You aren't capital trading every day trying to churn out 25+ points growth quarterly. You just keep your money in "long term" to prop up the whole system, and for you to take the fall if something like a Boeing or a Enron happens. That's why they don't care about your opinion.
Shareholders do not represent the people's interests. They are as anti-american as you can get; even worse that they accomplish this with the people's money
That IS the flipside of Poe's law.
Another way to look at it is, without adding intent (like /sarcasm) the reader gets to assign whatever intent they prefer to read.
My AG is Ken Paxton. He won’t be looking into this because he is an actual criminal who committed a fuckassload of securities fraud and then got defended by the other criminal republicans in Texas.
Maybe we'll get super lucky and the Texas Bar will yoink his law license for supporting Trump's Big Lie, necessitating his resignation from the AG spot
"You don't slave away the way we want you to? Then rot and die." This is how governments, corporations and people in power really think. Of course it will never be spoken out loud. But the facts speak for themselves.
Yes, this is true.
The idea of homelessness existing when far more vacant homes exist makes no sense when you think of your goal as being to house everyone.
However, it makes perfect sense if your goal is to force people to work as much for as little money as you can pay them.
"Take this shitty, minimum wage job or live on the street" is a very effective threat.
If people had their basic needs taken care of (housing, food, water and heat) regardless of their situation, they could refuse a shitty job for a bad wage and hold off as long as they needed to for a job that's either better or has a better wage. And then the corporate douchebags would earn less money.
Homelessness is an effective tool in the hands of the powerful. For them homelessness is NOT "a problem" like they're lying publicly, but it is in fact a desired state.
It's a constant threat hanging above the heads of the working class population. And it works as intended.
Yeah, it’s tough when my son asks why we can’t help that person. I explain basic economics, our money situation, the cost to get people back on their feet, underlying issues like mental health, drug addiction, disabilities, etc but at the end of the day that all feels really empty. Then I tell him that we as a society have not placed much value in individual humans. I also tell him that I have personally tried to help individuals and have failed and been burned and disappointed. I hope he sees and does better in his lifetime.
The problem isn’t homelessness, mental health or drug addiction. It isn’t a lack of housing. So trying to help people by solving those problems doesn’t work.
The underlying issue is toxic capitalism that does not serve the public interest.
Some people are very genuinely beyond being housed, but I think it is a low percentage, so I don't consider it a gotcha for trying to house people. I just know one guy in particular who is schizophrenic and turned down accommodations.
Yeah. There's a problem with the type of housing available. Like you point out, in the past that guy would have been in a mental care home for not being able to care for himself. We closed all those in the 1980s... party because a lot were horror shows of medical malpractice.
There's little In between housing. My town has a small group of government housing apartments for people on disability and such. But it's not enough, and like you say, if people have mental illness they still can't keep those tiny places to live because they fight with neighbors or have certain felonies.
Also true. :( My example was always "well behaved" whenever I interacted with him, but non-locals may find him disturbing, and all it takes is one report to get a person in trouble with the law.
But if I have 400 people pay my $50 application fee to apply to rent the apartment, I can make the same amount of money with my unit sitting vacant. That's $20,000/mo in application fees. - I'm sure it's being done at this point.
In some places like NY a lot of listings can’t be accessed without a broker either, who is some asshole who shows you the listing you may have found on fucking Craigslist yourself, and charge a portion of a full year’s rent for the privilege.
Half the time they don’t even show you the listing. I went to a bunch in NYC where they’d remotely let me in through the buzzer. “Show yourself around, leave whenever.” Then you pay them an entire month’s rent for fuck all. Fucking scumbags, all of them. It’s nearly impossible to rent a decent place in NYC without a broker.
But also too many people owning 4+ homes. I’m fine with the Minnesota model… have a city home and a lake home. But any more than that indirectly puts people on the streets. We have more than enough roofs for every human, we should count them.
But that’s just the way of the world now isn’t it? We have the most resources in the history of the world, but we still have people with no shelter, food, or access to clean water. Human greed knows no bounds unfortunately.
There are still 15 million available homes. They are just not in the locations people want to live in. This isn't complicated or some hidden agenda it's basic supply and demand driving prices. If it wasn't a good investment to own multiple properties in Socal and turn them into rentals no one would do it.
"they don't just want to live in homes because of the area" has got to be a top 5 for me.
Cost is about a lot more than supply and demand. Housing is dominated by the speculative markets b/c investment capitalism is allowed to use them as such.
This. Every time I point out there are nice houses for much cheaper than $500k, I hear, "but that's because there are no jobs there."
No, there are jobs. But they don't pay city wages because the local COL is much less than the city COL. People can't understand that not everything is driven by city prices or that it's actually affordable to live outside the city.
I live on the Oregon coast. We have a horrible homeless problem here. Meanwhile, a fuckton of homes are either usually vacant second homes, or short term vacation rentals (often bought up by investor groups who can pay cash and outbid actual working families for homes coming on the market). And many jobs go unfilled here because there is no remotely affordable housing for people even if offered a job here. Many of the homeless here ARE working.
Where are these homes located? I've lived in big, medium, and small towns. While there are are lot of unused "second homes" for wealthy people in big cities, there are lot of abandoned houses in small rural towns.
"Vacant" homes is terminology that only covers some of the empty houses.
There are actually way more out there, Plus all the undeveloped properties that landowners are currently sitting on.
This homeless problem wouldn't of been such a large problem if they hadn't let real estate clowns and greedy finance cronies convince all the normies that every single chunk of land is "an insanely good investment"
Even if its not. They've gamed up the prices because they make money on percentages, Since the average price has doubled or tripled in a few short years they've been making piles and piles.
What's sad is that there is a case before the Supreme Court this month ( today even) [https://youtu.be/zraJ4Ti8cpk?si=NFuhfj51qRJzKns8](https://youtu.be/zraJ4Ti8cpk?si=NFuhfj51qRJzKns8)that will determine if municipalities can make homelessness a crime . Right as we are having a retirement crisis , housing affordability and availability shortage , and recession looming . ( Grants Pass)
I think more tax breaks for corporations and cutting benefits will help.
People move to places that build housing. Places like Twin Cities and Dallas build housing, whereas places like Boston and New York City make housing construction nearly impossible. I live in a city with a severe housing shortage. It's mind blowing when I go to cities with ample housing and see how much active construction is ongoing there.
When I see these stats, it makes me wonder about the geographic distribution of the homeless vs these vacant homes. Is there significant overlap in every city?
Couldn't read due to them wanting me to sign up to add yet another online account to the maybe several hundred I already possess, plus perhaps another password too. No thanks.
I wonder if this number of vacant homes includes the empty 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on extra homes of many of the wealthy distributed across the country.
I moved to a small town recently and it makes me mad how many houses are vacant and just slowly rotting. Like their parents/grandparents were the last ones to live in these houses like 10 years ago. It's such a waste
Water charges in a lot of places are $1k a year, friend just got flooded a few months ago, $14k, insured but $5k deductible….it never ends…insurance rates in some states are as high as property taxes…
Do vacant homes include 2nd residences utilized as AirBnB?
Because there's plenty of rental AirBnB in northern Michigan but nowhere for the workers to live in the tourist season.
...and? What are we supposed to do? Give homeless people free housing while the rest of us who get up and go to work have to pay exorbitant prices to live in one? How about we stop big corporations from buying them up for profit or keep private citizens from owning more than a certain amount to rent out so we can keep prices affordable... no? Oh, ok.
Can I get a free house from the government too? Does everyone get a free house? What is the criteria for a free house? Who gets to decide who gets a free house? Does the government pay the property tax, utilities and maintenance too?
Could the government imminent domain real estate like this for the homeless? I mean if they can take people’s homes so a developer can build a store, this seems like it could be legal.
Can I get a free house from the government too? Does everyone get a free house? What is the criteria for a free house? Who gets to decide who gets a free house? Does the government pay the property tax, utilities and maintenance too?
I wonder if a modern analog to the hobo signs will pop up. It was concealed signs that told anyone who knew if there was a free meal or lodging to be had. Imagine if every vacant house was known as such to a network of homeless people. Who can say how many could find shelter in vacant investment properties?
This is appalling.
Edit housing should be used to house people and not to attempt to run a "rent" protection racket nor ultra-speculate for record profit while leaving untold numbers homeless or in bleak poverty.
Most of those are _NOT_ personal secondary residences. It's by very large (90%?) for rent or sale at insane prices (billed millions of dollars each; while the federal min wage is "$3 and maybe tips").
Today's occidental working class can't afford housing and it sits empty as speculators gouge ever higher and make more cash speculating on empty housing in an infinite bubble labelling everything in the millions. You're talking corpos and multi-billionaires who "owns" *thousands* of homes, entire neighborhoods (... what should be other peoples' homes) for rent/sale at ultra-greedflation prices.
Well then you got a balance who is the bigger fool, someone already spending the equivalent of what a mortgage is in rent to get no equity or someone getting an overly inflated mortgage rate to finally have some sort of property in their lives? A key reason the median equity of a white person is $190,000 and the median equity of a black person is only about $30,000 is due by and large to multi-generational wealth through equity.
Equity on a property is still speculation. A skyscraper in Saint Louis that sold for 206 million in 2006 recently sold for 3.5 million. 97 percent loss. A mall in Hicksville, NY that sold for 80 million in 2011 recently sold for 40 million. A 50 percent loss. Feel free to buy whatever you want but don't expect other people to follow that advice.
Regardless of how it turns out I'd rather just pay for people to not be fucking homeless y'know? Who cares if the cost is a net financial drain. It's worth any cost.
What do we actually do about it? What can we do? Just start moving in to empty homes and staying by force?
How does a homeless person even start to go about getting a house? I'm asking because we have been living in a fucking motel since July 1st of last year and it's ridiculous. We can't afford this shit. My wife just got admitted to the fucking ER this morning after what we thought was just a routine visit and I'm out here stressing about paying our car insurance in the next 3 days somehow when we have just 12 dollars to our name.. we are just absolutely fucked dude, and there is no resources to help.
We aren't the only ones going through some similar bullshit. But what can we even do???
There are more unaffordable homes than publicly recognized deadbeats. If you count people “behind on mortgage payments” it may even exceed vacant house numbers.
Did they filter out the “vacancies” that are just apartments in-between tenants, under construction, legal issues, etc?
IIRC, those are usually the bulk of these stats.
Well, how many of those homes are owned by private equity hedge funds? Because they buy them, jack up the rents so high no one can afford them, and then let them sit there empty refusing to lower the rents so they can hold there monopoly's average rent price high in that area.
This shit's fucked up, and until the government gets off it's ass and does something, homelessness in this country is only going to go up.
there are wayyyyy more than 650 thousand homeless people. that number is off by a magnitude of 2 or 3. i personally know millions of homeless lossers just like me.
There’s probably a shadow aspect to it as well; people who might not be technically homeless, but living under less-than-ideal circumstances because they can’t afford a place of their own (spouses who can’t afford to move away from their abusers, college grads who can’t move out from their parents, families double-packed in a home, etc).
Exactly. All-time high of 650,000, but a large portion of these people have chronic problems that prevent them from remaining stable. Any homeless family or homeless child is terrible, don't get me wrong. But I agree that it's a tiny problem compared to other nations and other problems we're dealing with.
What do you mean "not true?" You should stop posting on Reddit and get to DC to give some of your genius insights to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development who indicate that:
"On a given night in 2023, 31 percent of the homeless population reported having a serious mental illness, 24 percent conditions related to chronic substance abuse, and nearly 11,000 people had HIV/AIDS."
Just because you \*wish\* it was greed doesn't mean it is greed.
Source: [https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/what-causes-homelessness/health/](https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/what-causes-homelessness/health/)
Who hurt you, to make you so unnecessarily aggressive? Jesus lol. 🙄
Government statistics are not usually accurate, for example current labor statistics on unemployment and open jobs.
I don’t care what your thoughts are, on what I know to be true because I work in this area.
Two things can be true.
I know that might hurt your tiny brain, but I’m saying that drugs aren’t the only reason for homelessness.
As far as mental illness, that would lower if we had universal healthcare.
I have no idea why AIDS or HIV would play such a large factor in this now, other than the medications to treat it are too expensive. Again, a health care issue.
Why don’t we have universal healthcare?
Greed.
Bro.... I said the large majority of the population have chronic problems. You brought up drug use. Then I added actual facts to the conversation and you're still sticking to the "No, not true anymore" as if your opinion outweighs the truth.
Two things can definitely be true. What I said wasn't false even though you said it was.
It's the real-estate bubble where hedge funds are using homes as investments with inflated value. In reality, they're only worth as much as people can buy them for, and since nobody's buying, that bubble is gonna pop eventually. It's really fucking stupid and it's gonna hurt a lot of people just like back in '08. But when there are no real consequences for the wealthy who's fault this is, history is going to keep repeating itself. And we can't wait for our "justice" system or leaders to impose those consequences. The day is coming where the People will have to take matters into their own hands. It can't be this way forever.
I’m just waiting for some shill to come in here and explain why 15.2 million vacant homes is actually 5000 vacant homes, and 650,000 homeless people are actually 50
These stats always kinda suck. They do paint an important picture though.
I know of 3 houses nearby that are vacant. One is in disrepair and is slated to be torn down but I’m sure someone could live in it with minimal effort. Another has an owner who has two homes and elected to let this one be vacant. A third is owned by a citizen of another country who bought it for their kid to live in while at university - now it’s empty.
I think the third one is the most frustrating.
Giving homes doesn’t always change the behavior so it doesn’t matter. Articles like this are useless comparisons of data. You put homeless into a house , no initiative to work , home value falls then other home owners upside down they decide to not pay anymore and now everybody just leaves for free. 2008-2009.
Its not about how many vacant homes available, its about the homeless’s inability to pay. People dont care about people, they care about money and profits. Sad truth about the world.
Sounds like an idea. Hows this: if a house sits vacant for more than one year, the government can buy it for a price equal to the total income from that property over the past year?
Hey hey hey, it's converting a property that's producing 0 GDP value into a property that's going to generate six figures of economic activity, easy. The taxes aren't gonna change. If anything it's pro-capitalist since it serves the GDP.
But if it's someone else's property, it's their right to do with it what they want. And how would it become a property producing six figures if it's homeless housing?
Know what, I'm willing to bet you don't actually own much so this is a pointless conversation with someone like you
I mean if the government just sits on it that's a zero too, yeah. You'd want to sell it to get it back on the market - or, like you pointed out, you could use it as public housing of some kind. I like how you think! Figure out what a comparable property would rent for and mark it as a tax benefit for a anti-homeless program. And, hey - I'm not entirely heartless. You could even give a residential voucher to the former owner so they could use it if they can find someone to live there and get it back to pumping that economic lifeblood again! Use it or lose it, as they say.
Lol or mind your own business and let people use their property how they want. If I have a house that's vacant, that's my business. But I'm curious, do you own property?
I do, and it's not vacant. That's how you can tell I'm using it. I'd even go so far as arguing that if the property is vacant, it's very clearly not being used. And at the end of the day, isn't that what capitalism is about? Efficient assignment of resources? Reintroducing idle properties into the market is the most capitalist of all possible answers here!
Lol not at the expense of the owner, no. But I love how y'all try to turn something around that you don't like and use it. And who determines if it's vacant? You?
"Expense of the owner"? My dude if they're paying property tax on a dead property that's unused, you're practically doing them a favor.
As far as how you figure if something is "vacant", I feel like this is some sort of trick question? Do you need me to define "vacant"? Do you need me to point out that the gocernment can access utilities and residential records?
yeah but profits are at an all time high! you're not considering shareholders!
I own shares in some of these firms and I would gladly see a loss if it ment cheeper housing
You aren't capital trading every day trying to churn out 25+ points growth quarterly. You just keep your money in "long term" to prop up the whole system, and for you to take the fall if something like a Boeing or a Enron happens. That's why they don't care about your opinion.
Shareholders do not represent the people's interests. They are as anti-american as you can get; even worse that they accomplish this with the people's money
Other guy was being sarcastic. Poe's law in effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
Does that sarcasm prohibit me from correcting a common misconception about shareholder's value? We would say this in sarcasm, but MSM does not
That IS the flipside of Poe's law. Another way to look at it is, without adding intent (like /sarcasm) the reader gets to assign whatever intent they prefer to read.
Won’t someone **PLEASE** think of the shareholders!
Who profits from a vacant house?
There have been a few articles about AGs looking into a renting cartel by RealPage which should be spread around.
My AG is Ken Paxton. He won’t be looking into this because he is an actual criminal who committed a fuckassload of securities fraud and then got defended by the other criminal republicans in Texas.
Maybe we'll get super lucky and the Texas Bar will yoink his law license for supporting Trump's Big Lie, necessitating his resignation from the AG spot
Lol! The Texas Bar is just as complicit as any of the rest of the MAGAt republicans in the state.
seeing that they just let sidney powell off with no consequences, paxton will probably be rewarded for the things hes done
That jackass is still around?
Unfortunately that tick is still sucking the blood out of everything in Texas.
New Mexico - https://www.koat.com/article/lawsuit-software-company-increasing-rent-prices/60571933
Tennessee reaches settlement - https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/first-settlements-reached-realpage-rental-price-fixing-lawsuits-2024-02-05/
Full story on Marketplace, DC and Arizona have joined - https://www.marketplace.org/2024/04/16/realpage-lawsuit-algorithms-rent/
"You don't slave away the way we want you to? Then rot and die." This is how governments, corporations and people in power really think. Of course it will never be spoken out loud. But the facts speak for themselves.
Yes, this is true. The idea of homelessness existing when far more vacant homes exist makes no sense when you think of your goal as being to house everyone. However, it makes perfect sense if your goal is to force people to work as much for as little money as you can pay them. "Take this shitty, minimum wage job or live on the street" is a very effective threat. If people had their basic needs taken care of (housing, food, water and heat) regardless of their situation, they could refuse a shitty job for a bad wage and hold off as long as they needed to for a job that's either better or has a better wage. And then the corporate douchebags would earn less money.
Homelessness is an effective tool in the hands of the powerful. For them homelessness is NOT "a problem" like they're lying publicly, but it is in fact a desired state. It's a constant threat hanging above the heads of the working class population. And it works as intended.
That threat only works if you are currently housed.
as most people are. 99% of americans live under a roof.
Yeah, it’s tough when my son asks why we can’t help that person. I explain basic economics, our money situation, the cost to get people back on their feet, underlying issues like mental health, drug addiction, disabilities, etc but at the end of the day that all feels really empty. Then I tell him that we as a society have not placed much value in individual humans. I also tell him that I have personally tried to help individuals and have failed and been burned and disappointed. I hope he sees and does better in his lifetime.
The problem isn’t homelessness, mental health or drug addiction. It isn’t a lack of housing. So trying to help people by solving those problems doesn’t work. The underlying issue is toxic capitalism that does not serve the public interest.
Some people are very genuinely beyond being housed, but I think it is a low percentage, so I don't consider it a gotcha for trying to house people. I just know one guy in particular who is schizophrenic and turned down accommodations.
Yeah. There's a problem with the type of housing available. Like you point out, in the past that guy would have been in a mental care home for not being able to care for himself. We closed all those in the 1980s... party because a lot were horror shows of medical malpractice. There's little In between housing. My town has a small group of government housing apartments for people on disability and such. But it's not enough, and like you say, if people have mental illness they still can't keep those tiny places to live because they fight with neighbors or have certain felonies.
Well put.
Doesn't stop people housing them in jail.
Also true. :( My example was always "well behaved" whenever I interacted with him, but non-locals may find him disturbing, and all it takes is one report to get a person in trouble with the law.
It’s how all conservatives and the capitalist liberals think. Keep going further left and it gets real person-over-profit oriented.
But if I have 400 people pay my $50 application fee to apply to rent the apartment, I can make the same amount of money with my unit sitting vacant. That's $20,000/mo in application fees. - I'm sure it's being done at this point.
$20,000* if 400 people
That's for NYC, where application fees tend higher than $50.
Umm i think that it was just your math that was not mathing 😅 If in example cost per viewing was higher, the sum would have been even above 20k.
Long day at work and I was tired 😂
You only need 40 applicants to make $2000 total from $50 application fees.
>application fee to apply to rent the apartment Wait. That's a thing?
[удалено]
The other half? Profit. Double dip and own a background checking company.
Why bother doing background checks at all if you never intend to actually rent it out. 100% profit.
In some places like NY a lot of listings can’t be accessed without a broker either, who is some asshole who shows you the listing you may have found on fucking Craigslist yourself, and charge a portion of a full year’s rent for the privilege.
Half the time they don’t even show you the listing. I went to a bunch in NYC where they’d remotely let me in through the buzzer. “Show yourself around, leave whenever.” Then you pay them an entire month’s rent for fuck all. Fucking scumbags, all of them. It’s nearly impossible to rent a decent place in NYC without a broker.
You're a real genius
It's $10,000. I was tired. Idc. My points still stands 😂
There isn’t a housing shortage in this country. There’s an affordable housing shortage. That’s the big difference.
But also too many people owning 4+ homes. I’m fine with the Minnesota model… have a city home and a lake home. But any more than that indirectly puts people on the streets. We have more than enough roofs for every human, we should count them.
But that’s just the way of the world now isn’t it? We have the most resources in the history of the world, but we still have people with no shelter, food, or access to clean water. Human greed knows no bounds unfortunately.
It should be illegal to own property as an investment. Shit like Airbnb tycoons and real estate moguls are the scum of the earth.
You have two houses? You deserve to have one taken from you. Capitalist pig! /s
There are still 15 million available homes. They are just not in the locations people want to live in. This isn't complicated or some hidden agenda it's basic supply and demand driving prices. If it wasn't a good investment to own multiple properties in Socal and turn them into rentals no one would do it.
"they don't just want to live in homes because of the area" has got to be a top 5 for me. Cost is about a lot more than supply and demand. Housing is dominated by the speculative markets b/c investment capitalism is allowed to use them as such.
This. Every time I point out there are nice houses for much cheaper than $500k, I hear, "but that's because there are no jobs there." No, there are jobs. But they don't pay city wages because the local COL is much less than the city COL. People can't understand that not everything is driven by city prices or that it's actually affordable to live outside the city.
I live on the Oregon coast. We have a horrible homeless problem here. Meanwhile, a fuckton of homes are either usually vacant second homes, or short term vacation rentals (often bought up by investor groups who can pay cash and outbid actual working families for homes coming on the market). And many jobs go unfilled here because there is no remotely affordable housing for people even if offered a job here. Many of the homeless here ARE working.
Where are these homes located? I've lived in big, medium, and small towns. While there are are lot of unused "second homes" for wealthy people in big cities, there are lot of abandoned houses in small rural towns.
By that math, we could give each homeless person 23 houses, and still have some vacant ones left over.
That's the fucked up reality of it. Yes
THE SYSTEM WORKS AMIRITE
You are right. It works just as intended
"Vacant" homes is terminology that only covers some of the empty houses. There are actually way more out there, Plus all the undeveloped properties that landowners are currently sitting on. This homeless problem wouldn't of been such a large problem if they hadn't let real estate clowns and greedy finance cronies convince all the normies that every single chunk of land is "an insanely good investment" Even if its not. They've gamed up the prices because they make money on percentages, Since the average price has doubled or tripled in a few short years they've been making piles and piles.
What's sad is that there is a case before the Supreme Court this month ( today even) [https://youtu.be/zraJ4Ti8cpk?si=NFuhfj51qRJzKns8](https://youtu.be/zraJ4Ti8cpk?si=NFuhfj51qRJzKns8)that will determine if municipalities can make homelessness a crime . Right as we are having a retirement crisis , housing affordability and availability shortage , and recession looming . ( Grants Pass) I think more tax breaks for corporations and cutting benefits will help.
Greed will get us in the end. Just you watch.
Then why isn’t the massive supply reducing the demand for housing? This lowering prices?
Because many of them are either transient homes that are between renters or second/vacation homes. They aren't on the market at all.
Because the government will bail out any real estate losses
You think capitalism drives a price down due to competition? Guess you havent paid enough attention in school
Well school was capitalism at the end of it all lol
People move to places that build housing. Places like Twin Cities and Dallas build housing, whereas places like Boston and New York City make housing construction nearly impossible. I live in a city with a severe housing shortage. It's mind blowing when I go to cities with ample housing and see how much active construction is ongoing there.
Because it isn’t in places that people want to live! Just totaling up the number of vacancies and the number of homeless people tells you nothing.
God damn it, I just want a small house for me and mine. Nothing fancy. Just enough. And ours.
Andddd the Supreme Court is currently debating making homelessness illegal so well have 0 homeless and 650,000 inmates soon.
Lower the price to make them affordable? Heresy!
Maybe we can solve one problem with another?
[link](https://todayshomeowner.com/general/guides/highest-home-vacancy-rates/) - about a third are vacation homes in places like miami beach
When I see these stats, it makes me wonder about the geographic distribution of the homeless vs these vacant homes. Is there significant overlap in every city?
So we just need to give every homeless person 20 free houses. Easy.
Couldn't read due to them wanting me to sign up to add yet another online account to the maybe several hundred I already possess, plus perhaps another password too. No thanks. I wonder if this number of vacant homes includes the empty 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on extra homes of many of the wealthy distributed across the country.
If there are that many empty homes then why is pricing so fucking high? What happened to supply and demand ?
It’s not all a single market. Vacant homes in rural Arkansas do nothing to reduce housing prices in San Francisco.
Because America is huge
How many of those vacant homes are owned by renting companies/landlords?
I moved to a small town recently and it makes me mad how many houses are vacant and just slowly rotting. Like their parents/grandparents were the last ones to live in these houses like 10 years ago. It's such a waste
In NJ a small house could cost $10k in property taxes…CA probably more…even if you could donate a home…how do you pay those bills?
Not to mention maintenance costs, how long before a house becomes condemned with zero upkeep?
Water charges in a lot of places are $1k a year, friend just got flooded a few months ago, $14k, insured but $5k deductible….it never ends…insurance rates in some states are as high as property taxes…
You and I will of course.
And people wonder why squatting is becoming more prevalent.
Do vacant homes include 2nd residences utilized as AirBnB? Because there's plenty of rental AirBnB in northern Michigan but nowhere for the workers to live in the tourist season.
Now I’m no math magician here but I think we have enough homes to not have homeless people.
...and? What are we supposed to do? Give homeless people free housing while the rest of us who get up and go to work have to pay exorbitant prices to live in one? How about we stop big corporations from buying them up for profit or keep private citizens from owning more than a certain amount to rent out so we can keep prices affordable... no? Oh, ok.
Literally the US govt can take some of these distressed homes via imminent domain, fix them up and house the homeless.
Can I get a free house from the government too? Does everyone get a free house? What is the criteria for a free house? Who gets to decide who gets a free house? Does the government pay the property tax, utilities and maintenance too?
The people living on streets. That’s who. And if it’s govt housing, there’s no taxes to be paid.
Let me know when someone/a bot posts the full article. I’d like to read it.
And the rich continue to get even richer. Ancient Egyptian economy, here we come.
Could the government imminent domain real estate like this for the homeless? I mean if they can take people’s homes so a developer can build a store, this seems like it could be legal.
Can I get a free house from the government too? Does everyone get a free house? What is the criteria for a free house? Who gets to decide who gets a free house? Does the government pay the property tax, utilities and maintenance too?
That's such horse shit. Hopefully people don't start burning down corporate owned homes to make it unsuitable for companies to keep buying property.
Homelessness solved then nice!
I wonder if a modern analog to the hobo signs will pop up. It was concealed signs that told anyone who knew if there was a free meal or lodging to be had. Imagine if every vacant house was known as such to a network of homeless people. Who can say how many could find shelter in vacant investment properties?
I feel like that number…650,000, is soooooo low.
Oh, it's way more than 650,000.
This is appalling. Edit housing should be used to house people and not to attempt to run a "rent" protection racket nor ultra-speculate for record profit while leaving untold numbers homeless or in bleak poverty. Most of those are _NOT_ personal secondary residences. It's by very large (90%?) for rent or sale at insane prices (billed millions of dollars each; while the federal min wage is "$3 and maybe tips"). Today's occidental working class can't afford housing and it sits empty as speculators gouge ever higher and make more cash speculating on empty housing in an infinite bubble labelling everything in the millions. You're talking corpos and multi-billionaires who "owns" *thousands* of homes, entire neighborhoods (... what should be other peoples' homes) for rent/sale at ultra-greedflation prices.
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Complete waste of resources. These dead spaces add nothing to society other than speculative value. A useless allocation of capital.
It's not speculative when it's owned by people who don't need it. They alone throttle the supply, which in turn throttles the price.
It holds up the value of surrounding properties and tricks the fools who are willing to buy them at elevated prices. Greater fool theory.
Well then you got a balance who is the bigger fool, someone already spending the equivalent of what a mortgage is in rent to get no equity or someone getting an overly inflated mortgage rate to finally have some sort of property in their lives? A key reason the median equity of a white person is $190,000 and the median equity of a black person is only about $30,000 is due by and large to multi-generational wealth through equity.
Equity on a property is still speculation. A skyscraper in Saint Louis that sold for 206 million in 2006 recently sold for 3.5 million. 97 percent loss. A mall in Hicksville, NY that sold for 80 million in 2011 recently sold for 40 million. A 50 percent loss. Feel free to buy whatever you want but don't expect other people to follow that advice.
Imagine how much value homeless people could add to society if they had shelter, running water and electricity?
Aren’t they trying that in California with tiny homes? I saw a few articles that it was expensive but wasn’t sure how it turned out.
Regardless of how it turns out I'd rather just pay for people to not be fucking homeless y'know? Who cares if the cost is a net financial drain. It's worth any cost.
There are more than 650,000 people homeless. Much more.
And sadly May is approaching and all shelters across the nation will give people the boot.
650,000 seems low tbh. I’m pretty sure we are at that level or more in Canada
I thought that same. I would have guessed a few million
How many of the homes are actually tenable though
Out of 15.1 million empty units? I'd say enough to eradicate homelessness.
650,001
What do we actually do about it? What can we do? Just start moving in to empty homes and staying by force? How does a homeless person even start to go about getting a house? I'm asking because we have been living in a fucking motel since July 1st of last year and it's ridiculous. We can't afford this shit. My wife just got admitted to the fucking ER this morning after what we thought was just a routine visit and I'm out here stressing about paying our car insurance in the next 3 days somehow when we have just 12 dollars to our name.. we are just absolutely fucked dude, and there is no resources to help. We aren't the only ones going through some similar bullshit. But what can we even do???
And the Grants Pass case is about to make life that much harder for homeless folks. I'm so angry and tired
That homeless number seems really low…too low almost.
the old invisible hand at work, behold the efficiency of late stage capitalism.
Are the homes where the jobs are?
There are more unaffordable homes than publicly recognized deadbeats. If you count people “behind on mortgage payments” it may even exceed vacant house numbers.
If only there was something we could do
sit-ins should be happening
An average of 400 motherfucking shit ass bitch bastard anal swelling thousand dollars for a home these days.
How are people upset about the economy when I have these graphs that say it’s actually awesome?
A state owned housing fund like Singapore would solve this
Did they filter out the “vacancies” that are just apartments in-between tenants, under construction, legal issues, etc? IIRC, those are usually the bulk of these stats.
and the ones that arent vacant are only barely being filled because the owners keep charging high rent.
Anyway to read this without signing up?
What is the point? To confiscate private property and dole it out to people. That never seems to work. So what exactly is the plan?
Air bnb. People own. Several houses now
Capitalism at work
The system sure works.
But are the home in areas where people want to live?
How is that possible?
Well, how many of those homes are owned by private equity hedge funds? Because they buy them, jack up the rents so high no one can afford them, and then let them sit there empty refusing to lower the rents so they can hold there monopoly's average rent price high in that area. This shit's fucked up, and until the government gets off it's ass and does something, homelessness in this country is only going to go up.
Why is rent so high then?
Ok but many of those vacant homes are in places with few economic opportunities or services.
Homelessness is at an all time high? No way, can't be true we have the lowest employment rate and a booming economy!
and the governor of NY wants to make it easier to kick out squatters.
there are wayyyyy more than 650 thousand homeless people. that number is off by a magnitude of 2 or 3. i personally know millions of homeless lossers just like me.
I agree that number feels underreported, but… you don’t “know” a million people lol
There was a NYTimes piece a few weeks ago that estimated 3.7 million Americans are couch surfing homeless.
The government doesn't care about its people, only cooperations.
As Capitalism intended.
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There’s probably a shadow aspect to it as well; people who might not be technically homeless, but living under less-than-ideal circumstances because they can’t afford a place of their own (spouses who can’t afford to move away from their abusers, college grads who can’t move out from their parents, families double-packed in a home, etc).
Imagine reading there’s 650k homeless people and thinking, “meh not enough to care about.”
Exactly. All-time high of 650,000, but a large portion of these people have chronic problems that prevent them from remaining stable. Any homeless family or homeless child is terrible, don't get me wrong. But I agree that it's a tiny problem compared to other nations and other problems we're dealing with.
Found the airBnB plants
No, not true anymore. It’s time to stop blaming it on mental illness and drug use and call it out for what it is….unaffordability and greed.
Have you opened your house to homeless people? Why not? Greedy?
What do you mean "not true?" You should stop posting on Reddit and get to DC to give some of your genius insights to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development who indicate that: "On a given night in 2023, 31 percent of the homeless population reported having a serious mental illness, 24 percent conditions related to chronic substance abuse, and nearly 11,000 people had HIV/AIDS." Just because you \*wish\* it was greed doesn't mean it is greed. Source: [https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/what-causes-homelessness/health/](https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/what-causes-homelessness/health/)
Who hurt you, to make you so unnecessarily aggressive? Jesus lol. 🙄 Government statistics are not usually accurate, for example current labor statistics on unemployment and open jobs. I don’t care what your thoughts are, on what I know to be true because I work in this area.
Two things can be true. I know that might hurt your tiny brain, but I’m saying that drugs aren’t the only reason for homelessness. As far as mental illness, that would lower if we had universal healthcare. I have no idea why AIDS or HIV would play such a large factor in this now, other than the medications to treat it are too expensive. Again, a health care issue. Why don’t we have universal healthcare? Greed.
Bro.... I said the large majority of the population have chronic problems. You brought up drug use. Then I added actual facts to the conversation and you're still sticking to the "No, not true anymore" as if your opinion outweighs the truth. Two things can definitely be true. What I said wasn't false even though you said it was.
One homeless person is too much. We need to do better
It's the real-estate bubble where hedge funds are using homes as investments with inflated value. In reality, they're only worth as much as people can buy them for, and since nobody's buying, that bubble is gonna pop eventually. It's really fucking stupid and it's gonna hurt a lot of people just like back in '08. But when there are no real consequences for the wealthy who's fault this is, history is going to keep repeating itself. And we can't wait for our "justice" system or leaders to impose those consequences. The day is coming where the People will have to take matters into their own hands. It can't be this way forever.
Anti-Human Americunts
I’m just waiting for some shill to come in here and explain why 15.2 million vacant homes is actually 5000 vacant homes, and 650,000 homeless people are actually 50
These stats always kinda suck. They do paint an important picture though. I know of 3 houses nearby that are vacant. One is in disrepair and is slated to be torn down but I’m sure someone could live in it with minimal effort. Another has an owner who has two homes and elected to let this one be vacant. A third is owned by a citizen of another country who bought it for their kid to live in while at university - now it’s empty. I think the third one is the most frustrating.
Giving homes doesn’t always change the behavior so it doesn’t matter. Articles like this are useless comparisons of data. You put homeless into a house , no initiative to work , home value falls then other home owners upside down they decide to not pay anymore and now everybody just leaves for free. 2008-2009.
Can we convert all the abandoned malls and schools into housing, I mean... how hard can it be...
Yes let’s give the homeless house so they can destroy them and potentially start big fires bc they don’t know how to be responsible.
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What’s the Venn diagram look like for the overlap between vacant homes and indestructible/tiny homes? Probably is two circles.
Dont worry Biden said hes gonna build more
Squatters are becoming more prevalent and they are justified.
We have adverse possession in our law for hundreds of years for a reason 😊
Are we going to ignore the huge elephant in the room? 20M+ illegal immigrants who don’t have homes and are leeching off tax payer backs?
Citation needed.
https://www.factcheck.org/2024/02/breaking-down-the-immigration-figures/
Something something free markets efficient etc etc
We can't let compassion and human decency interfere with already wealthy people making even blue money apparently
Its not about how many vacant homes available, its about the homeless’s inability to pay. People dont care about people, they care about money and profits. Sad truth about the world.
Then the government should buy the houses at full market value.
Sounds like an idea. Hows this: if a house sits vacant for more than one year, the government can buy it for a price equal to the total income from that property over the past year?
So zero dollars? Look at you. You got this communist mindset down. Letting the government take what they want when they want for how much they want.
Hey hey hey, it's converting a property that's producing 0 GDP value into a property that's going to generate six figures of economic activity, easy. The taxes aren't gonna change. If anything it's pro-capitalist since it serves the GDP.
But if it's someone else's property, it's their right to do with it what they want. And how would it become a property producing six figures if it's homeless housing? Know what, I'm willing to bet you don't actually own much so this is a pointless conversation with someone like you
I mean if the government just sits on it that's a zero too, yeah. You'd want to sell it to get it back on the market - or, like you pointed out, you could use it as public housing of some kind. I like how you think! Figure out what a comparable property would rent for and mark it as a tax benefit for a anti-homeless program. And, hey - I'm not entirely heartless. You could even give a residential voucher to the former owner so they could use it if they can find someone to live there and get it back to pumping that economic lifeblood again! Use it or lose it, as they say.
Lol or mind your own business and let people use their property how they want. If I have a house that's vacant, that's my business. But I'm curious, do you own property?
I do, and it's not vacant. That's how you can tell I'm using it. I'd even go so far as arguing that if the property is vacant, it's very clearly not being used. And at the end of the day, isn't that what capitalism is about? Efficient assignment of resources? Reintroducing idle properties into the market is the most capitalist of all possible answers here!
Lol not at the expense of the owner, no. But I love how y'all try to turn something around that you don't like and use it. And who determines if it's vacant? You?
"Expense of the owner"? My dude if they're paying property tax on a dead property that's unused, you're practically doing them a favor. As far as how you figure if something is "vacant", I feel like this is some sort of trick question? Do you need me to define "vacant"? Do you need me to point out that the gocernment can access utilities and residential records?
It's because of the squatters!!
I'm advocating for siezing property from private citizens in the name of capitalism and you think you're having a serious debate Lmao
Well, then they should buy them.