly often, but what you describe is social democracy, not democratic socialism
I generally use the terms interchangeably. Are there fundamental differences?
Yes.
As others have mentioned democratic socialism is a form of socialism.
Socialism is a society where people own and run things together, without capitalism or feudalism or whatever. It is the idea that everyone should own their workplace and their home, either directly or through a state/community they own with everyone else in it. The spirit of socialism is removing all exploitative systems in favor of cooperative solutions. It would mean no renting out locales or apartments, and no bosses (as in owners) etc. There is also this idea that capital and currency should not be a thing as it tends to quickly go into the hands of a few over time, and so we are therefore often in favor of other systems of distributing goods.
Social democracy is liberalism (a form of capitalism) but with social safety nets and systems to limit the harm that capitalism can do, such as strong unions and labor laws. Originally social democracy was implemented by socialists who wanted to slowly bring about socialism, but it has mellowed out a lot and now it’s just what you and I describe.
Edit: I feel I should mention that social democracy is generally considered to be in decline. Union participation is down, things are being privatized, labor laws revoked. The socially democratic parties have not just mellowed out it seems, but have drifted right. They often seem more concerned with maintaining the status quo than with improving society.
The problem with utopian socialism is people, as always. There will always some sumbich that will take advantage of the system, as in all real socialisms, like USSR, China, NK, Cuba…
I think that utopian socialism is beautiful, but it doesn’t take into account human behaviors like greed, hate, rancor, etc… And the people able to capitalize on that.
Haha no :P
While some of those came about through socialist revolutions they were hijacked by the military who retained the socialist rhetoric. The actual state that followed the revolutions were never socialist, they were at best military dictatorships with some social policies comparable to social democracies.
The USSR is interesting as it was a planned economy. The others are just state capitalist however.
You should read about the revolutions and how they failed! It was never the socialism itself that failed, because it was never implemented in the first place! That’s the difficult part.
In general the more egalitarian the system the more obstacles to implement as those who own things have less incentives to implement it (and will do whatever they can to squash it or redirect it). It’s not coincidence that liberalism came about only after we got capitalists and a sizeable middle class. We ddin’t get democracy because it is a good system, we got it because it was a way for capitalists and the middle class to gain political power. With socialism there is no upper class that will support the revolution, no businesses or government will be on our side because it directly threatens them.
We have a word for those who claim they are a socialist yet support the states you mentioned. We call them tankies. Socialists and anarchists despise them because they are in many ways just like fascists, yet they try to worm their way into our spaces.
Edit:
I think that utopian socialism is beautiful, but it doesn’t take into account human behaviors like greed, hate, rancor, etc
It specifically does! Also utopian socialism is not a thing these days!
Nice to see the word “tankie” used in its proper context; for once.
This community is explicitly anti-tankie by the actual meaning of the word, so we like to use it properly!
Whole point of capitalism is breaking the game to get ahead. The meta is too advanced, and we no longer get good stuff out of it as a side effect; that waste has been largely eliminated.
Any solution will not last, unless the beast is slain, and the more we try the more we kludge up the engine. It’s not worth running anymore, if it ever was.
Wasn’t really ever worth it. There has been calculable dehumanization, exploitation, and genocides all in the name of profit and efficiency. The quality of life going up for some of us in some parts (which is largely because of unions anyways) should not excuse the harm that capitalism has done and continues to do.
As you say, the incentives in the system are not towards a prosperous and stable society, but towards maximizing how much you can squeeze out of people.
So in my opinion it was never worth it is essentially what I’m saying.
wasn’t ever
I agree, but even for those who don’t; it’s over. Any illusion of utility is drowned by the rising tide of it’s costs, even for those of us who don’t live in houses that will be underwater in 10 yew4e
Part of the problem is there is no market incentive for speculators and landlords to lower the costs of their units. They use software to set pricing with goes right up to the line of “collaboration” but doesn’t quite cross it.
I like the idea of a tax or fine for empty housing that is porportional to the highest advertised lease price of the unit. Let’s say 10% for starters, so if an apartment wants to jack the prices up on their “luxury” units to 2k a month, they pay $200 every month that unit is unfilled. 100% of that fine goes to subsidizing housing for low income renters. Now we have an incentive for housing prices to go down, but still have the ability for them to go up to meet actual market demands, and we provide more money for lower income renters to afford that housing in the first place. It also gives us another “lever” to pull to manage the housing market. Increasing or decreasing that tax/fine rate to manage real estate bubbles.
People are getting toxic at you so as OP i just want to send love for your radical [compared to the status quo] acknowledgment that vacant homes should be taxed.
Other people are being mean sickos for a percentage you mentioned, and though I share their perspectives, it still stands true that NO ONE in our current government would be caught dead saying such a radical anti-1% thing as far as I know. Keep fighting for human rights and don’t let the internet trolls push you backwards. ❤️
[There is time in the future for you to learn and perhaps become even more radical <like me lol ✨> but no shame for advocating for basic tier one human rights oriented policies.]
your radical acknowledgment that vacant homes should be taxed.
imagine thinking thats radical 🤣
how about housing as a human right? How about abolishing the class system where you have those that own and those who work? Any system which allows for “passive” income is by the definition of the phrase unjust.
radical compared to the status quo, thanks for allowing me to clarify
not starving kids in gaza is radical compared to the status quo, the status quo is not an acceptable benchmark.
As is not having rape-and-torture-dungeons.
Whats that about?
Im just a fucking prude i guess.
So, if I write a book, or compose a musical piece, I shouldn’t get ongoing retribution? What is my incentive then?
Let me understand this, are you advocating for some style of old school soviet style socialism?
First off creating art is and has been done for millenia without a profit motive, there are a lot more incentives for creating art and every single one of them will lead to a more fulfilling piece than simply a profit motive.
Secondly under capitalism most artists already don’t get ongoing retribution. They do work for hire, meaning the company they create their art or music for owns the art and any retribution goes to the owners of the company. How many animators do you think get royalties from disney after they’re done?
Thirdly do yo think there were no composers under old school soviet style socialism? They got paid the same as the other workers when creating films or theater productions and other stuff, there just was no royalty system that would have them and their grandchildren collect checks indefinitely without doing labor.
And that style of socialism that lifted millions out of poverty? That taught the common people to read and write? That despite gruesome civil wars was able to turn a mostly agrarian society into an industrialized one just in time to fend back and defeat the nazi beast at enormous cost to itself, freeing an entire subcontinent from the fascist yoke that it’s now sliding back under? Yeah consider me a fan.
Here is good video about childrens media in soviet times I found very interesting, and her other videos are superb too, highly recommend watching
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What is a landleech?
Someone who leeches off other peoples hard work by having them hand over a big chunk of their income in order to get a roof over their heads.
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political education
thats not what I’m trying to do at all, I just hate landleeches. If I hurt a landleeches fee-fees with a comment I dont care, it still wont come close to the misery and anguish these parasites to the working class cause.
Edit: to elaborate I rented from landleeches before, and heard stories from other renters, this isn’t me being righteously outraged but how I genuinely feel about them.
40%? Why not 30%? Or 20%, maybe even 10%?
I think it’s better for building to be done mixed-style, eg fancier homes mixed with less fancy ones. Prevents ghettoisation too, and forces the rich to interact with the poor more.
Taxing vacant homes is meh, I think it’s better to outright seize them. We then can claim we don’t tax vacant homes (as there aren’t any).
Plus not taxing vacant homes removes the incentive for the government to make MORE vacant homes. If it’s taxed, at least let the vacant home tax be less to the government in terms of profit, than having them be occupied; but more taxed to homeowners. The extra money left should be used in a way that doesn’t incentivise people to profit off vacancy. We could for example use it to build new homes which cannot be bought nor owned even partially by people already owning a home - which will drive down the price for vacant homes.
Thus we get an effect of:
too many vacant homes
–> vacancy tax (levied by independent non-profit volunteer agency, which gives a part to government, less to government than if it were occupied; thus giving the government an incentive to build homes).
–> remainder of both vacancy and occupancy tax goes to homebuilding by social housing cooperations (not landlords)
–> more homes are built.
–> More homes
–> price goes down.
–> People are inclined to sell the vacant homes.
–> Fewer vacant homes
–> Fewer are built
–> Price stabilises around rates where vacancy rates are at their lowest and the fewest second home occupiers exist.We should also necessitate that as much as possible in the government is for and by the people themselves, as decentralised as possible.
Democratic socialism is not capitalism. Democratic socialism is a system without capitalism altogether. What you suggest is social democracy. Which, although it is good too, has its deficit in not tackling for-profit egoistic mindsets enough. While capitalism “excels” at raising productivity for the employer, socialism excels at raising living standards for all. Kropotkin has written more about this in his Conquest of Bread. Very good work, might I say!
Taxing vacant homes is meh, I think it’s better to outright seize them. We then can claim we don’t tax vacant homes (as there aren’t any).
I wasn’t super with your comment at first, but this point - - holy fuck, watch the “housing crisis” disappear overnight if this was even hinted at.
Taxing vacant homes is meh, I think it’s better to outright seize them. We then can claim we don’t tax vacant homes (as there aren’t any).
It’ll upset the powers that be, they’ll yell communist!
So, increasingly tax’em for a couple of years, then seize them (and maybe use that tax money for remodeling if need be).
Have 1 house? 0%, 2->10%, 5->15%, and so on, so that having more than let’s say, 10 units stops making sense.
I’d go with 1: whatever%, 2 50%, 3 75%, …
Note that having one house, even occupied is already taxed pretty much universally.
In some jurisdictions, it might make sense, but in rural areas, it generally doesn’t. My parents bought a house to live in that happened to come with a second house on the land in the middle of nowhere. No one wants that second house.
The “productive empty land” could be a nightmare, lots of deforestation to ensue in areas that can ill afford it. There’s enough dead commercial properties to reclaim before we need to start going after “empty land”.
Forested land is already environmentally productive, and can get rebates as such. Developing it wouldn’t make much more anyway, as the land value in rural areas is rather low. This tax would hit city property first, and could be implemented for cities only anyway.
In cities, not only would this hit empty residential structures, it would also disincentivise big parking lots and single floor buildings.
The GOP is working hard to fix this … by greatly increasing the number of homeless people.
RAHHHHH USA USA
You can’t just say this and not say the staggering numbers
There are about 15 million empty homes in America and about 750,000 homeless people on any given night. It would be trivial to end homelessness without building a single new home. The next time someone is like “oh we need to build more housing” you look in their stupid fucking face and laugh because as long as housing is an investment commodity you can build all the housing in the world and it won’t matter
And don’t get me started on “luxury” housing - projects that do less than nothing to address the problem. If I had my druthers it would be illegal to put up any new luxury housing in any municipality that has an identifiable homeless population.
In practice, your plan would just result in abandoned dead towns in rural Kansas being turned into fenceless concentration camps for the formerly homeless.
there are plenty of houses and land just kept empty for the speculative value in almost every city
Truth.
Truth. “Ending homelessness” unfortunately isn’t just as easy as “give them homes.” There a huge hurdles to overcome that are created by other ghoulish aspects of capital.
Just one example, a huge proportion of unhoused people suffer from addiction and PTSD (veterans hugely overrepresented) and what this means for some solutions like building big apartment buildings (called “permanent supportive housing”) can devolve into conflict and interpersonal violence without meaningful recovery and mental health support—which of course we know is also restricted by a for-profit model of care.
And again that’s just one example. Another example I commented elsewhere is that @ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com’s plan without providing transportation could result in malnutrition or health concerns by positioning victims of homelessness deep in food and care deserts. This of course is the inhuman exploitation of healthcare under the fist of capital.
Don’t mistake ofc, there are some very smart people out there working hard to make plans through this maze, but that maze exists, and is difficult, and I don’t like laughing at people putting in the labor to explore the solution.
While having a home may not immediately solve those problems, they are infinitely harder to solve when you don’t have a home
Indeed! Just combating the “laugh in their stupid faces” and “it would be trivial” of the person I am responding to. No other disagreements. :)
Housing First policies have good results.
Indeed!
In both the scattered-site and project-based Housing First programs, residents are given access to a wide variety of supportive health and rehabilitation services which they have the option, although not mandatory, to participate in and receive treatment.
(emphasis mine)
It would be trivial to end homelessness without building a single new home.
I mean, no, but I get what you mean. Plenty of empty homes are in areas with low homeless density, so you would need a non-trivial system to transition homeless people, get them jobs, transportation to grocery, education and medical, etc.
Again you are not wrong cuz I get what you mean but, for example, if you see a project tackling homelessness by building housing (especially in urban and historically zoned areas, and especially when it’s government or ngo owned [not for investment]) it doesn’t necessarily mean they are full of shit, just that they are engaging on a different front of the battle. :)
Plenty of empty homes are rental units in areas with high homeless density, we would just have to re evaluate our relationship with treating housing as a commodity which is literally what I said
21,000 empty residential units in Philadelphia as of 2024, 5200 homeless in Philadelphia around the same time. Many cities would follow this trajectory.
But use some cities where the homelessness issue is absolutely tremendous:
NYC 247,000 vacant units and 350k homeless with the broadest definition of homelessness. Not enough, but the surrounding metro area could cover and transportation is more addressable here. Additionally NYC has 88,000 rent stablized units off the market, obviously not enough to cover here but enough to make a serious dent. Rent stablized units will stay empty because landlords would rather deny housing to a human and keep “equity” in their portfolio then rent at an affordable price and pay for renovations to make livable housing.
LA - 93-111,000 empty residential units. 75,000 homeless
The narratives that you and @woodscientist@lemmy.world perpetuate aren’t inherently untrue, they become true in some scenarios like NYC. But what they primarily do is defend a system where wealthy elites commodify housing instead of allowing it to be a human right.
When I was younger in my career I worked mobile therapy and one part of that was crisis response, which included responding to the cops when it was -2 degrees F out and they found a homeless person camping. I would often have to just drive around with them until morning because all the shelters are full or take them to my office and let them hang out while I did paperwork so they wouldn’t freeze to death. When I encounter your rhetoric I think of that, and the similar response when it would be 100+ degrees in summer, and I wonder how you can think that not housing someone is ever the correct choice
But what they primarily do is defend a system where wealthy elites commodify housing instead of allowing it to be a human right.
lol no, I am telling people not to “laugh in peoples stupid faces.” As I said multiple times lmao. This comment above alleviates the failures of your first comment so thank you for clarifying your original directives.
how you can think that not housing someone is ever the correct choice
COUGH COUGH GAG GAG THE SMOKE THE SMOKE WHERE IS IT COMING FROM OH ITS THE STRAW MAN YOU SET ON FIRE
So what are you advocating for? A theoretical future in which more homes are built correct? This takes time which implies the following: tonight a person who is homeless remains homeless and the landlord class who is currently raking it has their investment portfolio protected. If anything they likely make tons of money on developing the additional housing you describe.
Versus the state, today, acting and properly utilizing the housing supply that exists and housing people, today? Again you can misrepresent this by saying “there will be transportation problems” (there won’t, unless you protect the landlord class), or you can misrepresent this by saying “you’ll create ‘homeless camps’ in rural Kentucky with food deserts and no support” (you won’t, unless you protect the landlord class).
This is why i say you are defending wealthy elites, this is why i say you are defending not housing someone. I am not saying that your positions are incorrect, building more housing is necessary, changing zoning laws to be less car dependent and to change the structure of american suburbia is necessary, yes, agreed. Food deserts are a problem, access to services is a problem. But these are long term issues with long term solutions.
They can be coupled with a more drastic and forceful short term mediation that admittedly will not fix the problem entirely - temporary homelessness will always exist in some form as long as people kick each other out - and that will help the person that is living in a tent or their car or just sleeping in a fucking alley because the shelter is over capacity right now. And then the shelter may not be so constantly stressed of resources, can maybe even afford to stay open longer, and the person temporarily homeless will actually have a place to go.
i’m not advocating anything lmao i am saying it’s shitty to laugh in peoples faces.
if there is a region with high homless density compared to few vacant homes and it is determined that building housing is cost effective in service of that community i will not laugh in the aid worker’s faces.
i will not laugh. that’s all i mean, and if you actually tried to pay attention you would notice it’s all i have ever said.
i am blocking you now thanks for thoroughly embarrassing yourself
Okay well overly attach yourself to an obviously hyperbolic statement that wasn’t even directed at you and get offended, I guess.
Or don’t since your response to being challenged is to apparently disengage.
I used to work for an organization in Atlanta that was somewhat similar to Habitat for Humanity. We existed ostensibly to build and renovate low-cost housing for homeless people. Our basic course of action was 1) buy an abandoned house that numerous homeless people were squatting in; 2) roust the homeless people out so we could do the renovation (they literally had us carpenters doing this rousting, which was an interesting experience for a liberal college boy on a co-op like myself); 3) leave the house empty because we couldn’t find anyone who could both afford the mortgage and wanted to live in these neighborhoods. Like, it was crazy how much worse we were making the homeless problem.
Looking back on it decades later, I’m pretty sure this was a giant charity scam. We raised large amounts of donor money and very little of that went into actual renovations of anything. I’m not saying Habitat is or was like this, but we sure seemed to be.
You were part of the commodification of housing, sorry. This is a scam to kick squatters out and create “equity”, which can then be borrowed against for further real estate speculation
Your intentions were noble but you were used and your labor was stolen in the worst possible way, you created further wealth for wealthy people and evicted squatters into the street. I’m sorry that you were used in this way
your labor was stolen
TBF we mitigated that to some extent by getting high a lot and knocking off at 3:30 to drink beers.
How you scope a problem is a choice. It’s possible to make bad choices, but most people make reasonable ones. How to solve homelessness in Philadelphia, in a specific neighborhood therein, in the state of Pennsylvania, in the Eastern US, in the US as a whole, etc, are all reasonable problems to think about.
Different scopes of homelessness problem will have different extents to which supply, transportation, various policy choices, greedy investors, etc. influence the issue. Some places, reducing the value of places based on how long they’ve been empty might help, other places it may have little effect. It’s actually many related problems, rather than one big one, kind of like cancer.
And I tend to agree with what you’re saying, at smaller scopes, it really is a simpler problem. People camping outside vacant units should just be housed. Offering someone on the streets of Pittsburgh an apartment in rural Indiana might not actually be very helpful.
Scope and perspective are very important and homelessness won’t be universally solved by any one solution or cookie cutter response.
It’s wild to me though that things like housing first programs have been shown to work, vacant buildings like malls could be repurposed as shelters, golf courses could be campgrounds.
But instead they will ship homeless across state lines to places like California and New York for them to burden the state elsewhere, and homeless help programs get so grifted that it can cost $50 to put a PB&J into a homeless man’s hands.
In the end, what we can all agree on is this: We don’t have a resource problem; we have a distribution problem.
Thank you for this concise summary!
Find me an example of any city in the USA aside from NYC where the homeless population outranks the vacant home rate
I did not include this but when looking at those numbers this was the same for Seattle, for San Francisco, for Michigan, etc.
I’m not surprised if it exists but given LA and NYC have some of the highest rates of homelessness in the country I doubt there are many examples
The idea presented was never “ship homeless people all over to displace them and also put them in camps” but notice how it immediately gets twisted to the worst interpretation to defend commodity landownership
I’m not defending commodity landownership. Rent seeking behavior shouldn’t be rewarded, and I think housing people by transferring ownership of vacant units to them without remuneration to prior landlords would promote the public good.
My point was that as you change the perspective by which you look at a problem like homelessness, the casual factors change, as do the sorts of solutions that people consider. Yes, some of them are really bad at large scales, and I’d rather focus on smaller scales for that reason. At city/metro scales, it’s a lot easier to make meaningful change, and there’s something special about helping your neighbors like that. You’ve kind of made my point for me, there.
I’m not defending commodity landownership.
Me neither but u/ragebutt also twisted my words in this way. I suggest disengaging they are so mean lol.
The problem with this is that every market is going to have a certain number of empty homes in it in any given time. Properties are bought and sold, vacated and re-rented, and often in this process they sit vacant for a few months. Properties need to be cleaned or renovated. It doesn’t matter how egalitarian the home ownership distribution is. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking socialized housing. Any housing market will have some large number of vacant units at any given time.
My point is that it’s incredibly foolish to just look at the raw numbers of “vacant” homes. Most of those “vacant” homes are only temporarily vacant as part of the churn of the real estate market.
The truth is home construction dropped off a cliff after 2008. The real causes of the housing crisis are due to:
- A general shortage of home construction.
- Consolidation and mergers among home construction companies.
- General wealth/income inequality encouraging resources to go to small numbers of lavish homes for the wealthy instead of large numbers of modest homes for the working class.
Vacant units are not a significant cause of the high cost of housing. Are units sometimes kept empty because of financial reasons or to avoid the rent dropping in certain saturated markets? Yes. But that behavior cannot be maintained long term. In practice, there isn’t some vast supply of vacant housing, in places where people want to live, that can just be handed over to the homeless.
This sounds nice until we see that in the majority of markets that vacant units outnumber the homeless population by a significant factor.
You can again misconstrue my argument and say that people will be shipped off to camps in the middle of fucking nowhere (which is ridiculous) or you can go to this argument which that now there are just not enough homes, which is also fucking bullshit.
Or maybe you can stop licking the boots of landlords and understand that commodified housing is causing this issue.
85,000 vacant units in Seattle vs 17k homeless on any given night, 54,000 using the broadest definition of “homeless”
80,000 vacant units in Michigan vs 33,000 homeless again using the broadest definition
291,000 vacant units in Wisconsin vs 3200-20,000 homeless (again depending on how broadly you define “homeless”)
I challenge you to find a city outside of NYC where the vacancy rate doesn’t grossly outweigh the homeless population. And in NYC case you have the surrounding metro area. “B-b-b-b-but properties are being renovated!” Bullshit. 85,000 properties in Seattle being renovated? Come on. At least some of those are some rich fucks second property that they use sparingly. Restrict that, use it for low income housing, done.
Downvote all you want lmao this is researched social services data, look it up, not at all even my opinion 😂 I promise I am on the same side as you and just discouraging “laughing in the stupid faces” at people working for the good of our underprivileged neighbors. ❤️
I hate how toxic this site is gyatt damb.
The thing is that we always have vacant homes. Homes that are under renovation or waiting for the next tenant to move into or are in the wrong location. Vacancy rates are currently at one of the lowest points in history. We’re doing a better job cramming people into available housing than ever before and it’s not enough.
Missing some key education a moderate amount. The numbers this cites specifically point to livable homes. So renovations and transitions are explicitly excluded from that count.
Further, vacancy rates are primarily increased by rent-seeking behaviors (capital) like dual home ownership, AirBnB, holding homes empty as an investment, etc. This is what the post is speaking to. People owning multiple homes. As such…
We’re doing a better job cramming people into available housing than ever before and it’s not enough.
False. If we were doing a better job, the number of homes per rich individual would not be growing.
Humph…who wants to house the homeless? Certainly not me whose house is now worth 100x more than when I bought it!
I know you’re being purposefully flippant, but just to point out that you don’t need those kinds of returns in an actual healthy economy.
I would even argue that wild, unpredictable swings in value like that are the sign of unstable market speculation based on both fear and greed.
In a healthy economy houses are safe, boring, predictable, and highly regulated.
The problem is that NIMBYs would often protest to prevent affordable housing to be built to prevent depreciation of their property value; which, let’s say, was bought for €500k but the house is now worth €16 million. The depreciation in 10-20% from the €16 million would not even make a dent to the person’s personal wellbeing and survival. Being worth €13 million in the end is not even going to make someone poor and it is more than enough for most average people.
There has just been growth of greed in the last decades. Community is destroyed by excess individualism.
Yes someone has to foot the bill, and so often it falls on those who can least afford it.
Ofc this just makes poverty all the more unbearable which just reinforces the crab in the bucket mentality too afraid or shortsighted to consider communal solutions.
In the same vain, we have the technology and ability to give everyone on earth access to clean drinking water. We just can’t do it and still run a profit, so it doesn’t get done. Capitalism is the enemy of humanity.
Ideally, projects that are beneficial to everyone but unprofitable are picked up by the government. Like building highways and maintaining public lands… What we’re seeing in the US is what happens when you “run the government like a business”. It doesn’t mean efficiency, it means revenue generation for the board members. Sadly the fucking chuds in the US are too dumb to figure that out.
Why don’t they just drink champagne if their water is dirty?
That was literally how a good chunk of recorded human history did it, except with weak beer or diluted wine.
I am always on the lookout for different ways the same thing is taxed in different regions.
Australia’s Victoria region (state?) taxes one on the total value of all real estate, with large increases if the total amount is high, the building is empty for more than 6 months, or the building is owned by a trust (Caution: Australian law may define these things differently than your government.)
You can just say this without mentioning Utah, so I’ll add to the conversation:
https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how TL:DR: Give 'em a home, AND a social worker to figure out how to keep them housed.
https://jobs.utah.gov/homelessness/
https://www.unitedway.org/our-impact/financial-security/homelessness-home-ownership
Thanks for sharing!
Start setting empty homes on fire until the issue is solved
Let’s battle.
ba ba ba ba ba ba bumm bumm badum-dum (screen swirls in black)
mweeer bwer bwer-ner
mweeer bwer ner-ner
Unfortunately it isn’t actually that straightforward. That number includes abandoned and run down homes that are currently unlivable, houses that aren’t actually on the market because they’re being remodeled, they exist in the middle of nowhere where people don’t want to live, etc. Fundamentally, the problem with housing in the US is supply. We don’t build enough housing in the places people want to live.
While on the topic, a lot of people say that housing is commodified and that’s why it sucks. This is not accurate. Housing is treated as an investment that should go up in value over time, not a commodity that can be easily bought, sold, and traded.
If anybody is interested in learning more about housing in the United States from someone who studies this full time, I recommend Clayton Becker
That number includes abandoned and run down homes that are currently unlivable, houses that aren’t actually on the market because they’re being remodeled, they exist in the middle of nowhere where people don’t want to live, etc.
Would love a citation? The commonly cited numbers I know explicitly only include livable homes. Remodeling also excluded.
a lot of people say that housing is commodified and that’s why it sucks. This is not accurate. Housing is treated as an investment that should go up in value over time
yup and that sucks so bad BASED BASED BASED thanks for sharing
To my understanding, vacant housing refers to housing in which someone is not currently living, including housing that is under repair/renovation, needs repairs, or is abandoned/condemned.
https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/census-reveals-vacant-housing-mysteries
Also, of the housing that is vacant, two thirds are vacant for 6 or fewer months, and ~85% are vacant for 12 or fewer months. The median duration of vacancy is about 2.4 months. Only a small portion of vacant housing is actually vacant in the way people typically think when they hear vacant housing. Freeing up the ~10% of housing that is actually vacant long-term the way people think just would not alleviate the housing crisis. We gotta build more housing, y’all.
https://www.tiktok.com/@divasunglasses/video/7189814160165702955
Housing is generally cited as the canonical opposite of commodity products. Each one has to be valued independently and there’s often a huge delta between sales price and market price.
Each one has to be valued independently
i guess therein lies part of the problem. since each house is a bit different, there’s no economies of scale, and that’s a large part of the reason why housing is so expensive.
i’m in favor of the city building a million homes and renting them out at non-profit rates. people joke and say it looks ugly, but ask homeless people: would you rather be homeless or live in a soviet-style building? i haven’t done the experiment but i suggest that 90% of homeless people would rather not be homeless.
just as a rough idea: i saw a documentary about eastern germany (back when it was still sovjet) the other day and it casually mentioned that rent was around $60 per month (in 2019 dollars) (yes, you read that right). rent was incredibly cheap. though i’m not sure whether it was only the economies of scale or also some subsidies through the government.
Unfortunately it’s not a simple problem.
Real estate is non-commoditized for a number of reasons. A big part is that people have wildly different needs when it comes to housing. They don’t just prioritize different things, they often care about completely different factors. In many cases a feature to one person is a bug to an other.
People have tried to build large housing blocks in the past with mixed success. It’s certainly better than being homeless. Particularly in areas where all the previous housing had been bombed to rubble, the prospect of any shelter is incredibly attractive.
The DDR economy isn’t exactly one we want to model here. Remember that the overall system was so bad that people risked getting shot just to get out. Yes, there were many factors to why their economy was terrible but part of it was a Soviet era belief that the government could make major economic policy decisions without having to think too hard about the individual level details.
I wouldn’t read too much into prices in a command economy. Energy was famously cheap because the USSR overproduced energy. It was so cheap that many public buildings didn’t have light switches, they just left them on. That was money that could have been spent on more productive things. I also remember visiting the USSR during “Glasnost”. They were opening up but they still had the old price controls. Bread and Vodka prices were in single digit Kopecks. 100 Kopeck to the Ruble. The official exchange rate was something like 2 USD per Ruble. If you paid more than 1 USD for 5 Rubles on the street, you were getting ripped off. If you were savvy, 1 USD could get you up to 20 Rubles.
I do like your idea of the government building lots of housing. I’d just modify it a bit. The government builds houses all over the place. Each one is put up for auction with the minimum bid being break-even. If there’s every a time when those auctions don’t get bids, pause new construction in that area until it does.
That algorithm prevents over production of housing, allows for housing in the correct locations (as determined by the residents), automatically adjusts as demand increases, and allows for varied housing to meet the varied needs of a diverse set of residents. It’s also largely immune to speculation. If some hedge fund tries to buy all those houses, they’ll just be left holding the bag when the government pumps out cheaper alternatives.
It would crush real estate as an investment vehicle. Real estate won’t just stop going up in value, we’d be actively working to plateau or even reduce those values. I see that as a feature rather than a bug.
In the economy, every middleman eats a part of the gains. If you have private landlords buying up houses constructed by the city, that then rent them out to poor people, you make up completely unnecessary middlemen. cutting them out saves a lot of the cost, i predict. especially in cities, where people typically rent. maybe it wouldn’t work in rural areas.
Y es indecente, es indecente
Gente sin casa
Casas sin gente“No Hay Tanto Pan” – Silvia Perez Cruz
Translation:
And it’s indecent, it’s indecent
People without houses
Houses without peopledoes Youngster Joey have opinions about what to do about Blackrock?
Pokemon Red/Blue hitting with the facts.
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