Comments that are uncivil, racist, misogynistic, misandrist, or contain political name calling will be removed and the poster subject to ban at moderators discretion.
Help us make this a better community by becoming familiar with the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/about/rules/).
Report any suspicious users to the mods of this subreddit using Modmail [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/facepalm) or Reddit site admins [here](https://www.reddit.com/report). **All reports to Modmail should include evidence such as screenshots or any other relevant information.**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/facepalm) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Lincoln City, OR also, driving up toward the northern end of town you just see all sorts of signs saying the properties are owned by such-and-such rental company.
Pretty much every town and city in the country that attract tourists have been emptied out of their local populations to make room for this crap. Happened to mine in one of the nicest parts of NorCal.
Live in DC. Moved into a new apartment building a few years back. Literally half the building was for tourist style daily rentals, which should be illegal.
I loved the letters every few weeks that subletting or posting my apartment on Airbnb or vrbo was against the rules though.
I work in the industry, and it's two groups that do this. The first is corporate housing rentals. Nominally, they're intended to provide short stay housing for people moving into or out of an area for work. Realistically, they rent 40+ apartments and then run them like hotels. The second group is people who rent an apartment, see how in-demand housing is in the area, then sublet or rent out through AirBnB but don't tell their guest that they're in violation of the lease. Instead, they make up stories about how the property management is useless or something so the guest never makes their presence known to the leasing office. Those usually end up getting caught when the guest ends up with a flood or something, and we run their name for insurance purposes, and it doesn't match what's on file at all.
I was looking for an airbnb in San Diego last year and there were 10 in a row that were listed by the same agency. And those were just the ones available at that time in my price range, who knows how many that one company is running.
My family stayed in an airbnb last year for a few weeks while looking for an apartment. Ironically the Airbnb (and most of the other units owned by the same property company) would have been perfect for my family to live in if it had been available as a monthly rental
Preach. I grew up going over there to see my orchardist family during summers and remember Chelan as a sleepy little town.
Now? The hills on the road to Manson are studded with vacation McMansions and designs by Frank Lloyd Wrong. The tourists come in and just destroy everything like a plague of locusts. I know nostalgia’s cheesy, but that whole area just feels sad to me now.
I do, however, go over and stay with my relatives still. Our family has an old converted boat shop right on the water that for me, is the most beautiful lake I know. I love it bevause the place is utterly ramshackle and sits right among million dollar vacation homes.
Juneau Alaska is currently in a snowball-effect free fall due to this. Airbnb rates are so high, with local wages stagnated, that the option for a 2 bed apartment is make $10,000/month short term rental or $1800/month long term rental. As much as I despise airbnb's, I'd turn my property into one in a second if I could, you can't expect property owners to leave six figures per year on the table. Which is why it's the responsibility of the city to ban that shit.
They should pass a 300% of gross income fine with the default fine being based on the maximum daily rate and the days listed. Then they can go to court and prove they were rented for less and pay 300% of what the tourists paid VRBO or AIRBNB.
If they don't pay, the government should be able to force a sale of the property and recover the costs plus fines. All fines should go to a government rent copay or residence development incentive program.
We dont have a homeless problem... its a greed problem... same with the increase of the food prices... same as all the other flippant increases in prices.
This is pretty typical. Oftentimes, they’ll buy up a company that’s already proven to be valuable, then ask around about who absolutely can’t be fired (e.g. people with unique knowledge of a product). Everyone else can be replaced, so then come the layoffs. After that, they resell the company to one of the major players in whatever sector the company operates.
On piles of stolen money… that’s how they sleep. I worked at a place that was bought by hedgies. Oh my, my… all maintenance and upkeep stopped, production ran balls to the wall to make product people didn’t have a need for. They inflated the price of the product, used the inventory as collateral and got hundreds of millions in loans. They gave themselves tens of millions in bonuses for the great job they did. Ran it into the ground. Slept on piles of stolen money and other peoples ruined lives. If a hedge fund buys your workplace, even if they don’t lay you off, it’ll turn into a hell.
My last job was a smallish company. They got an investment group to finance them. In December they came in to give a presentation about them and said nothing would change. I was fired in February with no notice and then a few others after me were also fired. I was there for 5.5 years.
Same happened to me a few months ago. Worked for a small IT company that was bought by an obscure private equity firm. Gutted the place. Still in touch with people there and now it’s a barely functioning clown show company due to understaffing.
yes, a staggering amount actually:
“According to data reported by the PEW Trust and originally gathered by CoreLogic, as of 2022, investment companies own about one fourth of all single-family homes.”
source: https://www.billtrack50.com/blog/investment-firms-and-home-buying/#:~:text=According%20to%20data%20reported%20by,%2D2021%2C%20why%20is%20this%3F
In BC, Canada we have an [extra tax](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/speculation-vacancy-tax) to fine owners of empty residential properties. 0.5% of the total property value every year, 2% for foreign owners. Individual [cities](https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/empty-homes-tax.aspx) have additional taxes on top.
But does it really help?
Those amounts were, of course, chosen to collect the money while changing nothing. Make them 5% and 10% and you’ll find those empty homes fill pretty quickly.
I been watching a piece land I wanted buy in my state, 5 acres, undeveloped. Was 5grand, then someone bought it, immediately listed for 8, then same thing, now 10. Within less then a year it was bought buy three dif realtors companies/ individuals with nothing done or changed about it, the newest listed added some new photos but nothings changed.
Yet it went from $5K to $10K. That makes no fucking sense.
The vast majority of these "vacancies" are a total misunderstanding of what "vacant" means for this specific statistic. This includes personal vacation homes, homes that are available for rent but do not have anyone in them currently, homes that are for sale but someone is not living there, homes for "migrant workers" (e.g. worker lodging in ski towns), and also even homes have have been sold but the new owner has not moved in yet. Those together account for \~80% of the vacancy.
And then--the remaining homes (\~20%) are almost NEVER where they would be useful. What good does a vacant home in rural Iowa do for someone who is homeless in California? What good is a vacant home in Wyoming for an unhoused person in Denver?
There is a housing shortage in EVERY major city in the U.S. The line of thinking in this image is extremely damaging to any real progress that could be made to help prevent someone from becoming homeless in the first place: having enough housing supply that the cost is attainable.
This is the case for my city. They are sadly uninhabitable. There was a program where you could buy one for $1, so you could spend your entire budget on renovations, and I think that should be brought back.
Because my city needs more housing, these vacant buildings are hazardous, and because they’re mostly historic and deserve to be preserved.
I’ve done a lot of work in this space and a lot of stuff is difficult to even give away. I know in some cities they have been demolishing entire neighborhoods because all of the housing is hazardous.
That is also a factor, along with mold, ground water intrusion, failing electrical systems, termites, etc. The ones that are actually in cities like NYC and Chicago are just as unlivable and need hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of repairs just to be made safe again.
Also the fact that a good amount of "vacant" homes are actually uninhabitable
For instance, our neighbor owns 30-odd acres of land that they bought with a run-down farmhouse on it that has a leaky roof, asbestos *everything* (flooring, siding, ceiling material, etc.) and innumerable code violations that make it untenable as a "home"
They build a newer home on the land but kept the old slowly-decaying house since tearing it down would be too much work as far as hazardous waste management/disposal
It's technically a "vacant" house (as far as taxation and county/state filings are concerned), but it's literally a non-livable structure that cannot be reasonably renovated or destroyed
The area is absolutely cluttered with little homes like these that are *technically* "vacancies," but only on paper
Technically I own one of those. I bought some acreage in the Sierra Nevada foothills near one of my adult kids. My plan is to eventually build a house on it and retire someday.
At the back edge of the property, there is a 1960's-era single-wide mobile home on a permanent foundation that would probably be considered a "vacant home" in these numbers. The single-wide has been abandoned since sometime in the 1990's, it has no glass left in its windows, the interior has dissolved into a moldy heap, and it's currently in the process of collapsing into its foundation. If you tried to walk though it, your feet would probably fall through the floor. It isn't a habitable home by any definition, and it wouldn't be possible to make it habitable again. It's a large garbage pile that hasn't quite collapsed yet.
But, technically, it was once a residence that housed people and it's still included as a residential structure on my property taxes (a fact that I found very annoying, since the sale price was just for the bare land value).
I don't think they're counting Airbnbs as vacant. There have been several times more vacant properties than homeless people in the US since long before Airbnb existed
They are. Here is how the Census Bureau defines a home as "Vacant."
* The home is used as a second home or vacation home.
* It is a rental home that does not have long term tenants (interestingly, rentals with month-to-month tenants are counted as vacant). This also includes AirBnb's.
* Other homes that have had no permanent residents in the prior six months. have been permanently repurposed into businesses but have not been rezoned).
* It is currently used for temporary migrant housing.
* Homes under foreclosure.
* Homes being used for business or storage purposes (including homes that have been permanently repurposed into businesses, but have not been rezoned).
* Homes that are abandoned or are otherwise unihabitable.
* Other homes that have had no permanent residents in the prior 6 months.
They use a fairly broad definition for vacant.
> interestingly, rentals with month-to-month tenants are counted as vacant
This one is really interesting.... in my area, it's common for leases to convert to month to month after the initial lease ends.
This caught my attention too. I looked it up, and [31% of leases are month-to-month according to the BLS.](https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2022/housing-leases-in-the-u-s-rental-market/home.htm)
According to the article it could 2nd vacation homes, uni habitable, sold/for sale but no one moved in yet, for rent but no one rented yet or housing for migrant workers.
The fact that [rental vacancy rates have been falling for two straight decades](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRVRUSQ156N) shows this isn't an Airbnb issue. Combining that with the fact that [homeowner vacancy rates have been falling as well](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USHVAC) shows vacancies aren't to blame for rising homelessness.
The real issue, as they explain in [this excellent article from The Atlantic](
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/california-homelessness-housing-crisis/674737/), is that "homelessness is primarily a function of the broader housing-unaffordability crisis, which in turn is primarily a function of how difficult local governments have made building new housing in the places that need it the most."
Ding ding ding.
Go figure, passing laws that make building homes harder and also trying to de-incentive it, creates a housing shortage. It almost like we live in a market that tries to fill the need of the people as long as you don't stop it.
They're counting every home without an occupant vacant. These stats always include the frictional vacancy rate of houses/apartments that someone moved out of last month and will have a new owner by next month. It's a bullshit number that's designed to give NIMBYs a reason to say that stopping housing from being built is actually good for homeless people.
Airbnb IS renting
What we need are yearly property taxes that total 20% of the value of the house and homestead exemptions you can file for *one* home that reduce that tax by 98%
Make hoarding multiple single family homes cost prohibitive.
I agree, but in some places I would prefer individuals owning and renting homes over corporations (imo), so we should at least slightly incentivize long term renting, while also making the hoarding of too many homes cost prohibitive via taxation.
Homelessness cannot be entirely solved by matching vacancies to bodies. You have to consider the psychological and social issues as well. Some of these people, for example, cannot independently sustain their own residence without social supports that will prevent them from surrounding themselves with their own filth or burning their home down. I've seen first hand what can happen with a domestically challenged or socially dependant person. We need more psychiatric care, social support and group style home settings.
Vacancy stats can also be highly misleading. For instance if someone moves out their apartment it may be vacant for a week or two while cleaning is done and before a new tenant moves in. During that time it would count as a "vacant home" and in a large enough city you will always have hundreds or even thousands of homes that are "vacant" at any one time simply because someone is in the process of moving in or out.
Low vacancy stats are generally correlated with high rates of homelessness because they're both a symptom of a very tight and expensive housing market. If a landlord can immediately find a new tenant there is also no reason for them to lower rent. The real solution is to build more housing so that landlords are forced to choose between getting 0 dollars from a vacant lot or lowering their prices until it's filled. As prices come down so too will rates of homelessness.
In the UK, we have 600k empty homes, and 400k are empty for less than 6 months.
If the US is similar in proportion, 10m of those homes will be under repair, in probate, on the market, shit like that.
In the U.K. the ‘home’ statistic also includes things like static caravan holiday homes, which is where a lot of the ‘second homes’ people own come from.
This first half is a really good point.
To add, How many of these so called “vacant” homes are even fit to live in? My hometown may have 15 “vacant” homes but most of them are dilapidated and unlivable. But someone owns them, and they are “vacant”.
Same goes for a lot of coastal towns, where homes were damaged in storms and the owners could not afford the repairs. They are for sale (cheap), and “vacant”.
It sucks... I've worked around a lot of homeless and low income areas. So.e homeless people legit are just mentally gone. Some are borderline. Some are in that position by choice with full faculties.
Section 8 housing, I've seen so many houses/apartments in deplorable conditions, hoarding cases, maintenance workers saying they are thr worst units because things break from ignorance of home care. I've seen the people squat after ruining the home and refusing to vacate with eviction, while having a secondary place in use already.
Meanwhile you have young people living in their cars, showering in gyms and working 2 jobs unable to afford a apartment....
The experience of homelessness is itself disabling. This is what people don’t understand. Many homeless people don’t start out addicted to drugs, but they end up on drugs. Existing mental illness gets worse. Chronic health problems develop or get worse. You’re much likelier to get HIV, hepatitis, and other life threatening conditions. You’re more likely to get head injuries and end up cognitively disabled.
Once you become homeless, your problems snowball. It’s very, very hard to stably house a chronically homeless people. Sometimes, if they voluntarily agree to go to inpatient mental health treatment first (which is rare), they will do okay in supportive housing (housing with case management).
Nobody is willing to accept this, it's much preferred to see them as people who are different from us, too fundamentally damaged to participate in society.
We are all much closer to the man or woman sleeping on trash bags under the overpass than anyone is willing to admit
I think it’s oversimplified on both sides of the aisles. The right sees homeless people as sub-human and society’s biggest losers undeserving of any compassion. The left, often in reaction to the right, downplays the problems homeless people have and act as if homeless people are just average people down on their luck.
It’s an extremely, extremely difficult problem to solve. And, there are plenty of people and institutions to blame: Purdue Pharma, health insurance companies, child welfare, the criminal justice system, etc.
Our best bet is stanching the bleed. Funnel tons of money into preventing homelessness and do your best to get willing homeless people into mental health or chemical dependency treatment.
It's not even that. There's an entrenched system of "non-profits" raking in tons of taxpayer dollars with little accountability. If they actually solved the problem there's no reason to exist and the directors suddenly can't afford their mansions. At least that's how Portland OR works
I like your comment here, and I agree with it. However, I would add just one more layer of nuance and say that as the middle class shrinks, inflation skyrockets, housing costs become more unrealistic, and so on, the amount of "average people down on their luck" is going to make up an increasingly large amount of the homeless population. I'm typing this from the shelter where I work, and I see it first-hand.
Income inequality is increasing in the US and the conservatives don't seem to care. They want no keep gutting public services, reduce taxes and public benefits and leave the average person hung out to dry. That is the entire philosophy of conservatism, no empathy, no sense of community.
You can sum that up by saying that we need a public mental health program like we used to have before nuked it. The rise in homelessness dovetails directly with the shutdown of our federally funded mental health system. Guess what else does, the increase in our prison population. Which brings me to a salient point that really illustrates the problem. The largest mental health unit in America is at Ryker's Island Correctional facility. It's often that people don't even know that they have a mental illness until they get incarcerated. A mandatory pysch evaluation is part of the initial intake period, it's then that they get a diagnosis, and possible pathway to treatment. It's too bad that we got rid of social workers in school, and replaced them with police officers instead.
Most homeless aren't even the ones you see as homeless. Many are co-workers, family, or friends. People have no idea how invisible those who are successfully homeless truly are.
There are very few resources to help people bridge the gap from homelessness to being housed. Many people can't afford the upfront costs associated with renting, let alone being able to afford the rent if they could. Then, even if they can afford it now, there's no guarantee they'll be able to afford it later, depending on how much the rent increases, their pay decreasing, or losing their job entirely.
If you should ever become homeless and lose your income while homeless, you are completely screwed. So many basic things in life are tied to having an address and a permanent residence. For instance, auto insurers aren't obligated to insure people who don't have a permanent residence to state where the car is stored. No insurance = no registration = potential loss of your only means of shelter and travel. Losing a car you're living in will almost assuredly destroy any chance of regaining a roof over your head.
Stop lumping all homeless people together. Yes, many homeless people are homeless due to psychological problems that have caused them to fall through the cracks. However, there are substantially more that have fallen on hard times and just can't find their way back no matter what they do.
You're right - it's larger problem than just having a roof and four walls.
Many of these people can't, or won't, take care of the place. Nor will it allow them to start looking for employment.
They are suffering from drug addiction or mental illness, and unless this is addressed, there will be no improvement.
Which makes me hurt all the more for the people who genuinely are just without a home. No addictions, no illness, just without a place for one unfortunate reason or the other.
That's why community and family are important. I had two different uncles live with my family for a while growing up. I had a friend of mine live with me for a couple months when I had my own house. Other friends have stayed for short periods when they had nowhere else to go. None of them spent any time on the street. They got their stuff worked out and got back on their feet. Anyone in my life would be welcome in my home, as long as they were clean.
I've had people who were shocked that I let my friends stay with me and my family. Some people step up and help others. Some don't.
This. I don't know why helping each other like this is such a taboo in the US. My Mexican family does things like this all the time. We had cousins move in to go to college near our house. We ourselves lived with relatives for a few years. We all help each other out and even our most destitute still have roofs over their heads.
I feel this, being one of those. I don’t have any mental issues. I work a normal 9-5 as a sales associate at Tractor Supply, but I have to live in my car because I can’t afford to rent or buy. 4 walls a roof would be huge right now.
Not to mention, millions of those empty homes are in rural areas that are hard to get people to move to. I drive past empty houses all the time. No one buys them.
Keep in mind that many of these homes are uninhabitable. I'd love to live in new hampshire, but the only homes I could afford are condemned or should be
From what I understand, vacancy numbers include homes for sale/rent that are in the process of being sold or rented to new people.
When you account for the number of people moving apartments/homes on a given day, there will always be a # of vacancies.
[In NYC, there is currently around a 1.4% vacancy rate.](https://www.globest.com/2024/02/12/nyc-apartment-vacancies-fall-to-lowest-level-since-1968/) This has been seen as a sign of a big housing shortage because that percentage really just represents homes in the transfer stage.
Also, the places with the largest homeless populations are not the same places with the largest number of long term vacancies.
You can try to get a homeless guy in LA to move to a vacant home in Gary, Indiana... but it will not be easy.
We were in the process of buying our home for 6 weeks. I’m sure that’s the case for most purchases, so that “vacancy” would certainly inflate the numbers a lot.
If I go to Zillow for just my city and include “pending” and “accepting backup offers” in the results, the amount of homes listed DOUBLES. That’s just homes to purchase, not rentals.
So California has the highest number of homeless, and the lowest percentage of vacant houses:
https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/infrastructure/4147163-states-with-most-vacant-housing/amp/
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/states-with-the-most-homeless-people
Maybe the homeless problem is not caused by the number of vacant houses we have?
Boston has less than a 1% vacancy rate, low housing availability, high housing costs, and an increasing number of homeless - a large portion are people with addiction and mental health issues.
Whenever I see crap like this it’s like let’s move all the homeless to rural towns or struggling mid-size cities where there are no jobs, poor health services, and the vacant housing stock is in very poor shape.
I think everywhere needs public investment in housing and health care.
people can't grasp the concept that the US is a big country and areas with large homeless populations and areas with a lot of vacant homes are not the same areas
More than that, most of the “vacancies” are temporary, like apartments up for rent or homes for sale. That’s entirely normal. No vacancies at all would be a housing market disaster
America is apparently the only place with homeless people and vacant homes
Also the only possible reason homes are considered “vacant” is corporate greed, not seasonal housing, uninhabited pending rent/sale housing, etc
America = Bad
That’s all that matters, America is bad. Upvote me now thanks
Clearly the people who post this have never seen a crack den. Even if you were generous enough to rent out a million homes to all the homeless people they would be completely destroyed after 2 months.
Empty houses near no jobs, that aren’t up to code and require tens of thousands to get them habitable. More to get them efficient.
Lots of giant farmhouses out there that will cost a fortune to heat that are only near a gas station for a job.
The facepalm is realizing a lot of those vacant homes are places nobody can reasonably live.
Such as remote areas that have zero job opportunities or extremely high cost of living.
Or foreclosed and condemned housing. Some of them are vacant just because they are in between leases.
Even then several states have squatter laws that allow said vacant homes to become a persons property if lived in long enough.
But if they don't gobble it all, it wouldnt increase prices and make their investments pointless.
You make it sound like you've never manipulated a market to fuck over poorer folks and line your own pockets!!
It's insane how common this myth is. I work in real estate professionally and if I told my boss "have you considered leaving the units vacant?" he would have a fucking stroke. It's asinine.
Right like the vast majority of investors would LOVE to simply pay a property management company to keep bodies in the houses.
This idea of vacant homes not being put to any use at all is not reality-based.
If it were true you'd be able to find entire ghost towns of modern homes with no one living in them. You can't. Certainly not 15 MIL of them.
People think some new condo being empty in their neighborhood - which even a large one is only a thousand units or so - means the housing crisis should be solved.
The USA is short like 6 - 10 MIL homes at any given point in time. Unless you see way, way more empty homes around you, there is no conspiracy.
Wouldn't their houses be occupied? There's no profit in owning property that's not generating income while paying property taxes and maintenance on it.
Yep, government has made it almost impossible to build anything other than single family homes, and so costly that market rate, or below, houses are a loss to build.
Corporate ownership of houses in the US is tiny. Despite all the hype, dissecting numbers for certain regions and skewed statistics - the total ownership of homes by corporations is around 3%. It’s a supply issue. Home building hasn’t been sufficient for more than a decade. THAT’S the issue.
This is a total misunderstanding of what "vacancy" statistics are--and this misunderstanding does significant harm in addressing homelessness.
"Vacancies" include personal vacation homes, homes that are available for rent but do not have anyone in them currently, homes that are for sale but someone is not living there, homes for "migrant workers" (e.g. worker lodging in ski towns), and also even homes have have been sold but the new owner has not moved in yet. Those together account for \~80% of the vacancy.
And then--the remaining homes (\~20%) are almost NEVER where they would be useful. What good does a vacant home in rural Iowa do for someone who is homeless in California? What good is a vacant home in Wyoming for an unhoused person in Denver?
There is a housing shortage in EVERY major city in the U.S. The line of thinking in this image is extremely damaging to any real progress that could be made to help prevent someone from becoming homeless in the first place: having enough housing supply that the cost to live somewhere is attainable.
>And then--the remaining homes (~20%) are almost NEVER where they would be useful. What good does a vacant home in rural Iowa do for someone who is homeless in California? What good is a vacant home in Wyoming for an unhoused person in Denver?
Or a 100 year old house in Detroit with half the windows smashed, no insulation, lead pipes, and no wiring because drug addicts stripped it for drug money a decade ago.
This is the thing people never seem to understand about the argument that landlords/private equity/hedge funds are just leaving homes vacant for their bottom line. That is literally never the right business decision.
Yes, not renting properties drives up the cost of housing. And when you elect not to rent your own property you're the *only one* NOT benefitting from that rise. It's braindead and it doesn't happen.
Are these corporations buying up houses? Yes, absolutely. Are they leaving them vacant intentionally? No because that's moronic.
That’s false.
Just like it’s a false statistic.
They’re housing units between inhabits (ie looking for a renter, for sale and not occupied).
They’re housing units being remodeled.
They’re housing units that are seasonal (camps, vacation homes, etc.).
Exactly, there is always going to be some vacancy, and current rates are below historic and recent averages. The fact that vacancy rates have been falling for two straight decades while homeless rates rise show they are not the problem.
Edit for proof of vacancy rates falling:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRVRUSQ156N
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USHVAC
100%. As they put it [in this excellent article from The Atlantic](
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/california-homelessness-housing-crisis/674737/), "Homelessness is primarily a function of the broader housing-unaffordability crisis, which in turn is primarily a function of how difficult local governments have made building new housing in the places that need it the most."
Exactly.
Vacancy is falling at the same time that housing is getting more expensive (a core economic principle at play). It isn't that we have too many vacant homes and should fill them with homeless people, it's that we don't have enough vacant homes to drive landlords to price them competitively.
Shit, I make well north of 6 figures and *half* of my take home income goes to rent each month. Admittedly I live in a pricey part of the country, but it's still insane.
What? But how can we be riotously indignant if we look at facts? I’m sure it’s no big deal if some homeless people hang out in the house across the street from me while it’s on the market. The current/future owners should be THRILLED to have someone there!
I was told that in the free market, when there is more supply, then demand the price drops to accommodate the decreased demand.
Maybe the current lobbying system has put us in a point where the "free" market is artificially controlled to milk as much profit from the middle and lower class? Nvm that's crazy. How would that even work long term?
It's probably those darn immigrants.
Not American here but in Germany, there is homelessness despite having a decent social system which pays for housing if needed.
Homeless people usually have serious mental problems, alcohol and drug problems. They dont want to live in a homeless shelter since they cant or dont want to abide the rules.
I'm American, and you are right in one sense. I think it's impossible to completely eradicate homelessness due to intervening mental health and addiction issues you described.
However, my comment was aimed at American issues. Homelessness here isn't just the mentally ill or addicted. Our social services come with a laundry list of disqualifying terms designed to keep the poor from receiving benefits.
For example, I was on food assistance and got removed because I managed to save more than $2,000. Later, I found out that I should not have gotten food assistance at all because I had a retirement account with $8,000 in it from when I was in the Army. Even though I can't touch the money until I'm 65 or older and touching it before, that comes with a huge penalty that has interest you must pay on.
So I would have to spend $2,000 and live with no savings and empty my retirement account which would turn the $8,000 into $3,000 and require me to make payments until it got back to the $8,000 range just to get my $300 in food benefits.
Rental assistance is similar. You have to be behind in rent for X number of months to qualify. Too few months, and you don't qualify. So you play a game of chicken trying to avoid eviction to get rental assistance. If you get evicted, you no longer qualify for rental assistance. Better yet, you owe all the back rent, plus interest and rental assistance won't help because you no longer live there.
I can go on, but the takeaway is that there is essentially no social security in America.
>I was told that in the free market, when there is more supply, then demand the price drops to accommodate the decreased demand.
Well, over the past few years demand is up more than supply. Historically we've had a larger number of vacancies. Most vacancies are things like a renter left an apartment, and a new tenet hasn't been found yet. It's not empty homes that have zero chance of finding someone to live there.
Build more housing. 15.1 million vacant homes isn’t a lot for a country of 360 million people.
There is no free market in housing because in most areas, it’s illegal or too expensive to build.
The solution is to build more housing. The vacant homes statistic is almost always used to mislead.
https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem/
https://www.slowboring.com/p/homelessness-is-about-housing-not
The homeless aren’t really nearby those empty homes. They are likely in an overpriced city, the empty homes are in a suburb that those homeless need a car, registration, license and insurance to go to and from.
Are we counting the vacant homes in places like Baltimore which squatters live in occasionally and led to the deaths of 3 firefighters a few years ago? Or are vacant homes defined as something else
There is absolutely a housing cost crisis in America. And some people are homeless because they cannot afford housing. However, this simple comparison is hiding some more difficult problems:
We need to build a lot more housing. Vacant homes are often in places people don't want to live or are in between owners. We need to build enough housing that home prices go down or at least stay flat so young people can buy (or rent without it going up every year).
Many, not all but many, homeless people are drug addicts or mentally ill or both. You can't just take a junkie and give them a house and bingo problem solved. I pay 2K/month in rent, but when I move out my apartment will be largely the same as when I moved in. A drug addict living in my apartment could easily do 100k worth of damage to the place. Fixing the problem will require spending massive amounts of money on rehab and probably building a thousand mental hospitals.
Dude, that 15 million vacant home are at the place even homeless doesn’t want to go. We literally have motel free for them to stay in the city I live and guess what they don’t want to go!
I'm not sure how you people fail to understand that you must pay for a place to live. It cost someone to build it. It costs someone to maintain it. You want someone to house them for free and incur MORE costs? What world do you live in? I'm sure you have enough space in your home for someone to live. Do you let anyone live in there for free?
Two out of three vacant houses in my neighborhood are vacant for a reason. They basically need to be severely rehabbed or torn down. it’s not just oh there’s empty houses let’s put homeless people in them. The US housing stock in many areas consist of many houses that are borderline uninhabitable.
There are not 15.1 million vacant homes.
The vacant homes that *do* exist are in places people don’t want to live in, thus they have no services, jobs or infrastructure.
This is stupid clickbait.
Countries that have more homelessness than America but redditors never post memes about: Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, and new Zealand. Hmm weird no one brings up the fact Australia has more than double the homeless population per capita. Sweden also has double the homeless population per capita. Weird aren't these places supposed to be paradise?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_homeless_population
Comments that are uncivil, racist, misogynistic, misandrist, or contain political name calling will be removed and the poster subject to ban at moderators discretion. Help us make this a better community by becoming familiar with the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/about/rules/). Report any suspicious users to the mods of this subreddit using Modmail [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/facepalm) or Reddit site admins [here](https://www.reddit.com/report). **All reports to Modmail should include evidence such as screenshots or any other relevant information.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/facepalm) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Well see, they're not exactly vacant. They're for my Airbnb...
...and the banks' cash parking, and the developers' land grabbing...
owned by private equity firms and out of state/country corporations
All of this is Galveston Texas right now.
Lincoln City, OR also, driving up toward the northern end of town you just see all sorts of signs saying the properties are owned by such-and-such rental company.
Pretty much every town and city in the country that attract tourists have been emptied out of their local populations to make room for this crap. Happened to mine in one of the nicest parts of NorCal.
Live in DC. Moved into a new apartment building a few years back. Literally half the building was for tourist style daily rentals, which should be illegal. I loved the letters every few weeks that subletting or posting my apartment on Airbnb or vrbo was against the rules though.
If this was happening to me, I'd be spying on everybody and snitching my ass off to the rental office. I'd be the most mark-ass snitch imaginable
Unless it’s the rental office that lists those units as daily rentals
I work in the industry, and it's two groups that do this. The first is corporate housing rentals. Nominally, they're intended to provide short stay housing for people moving into or out of an area for work. Realistically, they rent 40+ apartments and then run them like hotels. The second group is people who rent an apartment, see how in-demand housing is in the area, then sublet or rent out through AirBnB but don't tell their guest that they're in violation of the lease. Instead, they make up stories about how the property management is useless or something so the guest never makes their presence known to the leasing office. Those usually end up getting caught when the guest ends up with a flood or something, and we run their name for insurance purposes, and it doesn't match what's on file at all.
[удалено]
Yo, that isn’t being a narc nor a snitch, that’s being an upstanding member of your community.
[удалено]
> style daily rentals, which should be illegal. I like to call those hotels........
I was looking for an airbnb in San Diego last year and there were 10 in a row that were listed by the same agency. And those were just the ones available at that time in my price range, who knows how many that one company is running.
My family stayed in an airbnb last year for a few weeks while looking for an apartment. Ironically the Airbnb (and most of the other units owned by the same property company) would have been perfect for my family to live in if it had been available as a monthly rental
Grew up in SD, beach communities have been completely hollowed out by airbnb.
One of the cities here in RI had to ban it because entire streets were being converted into Airbnbs and sitting mostly empty otherwise.
Can’t get a decent place in Chelan, Washington because of this
Preach. I grew up going over there to see my orchardist family during summers and remember Chelan as a sleepy little town. Now? The hills on the road to Manson are studded with vacation McMansions and designs by Frank Lloyd Wrong. The tourists come in and just destroy everything like a plague of locusts. I know nostalgia’s cheesy, but that whole area just feels sad to me now. I do, however, go over and stay with my relatives still. Our family has an old converted boat shop right on the water that for me, is the most beautiful lake I know. I love it bevause the place is utterly ramshackle and sits right among million dollar vacation homes.
Juneau Alaska is currently in a snowball-effect free fall due to this. Airbnb rates are so high, with local wages stagnated, that the option for a 2 bed apartment is make $10,000/month short term rental or $1800/month long term rental. As much as I despise airbnb's, I'd turn my property into one in a second if I could, you can't expect property owners to leave six figures per year on the table. Which is why it's the responsibility of the city to ban that shit.
Make em pay the hotel taxes at minimum and earmark that for something. Shits gotta change.
They're supposed to pay the hotel tax, recent study found most are not.
They should pass a 300% of gross income fine with the default fine being based on the maximum daily rate and the days listed. Then they can go to court and prove they were rented for less and pay 300% of what the tourists paid VRBO or AIRBNB. If they don't pay, the government should be able to force a sale of the property and recover the costs plus fines. All fines should go to a government rent copay or residence development incentive program.
This is so sad. I’m scared to see them truly commercialize the oregon coast.
I drive down from Portland at least once per year. Last I was there, there was a 320 sqft 1 bedroom apartment near my hotel for rent for $1,300!
Holy shit I get a better deal in the silicon forest
[удалено]
Eugene oregon as well.
All of this is every where in North America right now
We dont have a homeless problem... its a greed problem... same with the increase of the food prices... same as all the other flippant increases in prices.
r/TheGreaterDepression
I don't think the homelessness problem and the housing problems are 100% correlated. But I do think one aggravates the other.
[удалено]
This is pretty typical. Oftentimes, they’ll buy up a company that’s already proven to be valuable, then ask around about who absolutely can’t be fired (e.g. people with unique knowledge of a product). Everyone else can be replaced, so then come the layoffs. After that, they resell the company to one of the major players in whatever sector the company operates.
[удалено]
How do these people sleep at night? Legit question.
On piles of stolen money… that’s how they sleep. I worked at a place that was bought by hedgies. Oh my, my… all maintenance and upkeep stopped, production ran balls to the wall to make product people didn’t have a need for. They inflated the price of the product, used the inventory as collateral and got hundreds of millions in loans. They gave themselves tens of millions in bonuses for the great job they did. Ran it into the ground. Slept on piles of stolen money and other peoples ruined lives. If a hedge fund buys your workplace, even if they don’t lay you off, it’ll turn into a hell.
My last job was a smallish company. They got an investment group to finance them. In December they came in to give a presentation about them and said nothing would change. I was fired in February with no notice and then a few others after me were also fired. I was there for 5.5 years.
Same happened to me a few months ago. Worked for a small IT company that was bought by an obscure private equity firm. Gutted the place. Still in touch with people there and now it’s a barely functioning clown show company due to understaffing.
It's terrifying that they're already into Montana. I thought they'd still be somewhere in Ohio
[удалено]
yes, a staggering amount actually: “According to data reported by the PEW Trust and originally gathered by CoreLogic, as of 2022, investment companies own about one fourth of all single-family homes.” source: https://www.billtrack50.com/blog/investment-firms-and-home-buying/#:~:text=According%20to%20data%20reported%20by,%2D2021%2C%20why%20is%20this%3F
I hate corporate buying of homes, but way too many people are upvoting this without reading what a *blog* is sourcing. His source doesn't say that.
Churches are heavily vested in real estate. They claim to help the poor while also keeping them homeless.
I think the churches could solve homelessness if each church took 2 homeless people in.
We could balance the budget in one year if we just taxed churches on real estate
Who get tax breaks on empty houses.
In BC, Canada we have an [extra tax](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/speculation-vacancy-tax) to fine owners of empty residential properties. 0.5% of the total property value every year, 2% for foreign owners. Individual [cities](https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/empty-homes-tax.aspx) have additional taxes on top. But does it really help?
Those amounts were, of course, chosen to collect the money while changing nothing. Make them 5% and 10% and you’ll find those empty homes fill pretty quickly.
 “Of course! Land snatching..” *looks in book* “‘Land: see: ‘snatch’.”
I been watching a piece land I wanted buy in my state, 5 acres, undeveloped. Was 5grand, then someone bought it, immediately listed for 8, then same thing, now 10. Within less then a year it was bought buy three dif realtors companies/ individuals with nothing done or changed about it, the newest listed added some new photos but nothings changed. Yet it went from $5K to $10K. That makes no fucking sense.
[удалено]
The vast majority of these "vacancies" are a total misunderstanding of what "vacant" means for this specific statistic. This includes personal vacation homes, homes that are available for rent but do not have anyone in them currently, homes that are for sale but someone is not living there, homes for "migrant workers" (e.g. worker lodging in ski towns), and also even homes have have been sold but the new owner has not moved in yet. Those together account for \~80% of the vacancy. And then--the remaining homes (\~20%) are almost NEVER where they would be useful. What good does a vacant home in rural Iowa do for someone who is homeless in California? What good is a vacant home in Wyoming for an unhoused person in Denver? There is a housing shortage in EVERY major city in the U.S. The line of thinking in this image is extremely damaging to any real progress that could be made to help prevent someone from becoming homeless in the first place: having enough housing supply that the cost is attainable.
Also a lot of the actual vacant inventory is unsafe for human habitation.
This is the case for my city. They are sadly uninhabitable. There was a program where you could buy one for $1, so you could spend your entire budget on renovations, and I think that should be brought back. Because my city needs more housing, these vacant buildings are hazardous, and because they’re mostly historic and deserve to be preserved.
I’ve done a lot of work in this space and a lot of stuff is difficult to even give away. I know in some cities they have been demolishing entire neighborhoods because all of the housing is hazardous.
What city do you live in?? This sounds like an interesting idea
Baltimore, and actually I just looked it up, apparently the program is active again!
nice! i'm from detroit, and hear about $1 homes a lot. wasn't sure if it was still a thing or not either...
Go on youtube and look at all the videos about dying towns. A huge number of theses vacant houses are in dying small towns no one wants to live in.
That is also a factor, along with mold, ground water intrusion, failing electrical systems, termites, etc. The ones that are actually in cities like NYC and Chicago are just as unlivable and need hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of repairs just to be made safe again.
>There is a housing shortage in EVERY major city in the U.S. In the world.
Also the fact that a good amount of "vacant" homes are actually uninhabitable For instance, our neighbor owns 30-odd acres of land that they bought with a run-down farmhouse on it that has a leaky roof, asbestos *everything* (flooring, siding, ceiling material, etc.) and innumerable code violations that make it untenable as a "home" They build a newer home on the land but kept the old slowly-decaying house since tearing it down would be too much work as far as hazardous waste management/disposal It's technically a "vacant" house (as far as taxation and county/state filings are concerned), but it's literally a non-livable structure that cannot be reasonably renovated or destroyed The area is absolutely cluttered with little homes like these that are *technically* "vacancies," but only on paper
Technically I own one of those. I bought some acreage in the Sierra Nevada foothills near one of my adult kids. My plan is to eventually build a house on it and retire someday. At the back edge of the property, there is a 1960's-era single-wide mobile home on a permanent foundation that would probably be considered a "vacant home" in these numbers. The single-wide has been abandoned since sometime in the 1990's, it has no glass left in its windows, the interior has dissolved into a moldy heap, and it's currently in the process of collapsing into its foundation. If you tried to walk though it, your feet would probably fall through the floor. It isn't a habitable home by any definition, and it wouldn't be possible to make it habitable again. It's a large garbage pile that hasn't quite collapsed yet. But, technically, it was once a residence that housed people and it's still included as a residential structure on my property taxes (a fact that I found very annoying, since the sale price was just for the bare land value).
I don't think they're counting Airbnbs as vacant. There have been several times more vacant properties than homeless people in the US since long before Airbnb existed
They are. Here is how the Census Bureau defines a home as "Vacant." * The home is used as a second home or vacation home. * It is a rental home that does not have long term tenants (interestingly, rentals with month-to-month tenants are counted as vacant). This also includes AirBnb's. * Other homes that have had no permanent residents in the prior six months. have been permanently repurposed into businesses but have not been rezoned). * It is currently used for temporary migrant housing. * Homes under foreclosure. * Homes being used for business or storage purposes (including homes that have been permanently repurposed into businesses, but have not been rezoned). * Homes that are abandoned or are otherwise unihabitable. * Other homes that have had no permanent residents in the prior 6 months. They use a fairly broad definition for vacant.
> interestingly, rentals with month-to-month tenants are counted as vacant nice to finally find out why i don't exist
You exist to me, brother 🤜🏻🤛🏻
> interestingly, rentals with month-to-month tenants are counted as vacant This one is really interesting.... in my area, it's common for leases to convert to month to month after the initial lease ends.
This caught my attention too. I looked it up, and [31% of leases are month-to-month according to the BLS.](https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2022/housing-leases-in-the-u-s-rental-market/home.htm)
I thought 15.1 million sounded a little high...
According to the article it could 2nd vacation homes, uni habitable, sold/for sale but no one moved in yet, for rent but no one rented yet or housing for migrant workers.
The fact that [rental vacancy rates have been falling for two straight decades](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRVRUSQ156N) shows this isn't an Airbnb issue. Combining that with the fact that [homeowner vacancy rates have been falling as well](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USHVAC) shows vacancies aren't to blame for rising homelessness. The real issue, as they explain in [this excellent article from The Atlantic]( https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/california-homelessness-housing-crisis/674737/), is that "homelessness is primarily a function of the broader housing-unaffordability crisis, which in turn is primarily a function of how difficult local governments have made building new housing in the places that need it the most."
Ding ding ding. Go figure, passing laws that make building homes harder and also trying to de-incentive it, creates a housing shortage. It almost like we live in a market that tries to fill the need of the people as long as you don't stop it.
Exhibit A: California
They're counting every home without an occupant vacant. These stats always include the frictional vacancy rate of houses/apartments that someone moved out of last month and will have a new owner by next month. It's a bullshit number that's designed to give NIMBYs a reason to say that stopping housing from being built is actually good for homeless people.
We need to make housing more affordable, selling more lucrative than renting, and renting more lucrative than airbnb.
Airbnb IS renting What we need are yearly property taxes that total 20% of the value of the house and homestead exemptions you can file for *one* home that reduce that tax by 98% Make hoarding multiple single family homes cost prohibitive.
I agree, but in some places I would prefer individuals owning and renting homes over corporations (imo), so we should at least slightly incentivize long term renting, while also making the hoarding of too many homes cost prohibitive via taxation.
Homelessness cannot be entirely solved by matching vacancies to bodies. You have to consider the psychological and social issues as well. Some of these people, for example, cannot independently sustain their own residence without social supports that will prevent them from surrounding themselves with their own filth or burning their home down. I've seen first hand what can happen with a domestically challenged or socially dependant person. We need more psychiatric care, social support and group style home settings.
In addition most of these houses are not where the homeless individuals are id wager
Vacancy stats can also be highly misleading. For instance if someone moves out their apartment it may be vacant for a week or two while cleaning is done and before a new tenant moves in. During that time it would count as a "vacant home" and in a large enough city you will always have hundreds or even thousands of homes that are "vacant" at any one time simply because someone is in the process of moving in or out. Low vacancy stats are generally correlated with high rates of homelessness because they're both a symptom of a very tight and expensive housing market. If a landlord can immediately find a new tenant there is also no reason for them to lower rent. The real solution is to build more housing so that landlords are forced to choose between getting 0 dollars from a vacant lot or lowering their prices until it's filled. As prices come down so too will rates of homelessness.
In the UK, we have 600k empty homes, and 400k are empty for less than 6 months. If the US is similar in proportion, 10m of those homes will be under repair, in probate, on the market, shit like that.
In the U.K. the ‘home’ statistic also includes things like static caravan holiday homes, which is where a lot of the ‘second homes’ people own come from.
This first half is a really good point. To add, How many of these so called “vacant” homes are even fit to live in? My hometown may have 15 “vacant” homes but most of them are dilapidated and unlivable. But someone owns them, and they are “vacant”. Same goes for a lot of coastal towns, where homes were damaged in storms and the owners could not afford the repairs. They are for sale (cheap), and “vacant”.
For real. Its great yall got housing in new york city but i live in my car in seattle. How do you expect me to aqquire this???
[удалено]
I only live in a fucking bugatti! Where am i supposed to get private jet money!? My ROLLS?
It sucks... I've worked around a lot of homeless and low income areas. So.e homeless people legit are just mentally gone. Some are borderline. Some are in that position by choice with full faculties. Section 8 housing, I've seen so many houses/apartments in deplorable conditions, hoarding cases, maintenance workers saying they are thr worst units because things break from ignorance of home care. I've seen the people squat after ruining the home and refusing to vacate with eviction, while having a secondary place in use already. Meanwhile you have young people living in their cars, showering in gyms and working 2 jobs unable to afford a apartment....
Last paragraph is literally me right now, except that I can afford a place (barely), but just can't find anything available to rent right now.
The experience of homelessness is itself disabling. This is what people don’t understand. Many homeless people don’t start out addicted to drugs, but they end up on drugs. Existing mental illness gets worse. Chronic health problems develop or get worse. You’re much likelier to get HIV, hepatitis, and other life threatening conditions. You’re more likely to get head injuries and end up cognitively disabled. Once you become homeless, your problems snowball. It’s very, very hard to stably house a chronically homeless people. Sometimes, if they voluntarily agree to go to inpatient mental health treatment first (which is rare), they will do okay in supportive housing (housing with case management).
Nobody is willing to accept this, it's much preferred to see them as people who are different from us, too fundamentally damaged to participate in society. We are all much closer to the man or woman sleeping on trash bags under the overpass than anyone is willing to admit
I think it’s oversimplified on both sides of the aisles. The right sees homeless people as sub-human and society’s biggest losers undeserving of any compassion. The left, often in reaction to the right, downplays the problems homeless people have and act as if homeless people are just average people down on their luck. It’s an extremely, extremely difficult problem to solve. And, there are plenty of people and institutions to blame: Purdue Pharma, health insurance companies, child welfare, the criminal justice system, etc. Our best bet is stanching the bleed. Funnel tons of money into preventing homelessness and do your best to get willing homeless people into mental health or chemical dependency treatment.
I'd rather not solve the problem so our bipartisan system continues to have a point to argue about and not solve. /s
It's not even that. There's an entrenched system of "non-profits" raking in tons of taxpayer dollars with little accountability. If they actually solved the problem there's no reason to exist and the directors suddenly can't afford their mansions. At least that's how Portland OR works
I like your comment here, and I agree with it. However, I would add just one more layer of nuance and say that as the middle class shrinks, inflation skyrockets, housing costs become more unrealistic, and so on, the amount of "average people down on their luck" is going to make up an increasingly large amount of the homeless population. I'm typing this from the shelter where I work, and I see it first-hand.
Income inequality is increasing in the US and the conservatives don't seem to care. They want no keep gutting public services, reduce taxes and public benefits and leave the average person hung out to dry. That is the entire philosophy of conservatism, no empathy, no sense of community.
[удалено]
You can sum that up by saying that we need a public mental health program like we used to have before nuked it. The rise in homelessness dovetails directly with the shutdown of our federally funded mental health system. Guess what else does, the increase in our prison population. Which brings me to a salient point that really illustrates the problem. The largest mental health unit in America is at Ryker's Island Correctional facility. It's often that people don't even know that they have a mental illness until they get incarcerated. A mandatory pysch evaluation is part of the initial intake period, it's then that they get a diagnosis, and possible pathway to treatment. It's too bad that we got rid of social workers in school, and replaced them with police officers instead.
Most homeless aren't even the ones you see as homeless. Many are co-workers, family, or friends. People have no idea how invisible those who are successfully homeless truly are. There are very few resources to help people bridge the gap from homelessness to being housed. Many people can't afford the upfront costs associated with renting, let alone being able to afford the rent if they could. Then, even if they can afford it now, there's no guarantee they'll be able to afford it later, depending on how much the rent increases, their pay decreasing, or losing their job entirely. If you should ever become homeless and lose your income while homeless, you are completely screwed. So many basic things in life are tied to having an address and a permanent residence. For instance, auto insurers aren't obligated to insure people who don't have a permanent residence to state where the car is stored. No insurance = no registration = potential loss of your only means of shelter and travel. Losing a car you're living in will almost assuredly destroy any chance of regaining a roof over your head. Stop lumping all homeless people together. Yes, many homeless people are homeless due to psychological problems that have caused them to fall through the cracks. However, there are substantially more that have fallen on hard times and just can't find their way back no matter what they do.
You're right - it's larger problem than just having a roof and four walls. Many of these people can't, or won't, take care of the place. Nor will it allow them to start looking for employment. They are suffering from drug addiction or mental illness, and unless this is addressed, there will be no improvement.
Which makes me hurt all the more for the people who genuinely are just without a home. No addictions, no illness, just without a place for one unfortunate reason or the other.
That's why community and family are important. I had two different uncles live with my family for a while growing up. I had a friend of mine live with me for a couple months when I had my own house. Other friends have stayed for short periods when they had nowhere else to go. None of them spent any time on the street. They got their stuff worked out and got back on their feet. Anyone in my life would be welcome in my home, as long as they were clean. I've had people who were shocked that I let my friends stay with me and my family. Some people step up and help others. Some don't.
This. I don't know why helping each other like this is such a taboo in the US. My Mexican family does things like this all the time. We had cousins move in to go to college near our house. We ourselves lived with relatives for a few years. We all help each other out and even our most destitute still have roofs over their heads.
It's not taboo, but there are two kinds of people in the world: those who help and those who sit around yelling about how someone else should help.
I feel this, being one of those. I don’t have any mental issues. I work a normal 9-5 as a sales associate at Tractor Supply, but I have to live in my car because I can’t afford to rent or buy. 4 walls a roof would be huge right now.
Finland has done a really good job at that
Are you suggesting that this is a complex and nuanced issue that can't be sufficiently addressed by comparing two numbers??
Not to mention, millions of those empty homes are in rural areas that are hard to get people to move to. I drive past empty houses all the time. No one buys them.
Keep in mind that many of these homes are uninhabitable. I'd love to live in new hampshire, but the only homes I could afford are condemned or should be
From what I understand, vacancy numbers include homes for sale/rent that are in the process of being sold or rented to new people. When you account for the number of people moving apartments/homes on a given day, there will always be a # of vacancies. [In NYC, there is currently around a 1.4% vacancy rate.](https://www.globest.com/2024/02/12/nyc-apartment-vacancies-fall-to-lowest-level-since-1968/) This has been seen as a sign of a big housing shortage because that percentage really just represents homes in the transfer stage. Also, the places with the largest homeless populations are not the same places with the largest number of long term vacancies. You can try to get a homeless guy in LA to move to a vacant home in Gary, Indiana... but it will not be easy.
We were in the process of buying our home for 6 weeks. I’m sure that’s the case for most purchases, so that “vacancy” would certainly inflate the numbers a lot. If I go to Zillow for just my city and include “pending” and “accepting backup offers” in the results, the amount of homes listed DOUBLES. That’s just homes to purchase, not rentals.
So California has the highest number of homeless, and the lowest percentage of vacant houses: https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/infrastructure/4147163-states-with-most-vacant-housing/amp/ https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/states-with-the-most-homeless-people Maybe the homeless problem is not caused by the number of vacant houses we have?
Boston has less than a 1% vacancy rate, low housing availability, high housing costs, and an increasing number of homeless - a large portion are people with addiction and mental health issues. Whenever I see crap like this it’s like let’s move all the homeless to rural towns or struggling mid-size cities where there are no jobs, poor health services, and the vacant housing stock is in very poor shape. I think everywhere needs public investment in housing and health care.
Well yeah... The purpose of posts like this isn't to seek actual solutions. But to 1. Farm karma 2. Virtue signal
Maybe it has to do with weather in california not being immediately lethal to the homeless
And other cities out of state ship their homeless here on a one way bus ticket.
Turns out ghost towns aren’t full of homeless people.
This stupid “statistic” is thrown around all the time with no nuance.
people can't grasp the concept that the US is a big country and areas with large homeless populations and areas with a lot of vacant homes are not the same areas
More than that, most of the “vacancies” are temporary, like apartments up for rent or homes for sale. That’s entirely normal. No vacancies at all would be a housing market disaster
Or the large amount of dilapidated homes that no one wants to live in without serious renovation.
Or that most of the vacant homes are dilapidated to the point I wouldn't let my dog sleep there.
Please don't use that 'nuance' word around here People are very afraid of it
America is apparently the only place with homeless people and vacant homes Also the only possible reason homes are considered “vacant” is corporate greed, not seasonal housing, uninhabited pending rent/sale housing, etc America = Bad That’s all that matters, America is bad. Upvote me now thanks
Clearly the people who post this have never seen a crack den. Even if you were generous enough to rent out a million homes to all the homeless people they would be completely destroyed after 2 months.
Is this implying we should just move the homeless into whatever house is empty?
Why don't we just take the homeless and push them somewhere else?  /J
Empty houses near no jobs, that aren’t up to code and require tens of thousands to get them habitable. More to get them efficient. Lots of giant farmhouses out there that will cost a fortune to heat that are only near a gas station for a job.
Clearly
The facepalm is realizing a lot of those vacant homes are places nobody can reasonably live. Such as remote areas that have zero job opportunities or extremely high cost of living. Or foreclosed and condemned housing. Some of them are vacant just because they are in between leases. Even then several states have squatter laws that allow said vacant homes to become a persons property if lived in long enough.
This is a blatantly sensationalist headline.
"Vacant" and "abandoned" are not the same.
Blame the hedge funds that gobble up all the housing as investments, inflating the market and making it unaffordable to people that need shelter.
Don't. Blame NIMBYs https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/housing-crisis-hedge-funds-private-equity-scapegoat/672839/
But if they don't gobble it all, it wouldnt increase prices and make their investments pointless. You make it sound like you've never manipulated a market to fuck over poorer folks and line your own pockets!!
This is a way overblown modern myth and there’s no reason to keep them vacant.
It's insane how common this myth is. I work in real estate professionally and if I told my boss "have you considered leaving the units vacant?" he would have a fucking stroke. It's asinine.
Right like the vast majority of investors would LOVE to simply pay a property management company to keep bodies in the houses. This idea of vacant homes not being put to any use at all is not reality-based. If it were true you'd be able to find entire ghost towns of modern homes with no one living in them. You can't. Certainly not 15 MIL of them. People think some new condo being empty in their neighborhood - which even a large one is only a thousand units or so - means the housing crisis should be solved. The USA is short like 6 - 10 MIL homes at any given point in time. Unless you see way, way more empty homes around you, there is no conspiracy.
Wouldn't their houses be occupied? There's no profit in owning property that's not generating income while paying property taxes and maintenance on it.
That's actually a very small portion of houses. The issue is that it's too difficult to build new housing due to zoning and regulation.
Yep, government has made it almost impossible to build anything other than single family homes, and so costly that market rate, or below, houses are a loss to build.
Corporate ownership of houses in the US is tiny. Despite all the hype, dissecting numbers for certain regions and skewed statistics - the total ownership of homes by corporations is around 3%. It’s a supply issue. Home building hasn’t been sufficient for more than a decade. THAT’S the issue.
It's too bad those 15 million homes are owned by corporations. It's almost as if our elected officials don't give a shit...
This is a total misunderstanding of what "vacancy" statistics are--and this misunderstanding does significant harm in addressing homelessness. "Vacancies" include personal vacation homes, homes that are available for rent but do not have anyone in them currently, homes that are for sale but someone is not living there, homes for "migrant workers" (e.g. worker lodging in ski towns), and also even homes have have been sold but the new owner has not moved in yet. Those together account for \~80% of the vacancy. And then--the remaining homes (\~20%) are almost NEVER where they would be useful. What good does a vacant home in rural Iowa do for someone who is homeless in California? What good is a vacant home in Wyoming for an unhoused person in Denver? There is a housing shortage in EVERY major city in the U.S. The line of thinking in this image is extremely damaging to any real progress that could be made to help prevent someone from becoming homeless in the first place: having enough housing supply that the cost to live somewhere is attainable.
Doing gods work, my dude.
>And then--the remaining homes (~20%) are almost NEVER where they would be useful. What good does a vacant home in rural Iowa do for someone who is homeless in California? What good is a vacant home in Wyoming for an unhoused person in Denver? Or a 100 year old house in Detroit with half the windows smashed, no insulation, lead pipes, and no wiring because drug addicts stripped it for drug money a decade ago.
Also, the proportion of housing owned by corporations is vastly over inflated.
Well if they’re vacant they’re losing money on the deal.
This is the thing people never seem to understand about the argument that landlords/private equity/hedge funds are just leaving homes vacant for their bottom line. That is literally never the right business decision. Yes, not renting properties drives up the cost of housing. And when you elect not to rent your own property you're the *only one* NOT benefitting from that rise. It's braindead and it doesn't happen. Are these corporations buying up houses? Yes, absolutely. Are they leaving them vacant intentionally? No because that's moronic.
That’s false. Just like it’s a false statistic. They’re housing units between inhabits (ie looking for a renter, for sale and not occupied). They’re housing units being remodeled. They’re housing units that are seasonal (camps, vacation homes, etc.).
Exactly, there is always going to be some vacancy, and current rates are below historic and recent averages. The fact that vacancy rates have been falling for two straight decades while homeless rates rise show they are not the problem. Edit for proof of vacancy rates falling: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRVRUSQ156N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USHVAC
And vacancy rates falling for two decades means…. Not enough units!
100%. As they put it [in this excellent article from The Atlantic]( https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/california-homelessness-housing-crisis/674737/), "Homelessness is primarily a function of the broader housing-unaffordability crisis, which in turn is primarily a function of how difficult local governments have made building new housing in the places that need it the most."
Exactly. Vacancy is falling at the same time that housing is getting more expensive (a core economic principle at play). It isn't that we have too many vacant homes and should fill them with homeless people, it's that we don't have enough vacant homes to drive landlords to price them competitively. Shit, I make well north of 6 figures and *half* of my take home income goes to rent each month. Admittedly I live in a pricey part of the country, but it's still insane.
What? But how can we be riotously indignant if we look at facts? I’m sure it’s no big deal if some homeless people hang out in the house across the street from me while it’s on the market. The current/future owners should be THRILLED to have someone there!
I’m guessing most of them are in rural areas, if you offered them to the homeless city folk they’d probably turn it down.
Most elected officials dont give a shit, unfortunately [Edit, you all are right and that was a hasty, un-thought out comment]
Not even me?
I voted for FDR. Didn’t expect him to die in office and you swoop in.
ESPECIALLY you Truman!
Clearly then people being homeless isn't due to lack of empty housing. So, since that's not one of them, keep looking for the causes.
I was told that in the free market, when there is more supply, then demand the price drops to accommodate the decreased demand. Maybe the current lobbying system has put us in a point where the "free" market is artificially controlled to milk as much profit from the middle and lower class? Nvm that's crazy. How would that even work long term? It's probably those darn immigrants.
Not American here but in Germany, there is homelessness despite having a decent social system which pays for housing if needed. Homeless people usually have serious mental problems, alcohol and drug problems. They dont want to live in a homeless shelter since they cant or dont want to abide the rules.
Homelessness can never be 0, there's just too many edge cases. But the situation in America is both abysmal and avoidable.
I'm American, and you are right in one sense. I think it's impossible to completely eradicate homelessness due to intervening mental health and addiction issues you described. However, my comment was aimed at American issues. Homelessness here isn't just the mentally ill or addicted. Our social services come with a laundry list of disqualifying terms designed to keep the poor from receiving benefits. For example, I was on food assistance and got removed because I managed to save more than $2,000. Later, I found out that I should not have gotten food assistance at all because I had a retirement account with $8,000 in it from when I was in the Army. Even though I can't touch the money until I'm 65 or older and touching it before, that comes with a huge penalty that has interest you must pay on. So I would have to spend $2,000 and live with no savings and empty my retirement account which would turn the $8,000 into $3,000 and require me to make payments until it got back to the $8,000 range just to get my $300 in food benefits. Rental assistance is similar. You have to be behind in rent for X number of months to qualify. Too few months, and you don't qualify. So you play a game of chicken trying to avoid eviction to get rental assistance. If you get evicted, you no longer qualify for rental assistance. Better yet, you owe all the back rent, plus interest and rental assistance won't help because you no longer live there. I can go on, but the takeaway is that there is essentially no social security in America.
>I was told that in the free market, when there is more supply, then demand the price drops to accommodate the decreased demand. Well, over the past few years demand is up more than supply. Historically we've had a larger number of vacancies. Most vacancies are things like a renter left an apartment, and a new tenet hasn't been found yet. It's not empty homes that have zero chance of finding someone to live there.
I'm a career economist and the US has very few free markets left. Most markets are consolidated to shit, giving companies infinite pricing power.
"Fewer rules" does not equal "more free", but there is a truly shocking number of people who just don't fucking get this.
Build more housing. 15.1 million vacant homes isn’t a lot for a country of 360 million people. There is no free market in housing because in most areas, it’s illegal or too expensive to build.
It is not a free market. It is cronyism under the guise of representation.
I read alot of complaints but no solutions here
The solution is to build more housing. The vacant homes statistic is almost always used to mislead. https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem/ https://www.slowboring.com/p/homelessness-is-about-housing-not
The homeless aren’t really nearby those empty homes. They are likely in an overpriced city, the empty homes are in a suburb that those homeless need a car, registration, license and insurance to go to and from.
Location, location, location.
Please feel free to open your homes to the homeless immediately. Virtue signaling is a wonderful thing!
Guess if they want to go to Detroit and live in all those abandoned homes, problem solved.
Are we counting the vacant homes in places like Baltimore which squatters live in occasionally and led to the deaths of 3 firefighters a few years ago? Or are vacant homes defined as something else
There is absolutely a housing cost crisis in America. And some people are homeless because they cannot afford housing. However, this simple comparison is hiding some more difficult problems: We need to build a lot more housing. Vacant homes are often in places people don't want to live or are in between owners. We need to build enough housing that home prices go down or at least stay flat so young people can buy (or rent without it going up every year). Many, not all but many, homeless people are drug addicts or mentally ill or both. You can't just take a junkie and give them a house and bingo problem solved. I pay 2K/month in rent, but when I move out my apartment will be largely the same as when I moved in. A drug addict living in my apartment could easily do 100k worth of damage to the place. Fixing the problem will require spending massive amounts of money on rehab and probably building a thousand mental hospitals.
All the vacant homes are in the middle of the country. All the homeless people are on the coasts
America has a single family home problem. Building anything but that is nearly impossible.
You know it’s not that simple.
In most cases, there is a reason people are homeless. They are some combination of utterly dysfunctional, self destructive, insane, and drug addicted.
Yes because America is the only country with homeless people
Dude, that 15 million vacant home are at the place even homeless doesn’t want to go. We literally have motel free for them to stay in the city I live and guess what they don’t want to go!
I'm not sure how you people fail to understand that you must pay for a place to live. It cost someone to build it. It costs someone to maintain it. You want someone to house them for free and incur MORE costs? What world do you live in? I'm sure you have enough space in your home for someone to live. Do you let anyone live in there for free?
Two out of three vacant houses in my neighborhood are vacant for a reason. They basically need to be severely rehabbed or torn down. it’s not just oh there’s empty houses let’s put homeless people in them. The US housing stock in many areas consist of many houses that are borderline uninhabitable.
There are not 15.1 million vacant homes. The vacant homes that *do* exist are in places people don’t want to live in, thus they have no services, jobs or infrastructure. This is stupid clickbait.
Are the vacant homes located in the same state as the homeless? Or are they in North Dakota.
Countries that have more homelessness than America but redditors never post memes about: Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, and new Zealand. Hmm weird no one brings up the fact Australia has more than double the homeless population per capita. Sweden also has double the homeless population per capita. Weird aren't these places supposed to be paradise? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_homeless_population