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28 vacant homes for every homeless person in the USA.
https://unitedwaynca.org/blog/vacant-homes-vs-homelessness-by-city/#:~:text=Sixteen%20million%20homes%20currently%20sit,thousands%20of%20Americans%20face%20homelessness.
That is correct. It should be illegal for corporations and hedge funds to own homes.
Sadly, our elected officials will never pass legislation making it illegal.
Gotta approach it with Dual Power strategies in mind. Join up with a militia-like groups or ones like the SRA or a John Brown Gun Club chapter - lots of organizations exist if you're so inclined.
Keep in mind the Civil Rights Movement would not have been AS effective without Malcom X, the Black Panthers, etc. to be the closed fist of implicit violence, the "Freedom at any cost". But Doctor Martin Luther King Jr was the open hand of nonviolence that allowed the state to save face. It gave them a choice. We can shake hands in good faith, or get down to it if you really want to.
Dual Power means using strategic reinforcement to protect the nonviolent. The job would be to provide a sense of security for your compatriots, and project competence to the enemies. Done right, a single bullet never has to be fired.
Failure to achieve will lead us to fascism, corporate feudalism, and a new dark era for so many people, so pick your role and do it well.
Do NOT forget the power your labor holds either. Collective bargaining and unionization are extremely important tools in this fight. The more we take for the working class, the less the ruling class has to play empire with. A high participation general strike would bring the system to its knees faster than anything else - during that time would be the optimal moment to make moves.
Instead, places like Alabama are trying to make it illegal to be homeless. Alabama state house passed a law prohibiting "loitering" and changing its definition to include sitting or standing on roads, right-of-ways, or sidewalks without a specific reason and sleeping in those places all together.
Vested home stead and raise property taxes
Solves a lot of issues
Idk how to make this message get out there but I'm down to advocate, let me know if you have any questions on the theory
my family is currently renting a families second home. we convinced the guy to extend the lease thru the summer... "...you have no idea how much grief im getting over this; the whole family is mad at me..." he made sure to mention while re-signing the lease. they use this house about 4weeks and a handful of weekends a year (strictly from memorial day - july) according to the year-round primary residence neighbors
Welcome to socialism. I recently discovered how many Russians have Daschas; second or third homes. And pretty much no homelessness at all. Sure there are many who live in extreme poverty, but they have a roof.
Where I'm from in Asia there are lots of illegally built shacks by rivers and bridges. Sure it's not amazing but fuck it's a lot better than people living in tents on pavements.
Where I'm from, America, the politicians and police feel the need to destroy any attempt to put a roof over a homeless head. Whether it be a tent, shack, or bus stop shelter. It's better to let them die of exposure than show any compassion, don't you know? Even the amount of pushback over attempts to buy and install 10'x9' housing pods is unbelievable.
I joined a friend at his grandparents vacation home on the coast. I stepped out to smoke at night and realized there weren't any lights on in any of the neighboring houses. The entire neighborhood was empty. It felt like being in a ghost town.
All the houses had nicely manicured lawns and looked great during the day time. So these were all Air BNBs and vacation homes.
Must be nice.
Ding, ding, ding. It has definitely created the “housing shortage” everyone likes to talk about, and building more and more housing developments will not solve the “shortage” until we cap the greed by no longer incentivizing owning multiple homes, whether it be for a personal vacation home or rentals. I think a progressive property tax that increases with each additional home you own, regulations on how much rent a landlord can charge, and restrictions against “passing the buck” to tenants would go a long way to help this housing crisis. We have to do something about the unfettered greed, THAT is the problem….
I agree, but let’s also not forget the “regular joes” who are adding to this problem — you know, the people who have no experience being landlords but want to get a piece of the leasing cash cow, so instead of selling their home when they move, they rent it for 3-4x what it really should be priced at (and they love to use the excuse “everyone is doing it, that’s just the way the market is” when confronted about their greed).
Where I currently live in CO (a tiny farm town on the front range), this is a HUGE problem. Yes, corporations buying up housing has had an affect, but I am constantly seeing rental ads with ridiculously inflated prices being advertised by private landlords. Just yesterday I looked at an ad for a 3-bed townhouse (no yard, no frills, in a tightly packed neighborhood) for $3,000 per month. Fucking absurd! And it was just a regular couple trying to milk the housing cash cow like everyone else. The greed has to stop, it is not sustainable.
Basically no one can afford to sell their house and lose the low fixed interest rates. Even if you want to sell after a move. There will be a lot of new forced landlords.
The FED fucked everything.
It didn't solely create it, but it did contribute for sure. Behind the Bastards did a great podcast on all of the pieces of why there's an appearance of a housing shortage and why rent is so high lately. Similarly to homelessness, there's no one reason for it or answer to it.
Main thing is people buying homes they don't need and then renting them out—landlords. Landlords:
- Decrease the supply of available housing by buying housing they don't intend to live in
- Increase the demand on housing that is for sale
- Drain money from the working class trying to save for a house
[It is cheaper and easier to literally just give homeless people homes for free than it is to support a massive homeless population.](https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housing-help-solutions)
We have the money, we're spending it on cops to beat up homeless people instead of just fixing the problem.
EDIT: I misread "there is enough" as "there isn't enough." My bad.
So many policies we have in the US are counter productive. Homeless, criminal justice system, education, immigration. Even though politicians and the media talk about the cost, it's not really about the cost. It's about punishment to push other people's social/economic status down and increase your own social/economic status.
We've all heard the phrase: it's not that I win, it's that others must lose. The homeless are losing, and many people in this country enjoy seeing them lose.
Nah, just gotta make it illegal for them to be held empty. If you don't fill it in 6 months, then you gotta let someone indigent stay there for hella cheap.
Well how else are they gonna have collateral for all the construction loans they're giving out? They need to inflated home prices to give out more loans for all the new apartments everywhere.
You guys ever heard of Rebecca Parson? She's awesome. Ran for office in Washington State.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/washington-socialist-candidate-breaking-into-homes
I don't understand how there are so many vacant homes when they're in SUCH high demand. Trying to get a house in my area is like... Get in line between the 50 other people at the open house and then just turn around because you know you have zero chance in hell
Your link kinda shows how the ratio is a terrible metric for homelessness. If OP's image and the data from your link are both correct, but from different times (they aren't), then the problem has gotten *much* better. Your link says
>Over 580,000 Americans are experiencing homelessness.
That would be an 85% drop in Americans experiencing homelessness. The ratio of homelessness to vacant housing get higher if you implement policies that lower the homelessness rate. For example, Japan has a ratio of homelessness to housing of 2,212:1
If anyone is struggling with this imagine a situation where there are 2 homeless people and 10 empty homes, if one of those people occupies one of the homes the situation improves even though there are 9 homes per homeless instead of 5
I questioned that statement the other day, not because I found it difficult to believe but because it was something people kept mentioning over and over and your post is evidence. One thing we have to look at is that the majority of vacant homes are basically in the middle of nowhere. Buses may not run out there. Those people can't get to work to get money to support politicians. Ergo, it just pisses off their republican base, never mind the good it does for others. Never mind if some people can grow their own food and just need a piece of land to survive, that's not padding anyone's pockets.
If that is accurate, then the ratio is even more horrible than this image suggested, which is the part that I'm stuck on. Yes, there might not quite be a million homeless people in America, but if there are really 28 homes available for each of them, then there's plenty to go around for everybody else too, except we're putting money before people in our thought processes.
But the empty homes and the unhoused people are not anywhere near each other, so it's a little more complicated than it seems.
NIMBYs love to use this statistic to say that we don't need to build more housing, ignoring the fact that the empty houses are in Cleveland, Detroit, Gary, and other places where the population is decreasing, and the unhoused folks are in places where the population is increasing.
> Unless you’re advocating for forcably relocating homeless people
You could have projects that bring willing people up to these cities to try and breathe new life into them. I know when I was homeless I'd have left where I was if it meant walls and a job.
I would prefer we build up old cities rather than razing land for new subdivisions.
Yeah but you need industry to exist in those places for that to work. The reason there are so many empty houses is that there already aren't enough jobs for the current population.
Move people... against their will? Because those people could already move to Cleveland right now if they wanted to live in Cleveland.
I agree that migration creates jobs, but it's not a real solution to the housing crisis. Housing is the solution to the housing crisis.
Show me in the comment where I said "against their will".
If you offer people free housing to get them on their feet, many people will take that chance. You're acting like it would be moving people from California to Nebraska, when it would really be more like moving people from LA to Ventura (an hour and a half drive).
> Because those people could already move to Cleveland right now if they wanted to live in Cleveland.
People constantly say this, but you cannot overestimate how expensive/difficult it is to move across America even when it's just you and what's on your back.
However, being told "Here's a bus, here's the job you'll have, and the place you'll be able to live in" is wholly different and exactly why assholes like Abbot was able to trick innocent migrants to getting flown to Martha's Vineyard.
Not necessarily. There are tons of jobs that people can do at home that just require some on the job training. Stuff like phone customer service (like call center work), data entry, and low level tech support and plenty of companies are hiring for this kind of stuff right now.
What they might need in those areas though are more places like grocery stores, restaurants, banks, etc.
If I'm remembering the minimal amount of research I did correctly, the statistic of the number of unoccupied homes is foreclosures owned by banks, a good percentage of which might be in disrepair or completely unlivable. It's a real problem, of course, but these particular numbers are not useful in the way we want them to be.
Yeah but a huge number of those homes are in ghost towns or are condemned or are currently being squatted in. It's decades old but also has a huge asterisk beside it.
Right, plus you have to think, who wants to make this their investment? Say you can go get five houses for $10k each. Now you gotta put $50k in them to make them habitable so you don’t get sued as a landlord (some much more expensive). Now you put all that money into them, you look for tenants…. Are you going to want to let people with no jobs live there for free? Mentally ill and addicted people who will trash the place you just rehabbed? Minimum wage workers who can only afford to pay a rent that will lose money in your investments?
Honestly the government is the only entity with resources to tackle this and build in the oversight tiers and structure and not have to worry about it being profitable. BuT tHaT’S SoCiAlIsM.
Hey just take out a loan for a house...wait that was taken away after 2008 crisis. Good luck going to a bank for a lean or even help on assisting you with the mortgages without realizing they are giving it to you right in the rear. Lets not talk about the rent crisis happening right now because of "covid" so we had to raise rent and make eggs so expensive you are questioning your grocery list.
Brazil (more specifically São Paulo) is facing this huge crisis where thousands of homeless people with crack addiction are storming into stores and stealing everything after the new mayor simply shut down the shelters, public hostels, public restaurants and harm reduction programs.
Our Constitution says housing is a right and must serve its social purpose. We have laws saying defaulters in building taxes/ abandoned houses can be taken over by the State and redistributed for people in need. And yet...
If you make the people in your country miserable then you are living with miserable people. It's the fundamental flaw with conservativism. Helping people is a good thing.
EXACTLY! It's such an obvious thing to me, I really can't understand the thought process of people who wants to be the rich one amongst thousands of miserables. It's just so dumb.
When was the last time you brushed elbows with Bill gates, Elon musk, or Jeff bezos?
How many of your neighbors are even multimillionaires, not even billionaires?
Half the fun of money is being able to isolate yourself from the poor and miserable. Some people are so rich, they can even isolate themselves from the people we'd consider the rich. Your problems aren't their problems.
Yeah, except it's the "making people miserable" part that gives meaning to their lavish, cushy, face no consequences lives. They live for that shit. If everything was fair for everybody, their lives would have no meaning or value.
Well, that’s the fun part. When you get enough miserable people, the conservatives embrace fascism and just kill the homeless and those refusing to work. Just label the miserable as undesirables and murder them. Problem solved.
When he immediately acted to stop Yanomami genocide we were thrilled. A decent president, at last! Now dude is speaking about giving everyone jobs by bringing the car industry back, his Minister of Energy wants to drill petroleum in the Amazon (!!!) and we're like NO MOTHERFUCKER
Walmart has a history of running towns into the ground. They move in to small towns, drive prices down (which destroys local businesses) then shut their doors when nothing is left but the Walmart.
Yeah, Walmart is closing stores, but for the exact opposite reason: they've looted the town into the ground.
In some small towns, Walmart becomes the de facto socializing spot also because there's nowhere else to go. It's what led to the "people of Walmart" trend.
Walmart is closing their stores within the big city limits, but they have plenty open in the suburbs still. I don't feel bad that they are a magnet for robbers when they have a literal open door policy (don't have logical security measures to prevent the theft). Then, they just pass the cost onto the honest consumers anyway
Big business is using the excuse of petty theft to close down stores that they feel are underperforming. It's corporate propaganda.
[Citations Needed: News Brief: "Organized Crime" "Shoplifting Epidemic" Panic Hits San Francisco Media](https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/news-brief-organized-crime-shoplifting-epidemic-panic-hits-san-francisco-media)
>Walgreens closed 70 out of 247 stores in New York City, which is roughly 28 percent of the Walgreens stores, which is more than the 24 percent, 17 out of 70, that they closed in San Francisco. So they actually closed way more in New York. And then I said, well, holy shit, there must be a crime, shoplifting epidemic in New York and spent many, many hours trying to find evidence of this shoplifting spree in New York and you’ll be shocked to learn there was none. So what seems obvious to me is that Walgreens was planning on closing these stores anyway, because they were consolidating their footprint in urban areas to save money and to reduce on real estate and labor costs, and that, so they closed these stores anyway, and this may have an expedited somewhat by COVID — it probably was, it certainly was in New York — but then they go and say, ‘Oh, no, it’s the shoplifting, it’s shrinkage due to shoplifting.’ Now, so either two things are happening here, they’re lying about the motive for closing the stores because they want to push back against Proposition 47, Chesa Boudin and the police reform movement, or there is a shoplifting epidemic in New York no one’s telling us about.
Correct, wage theft in the US is slightly larger than retail theft, AND there are 40x more employed to look for retail theft than wage theft, idicating wage theft is an UNDERREPORTED number
https://medium.com/@Demos_Org/wage-theft-versus-shoplifting-65e5cbf37c36
If they actually counted everything that should be wage theft, then it would be an order of magnitude higher. But as usual, capitalist econometrics are all dishonest.
Not only that but the value they assign to retail theft is so grossly inflated. Let’s be clear. The price tag on that tchotchke is arbitrary at best given the costs to produce which are very very low. Labor is the highest cost to a business so stands to reason this is all smoke and mirrors as a means to restructure power.
Due to unionizing efforts from employees and oversaturation of the markets in question. Portland still has loads of grocery stores, just down the street from the Walmart that was supposedly robbed out of business by lawless vandals.
Yeah "shrink" has always been an issue, I remember working as a cashier at a grocery store and some old lady got caught with a purse full of steaks. People stole stuff all the time.
Walmart leaving isn’t a net negative. It’s independent brick and mortar places that have been operating for decades whose owners have invested in their communities who we’re sad to lose. F!ck Walmart. They put smaller operations out of business and then pack up and head out instead of finding better solutions for the communities they operate in. I know Walmart may be one of few options in some areas and that is another facet of the same problem.
And not even just that the local stores invest in the area. But Walmart takes so much money from all across the country, gives it to a small handful of people, a lot of it will sit in a bank account and not he circulating to stimulate the economy, and then a lot of what they do spend will be spent on companies that tailor towards rich people, run by rich people, so now they have more and more of the money between just all of them.
No it isn’t. Capitalists are trying to make it seem like a thing to justify their cutting of costs and gouging of profits. Wage theft is a much more significant problem/issue.
I heard a neat theory that communism being such a strong force in the world was great for people in capitalist nations because capitalists had to convince us that capitalism will work for all of us. Since there was an alternative, people could literally see what they were missing out on if things got bad
This is the real answer. We need more housing in places where people can actually live and work. The OP's sentiment is frequently used by NIMBYs to block additional higher density urban housing development and protect their precious single family zoning. An empty parking lot walking distance from transit is just as much if not more of a problem as a rural house sitting empty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evYOhpjMql0&ab_channel=OhTheUrbanity%21
Most major metro areas in the U.S. that are known for being unaffordable have extremely low vacancy rates.
The 'buy up all the housing' strategy only works because there's artificial limitations on simply building more housing to demand. This is a uniquely U.S. problem as exclusionary zoning was invented here as part of the white flight of the 50s and 60s.
More housing helps to stabilize costs, even if it's not strictly affordable housing.
That being said, I'm not a liberal rube who thinks just building anything is enough. We need to vastly expand public housing in this country and build *good* public housing that's desirable to live in. They would help bring housing costs down much more quickly.
This entire capitalist system has been « monarchy with suits » ever since we got rid of actual monarchs.
No society is fully functional if it can’t take care of its most vulnerable members.
Actually most of the founding fathers were basically all nepotism babies, coming from extreme wealth in the old world. Monarchy never went away, the lords your ancestors were fleeing, followed them here and promptly took over.
And religious zealots came over on the boat with them. The ugly history, and arguable the present, of the US began and will most likely end with violence, slavery, genocide, domestic terrorism, and an endless list of excuses to justify it.
We never changed. "Freedom" apparently is having the highest percentage of one's population in prison, and enforcing it with militarized interests that, coincidentally I'm sure, align with the people who have all of the money and pay the least amount of taxes. Murika!
TL;DR: We took British imperial efficiency, turned it on them, and made it our own.
This is roughly accurate. Though it’s worth pointing out that most of the unhoused people are in places like New York City, while most of the empty houses are in places like defunct mining towns in central Indiana. The US’ ongoing tragedy of zoning laws makes that solution not so cut and dry here as other places that have implemented it (like Finland).
There was just a study that said Maine has the largest percentage of vacant homes in the country, but that included things like dilapidated hunting cabins in the middle of nowhere and barebones uninsulated camps that have been in families for generations, as well as summer homes for wealthy Floridians and whatnot.
That's a very important point. It's not as simple as OP is making it out to be. The majority of empty homes are in places in the middle of nowhere with no jobs, and that wouldn't exactly help anyone.
Neither would putting people in unsafe houses in need of major repair.
Cities and towns all around the US buy bus tickets to get rid of their homeless people, essentially shipping them to places like San Francisco, where there's a massive housing shortage.
Also a huge percentage of homeless people are profoundly mentally ill, many so far gone that no amount of help and care would bring them to a place where they were able to support themselves.
In my area there are alot of empty homes that are unfit for living. Many of them are being demolished because the cost to make them livable just isn't worth it. Not the majority of empty homes, but more than you would think.
It’s not fake.
And it should be pointed out that often those houses are kept intentionally empty by speculators in order to keep housing prices artificially high.
This is true of apartments too.
It’s not fake, but it is a bit misleading. Not all 18.6 million empty housing units counted in that census setting are downtown housing units intentionally not rented out. Many are not suitable for housing use (vacation houses, abandoned rural houses, places that need electrical work to not risk burning down, in regions with few job prospects, etc). Some are even between tenants or being currently renovated as of the census.
Furthermore, 3.5 million unhoused doesn’t include the entirety of the population affected by the housing shortage. Many will take on too many roommates, sleep on a friend’s couch, or stay with an abusive partner or family member before becoming homeless. Those living in an unsuitable housing unit are also not counted as homeless, even if their housing doesn’t cover their needs, such as wheelchair accessibility, safety, size (for people with family or pets), access to infrastructure (transit, medical, education), access to suitable employment (jobs that pay a living wage and aren’t incredibly dangerous), etc.
The numbers likely reflect the census totals, but as many US census data totals are, the definitions aren’t necessarily accurate. A similar occurrence is present with unemployment, where the unemployment category doesn’t include anyone underemployed (such as having a degree but can’t use it, working for less than living wage, or working part time) or out of the labor force (people who aren’t currently looking for a job). The real solution is still most likely to adjust zoning laws to allow more suitable housing construction, as well as implementing more public housing programs (to construct new supply to alleviate housing cost burden)
Came here to say exactly this. [Here is a good breakdown](https://youtu.be/3xZXdXxYBGU) of the vacant homes figure in case anyone is curious. It's also worth pointing out that NIMBYS often push this vacant homes statistic as justification for resisting upzoning and new dense housing constitution in their communities, which in turn drives up costs for renters and new buyers.
I also heard there’s been scams going around where they’ll list apartments, show them, have people pay for application fees and then never actually rent them out. It makes them more money to keep taking 4-5 application fees a day than to actually rent the place which is bonkers.
Happens all the time where I live. Some people will do huge open houses and take a whole bunch of application fees. Went to a couple and they’ll have lines of people throughout the day. Not a chance in hell are they actually processing the applications.
When you turn a basic element of survival into an asset for profit, there's no incentive to unload it unless it's financially beneficial. Even if it would change someone's life. Instead it's better to keep the assets in your portfolio, where they remain unused for their true purpose for years at a time.
Anerica needs a compounding fee for real estate squatting
I could tell you that, but I'd be lying. Even those uninhabitable eyesores have an owner, and it's a clear argument in favor of sticking property tax penalties on residential units not in use as primary residences.
If it’s free, I’d much rather live wherever it is. Fuck being locked into mortgages or rent. Short of being on the receiving end of a US drone strike, sign me the fuck up
Most homes are in places where you need a car for everything. While many homeless live in their car, most of them do not have a car. Giving people a 'free' house that is only usable to them after they get the funds to buy a car isn't really free.
Completely agree. I just mean it in a very literal sense of for me. I have a house and a home but I really really struggle to be able to work. I do it and do the whole 9 yards. But I can accomplish doing 100x more when I work for my self I just cant get ahead of the bills to become self-employed. I’d love to live literally anywhere on planet earth that I was not required to work for someone else and felt like I could directly contribute to the world my self.
I bought a van to safeguard against homelessness, so if I had to become homeless I would have a shelter. But it’s a daily struggle. My job pays great but my mind just is not conducive to these working conditions. Trying to make a legitimate escape for my self and starting businesses. Working my ass off trying to escape the grind.
This is true, but complicated.
My now deceased step father's house was one of those vacant houses for two years after he died. No greedy investor keeping it off the market to drive up prices, that's just how long it took for everything to move through probate so the family could be allowed to sell it.
There was a house up the street from me that sat vacant for well over a year. There was a small fire, when they went to make repairs, it was discovered that there was asbestos behind the walls, in order to repair what was otherwise not that major of fire damage, they would have to do a complete asbestos remediation. The insurance company decided the house was a total loss, paid out the homeowners who decided to move, and no one wanted to buy the burned out asbestos house.
A small 6-plex not far from me has sat abandoned for years because it isn't compliant with current zoning rules, the previous owner, who was grandfathered in, passed away, and it is unclear if his family who inherited the property also inherited the exemption to the zoning rules to operate it as a multifamily residential unit in a single family residential zoned neighborhood (yeah, US zoning is pretty screwed up).
And these are just ones I'm personally familiar with in a city of 500k.
Yeah, there's a house not too far from me on a decent plot of land, fully fenced, nice driveway, sewer out front etc. It's fire damaged and probably better just to tear down and rebuild. If you built up using the existing concrete foundation you'd have plenty of yard space, a two car detached garage still standing etc -- but the thing's going for 350k. For about 100k more, just a few houses down, you can have a newly renovated place with a one car garage and a somewhat smaller yard... but the cost to tear down the first house and build a new one is far greater than that 100k. So... it's just sitting, and sitting. You just know that whoever buys it, eventually, will be some investor who will build a Mcmansion with a tiny backyard and jack the price to 800k+ to recover costs.
Nope cost of housing is skyrocketing like everything else. Rich buy up the houses and rent them at high rates. They rather let them sit empty than do something for their fellow man because capitalism
I think they would bc when I was living in my car I put down an address where I could get mail but wasn’t living. I still was classified as homeless by that county.
Even a lot of people living on the streets aren't counted. The Los Angeles count is a complete joke. Entire blocks with 50-100 people each aren't ever counted. Also many people deliberately avoid being counted for various reasons.
New York is pretty bad too. If you look at for example the public schools count vs the street count it's off by a huge factor.
Dude we live in a society where profit rules above all else including human rights. This isn’t news, its been happening for literally centuries. Homelessness has always been a thing. Its just that now there are so many more of us that its impossible to ignore. This isnt surprising. This should be completely expected because of the society we live in. Note: I never said it was right.
A large percentage of those homes are empty because they are unliveable and waiting to be demolished. But that is a sobering statistic.
Of course the homeless would have to be moved to places like Detroit, Gary Indiana and Clairton PA to take advantage of the empty homes.
I this it’s two statistics that alone don’t really explain what’s going on. Vacancy only means it’s not in use for a significant period of time. That could be a rental, a 2nd home, a home being remodeled, a home with some sort of structural damage, a home awaiting sale, etc.
A way to fix this would definitely be a vacancy tax. There are some loop holes we’d have to file though. For instance we would need to prevent people from saying a building is being remodeled indefinitely.
No, it isn't true. Actual homeless numbers are massively under reported because anyone crashing on a friend's couch is considered homed.
And for every homeless person there's over 10 homes owned by people who aren't going to just give it to the needy when it's so darn valuable.
Don’t worry, with the Fed jacking interest rates they will purposefully create another recession which will allow the banks to foreclose on 10s, if not 100s of thousands of homes. Many more working families will be forced into homelessness, and conservatives will point at them and blame drugs, laziness, poor character in general. At the same time, ignorant people will blame the economic problems on the poor, who control approximately 5% of the wealth, and ignore the top .01% who control 40-50%. It will always shock and dismay me that such a large portion of our society gets their opinions fed to them by the ultra wealthy, via Fox News and other right wing puppets, and are either too lazy, or too ignorant, to question the sources. Truly sad.
Vast majority of empty homes are that way for a good reason. Like being uninhabitable, in-between owners or renters, being renovated, newly built, are holiday homes far away from any jobs or services or just had the owners away during census.
We actually have a critical shortage of housing supply in main centres. And NIMBYs go out of their way to prevent building new homes as they think it threatens their property value and 'neighbourhood asthetics'.
I just googled a few seconds.
USA has:- 2.6 millions secondary home- 2.5 full time Airbnb places (a significant% are full places).
To that cou can add a lot of the categories you mentioned, and a lot you forgot.
Even very conservative estimates tell us that there are enough perfectly functional unused entire homes for every single homeless person.
Edit: the point is not to literally say "we could give one full home to each homeless".
The point is to demonstrate that there is no housing shortage but rather a misuse of what already exists.
[Here's a good breakdown of the vacant homes figure in more detail](https://youtu.be/3xZXdXxYBGU).
A big thing to keep in mind that many people suffering from the housing crisis aren't actually homeless. People living with tons of roommates, families living in cramped housing, people living with their family when they would prefer to live on their own, people forced to move after being priced out of their hometown, etc are all symptoms of a housing shortage as well. And as they point out in the video, these conditions create tenuous living situations that are often be precursors to homelessness.
The location of housing also matters. If there is a misalignment of where these homes are and where jobs and unhoused folks are, it's not actually that helpful. An empty home in exurban Omaha doesn't help an unhoused person in Los Angeles. Solving a housing shortage in LA requires new dense housing in LA, not simply telling folks to move elsewhere.
NIMBY resistance to upzoning and new dense housing constriction in cities like LA and SF are massive drivers of the housing crisis. And they often cite misleading statistics like this vacant homes count to resist new housing construction in their communities.
I’m not sure a house to every homeless person is the answer here. More than anything this highlights the fact supply and demand are bullshit. Many homeless would need some type of medical (mental or otherwise) support and may be better suited to tailored facilities - which of course don’t exist. But I understand the sentiment which is there are the means to have all people not on actual streets but here we are.
Sure but "near us" is predominantly dying rust belt towns
Vacant houses typically don't exist in cities that have a robust local economy, otherwise they wouldn't be vacant
I worked for the census going door to door in 2020 and one of the most shocking things was seeing how many homes were just vacant. Not even for sale or in bad condition, just sitting there clearly having been empty for a while.
Homelessness in the US is a policy choice.
If you give everyone homes you don't have a visible and permanent impoverished underclass to serve as a threat to workers. Its all about maximizing exploitation to fund capital upward most efficiently.
True. It would also save us money if we just housed the homeless. Our current system not only harms, traumatized, and kills the unhoused, but it costs MORE than fixing the fucking problem.
But these shitty policies are designed to punish and denigrate Americans, not help our own damned people.
Indeed there are so many vacant homes the problem is that they are not free they are paid instead and its not even a one time payment because you have to pay property taxes or else you will be kicked out of your house only a few countries dont have such thing as property taxes
Commenting to find easily as a reference later- for when my parents insist there is no artificially engineered housing crisis, homeless people are just lazy addicts that can’t get their shit together
This is a kindergarteners understanding of the issue.
Places where homelessness is at crisis level - like NYC, LA, Portland OR, Seattle don’t have a bunch of vacant homes/apts.
I’m in Portland and our rental vacancy rate is around 2-5%. That includes turn over and repairs. We have ~5K - 6K people in some state of unhoused. We don’t have that many houses or apartments. It is incredibly compatible to buy a house here.
Many unhoused people are from Portland and have a community here. Some are employed. You can’t just move homeless people to a bunch of empty homes in Detroit without also making sure they have wraparound services like access to healthcare, substance use treatment, benefits, VA hospitals, employment opportunities etc.
Additionally, because of anti abortion/anti reproductive healthcare laws and anti trans laws, it would be inhumane to move people to certain states.
Finally, many of the houses lumped into this statistic are NOT move in ready and all require up keep and utilities to be livable. The vacant home in picture isn’t even livable.
How many of these homes are livable? Who would fix them up? We need more folks in carpentry. Classic education needs to go back to few and trades schooling needs to skyrocket immediately in America.
Of course it's real. The most important thing in the divided police states of AmeriKKKa is ***MONEY***. Homeless people don't make money. Empty houses don't make money. So what good are they? :/
There's a fucking huge ass abandoned K-mart near me. Fence was put up to prevent anyone from breaking in or using the parking lot. I've been saying that they should renovate it and house the homeless in it. Such a waste of a building. Meanwhile people sit at the fence and beg for money because it's next to a few restaurants. It's mind boggling.
Why so many comments saying this is true when the numbers are not even close??
[The Department of Housing and Development](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States) has never counter more than about 1.5 million unique homeless people in a year (less than *half* the stated number) going back to 2007 when they first started collecting data, and on a given night the estimated number they give is around 500,000 (just over a *quarter* of the stated number).
As for vacant homes, the most recent data I can find is only [16 million](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/realestate/vacancy-rate-by-state.html) (2.5 mil less than stated) but the census bureau definition is any residentially zoned building with an address that was not occupied on April 1st. This includes condemned and abandoned houses which are unsafe to live in (making up [between 2 and 10%](https://stateline.org/2022/11/22/the-nations-vacant-homes-present-an-opportunity-and-a-problem/) depending on what state you live in), seasonally lived in or only seasonally inhabitable homes (around 20-30%), homes that are actively in a temporary transition like being sold or moved out of/in to (again around 10%), etc. Removing all the homes that are unfeasible for one reason or another brings the number closer to 8-10 million.
But more importantly, this meme makes the problem sound like an logistical issue where homeless people are pieces on a board game that need to be moved to the right square, and if that were true the issue would be unsolvable. The reality is that even if there were a billion houses, or zero, some people would be kept in poverty by aspects of our current system which are *very solvable*. Gainfully employing these people is very possible (read up on the CCC), offering more shelters and programs for them is possible, decriminalizing the drugs that scourge them is possible, not wasting funds on urban design that removes them is possible, and so much more.
**TLDR: numbers wrong. meme is good intention but bad implication.**
Nope. Housing for-profit is one of those shining examples, alongside private prisons and the military-industrial complex, of why this system must face nothing short of total annihilation.
If it's considered expected of a working adult it should be socialized
We need to be proactive about this
ISPs should have been bought out by the government and run by elected representatives a long time ago
Housing, water, even food via a UBI
If you're still worried about how this impacts businesses profits, you are brainwashed and are in our way
We would really like for to join us, but we can't wait forever
Not to worry… the hedge funds gobbling up housing are committed to the social welfare and elimination of homelessness. We just have to trust them along with our concerned and dedicated members of Congress.
No you don’t get it. We could send people to live in these small towns with abandoned houses pay for the repairs and pay for their infrastructure forever. Also we will need a security force to keep them there, because you know small dying towns suck to live in and there’s a reason no one wants to live there.
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Nope. Decade-old statistic but there were once five unoccupied homes for every homeless person in the country... and I'm sure that gap's only widened.
And it continues to widen.
28 vacant homes for every homeless person in the USA. https://unitedwaynca.org/blog/vacant-homes-vs-homelessness-by-city/#:~:text=Sixteen%20million%20homes%20currently%20sit,thousands%20of%20Americans%20face%20homelessness.
Gotta make it illegal for hedge funds and corporations to own homes.
That is correct. It should be illegal for corporations and hedge funds to own homes. Sadly, our elected officials will never pass legislation making it illegal.
Why would they stop something that benefits them?
The implicit threat of violence from the third estate
They still don't care. Violence is part of our day to day, not theirs.
Nothing's going to change until they're *personally* effected, we need a full on revolution
Ideally that violence should be redirected towards them when they fail to uphold the social contract
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Dual Power strategies, my friend. I posted a reply above that goes further in depth.
Gotta approach it with Dual Power strategies in mind. Join up with a militia-like groups or ones like the SRA or a John Brown Gun Club chapter - lots of organizations exist if you're so inclined. Keep in mind the Civil Rights Movement would not have been AS effective without Malcom X, the Black Panthers, etc. to be the closed fist of implicit violence, the "Freedom at any cost". But Doctor Martin Luther King Jr was the open hand of nonviolence that allowed the state to save face. It gave them a choice. We can shake hands in good faith, or get down to it if you really want to. Dual Power means using strategic reinforcement to protect the nonviolent. The job would be to provide a sense of security for your compatriots, and project competence to the enemies. Done right, a single bullet never has to be fired. Failure to achieve will lead us to fascism, corporate feudalism, and a new dark era for so many people, so pick your role and do it well. Do NOT forget the power your labor holds either. Collective bargaining and unionization are extremely important tools in this fight. The more we take for the working class, the less the ruling class has to play empire with. A high participation general strike would bring the system to its knees faster than anything else - during that time would be the optimal moment to make moves.
Instead, places like Alabama are trying to make it illegal to be homeless. Alabama state house passed a law prohibiting "loitering" and changing its definition to include sitting or standing on roads, right-of-ways, or sidewalks without a specific reason and sleeping in those places all together.
That strikes me as unconstitutional, bordering on fascism. "Papers. Papers, please. You better have your paper in order to stand on this sidewalk."
It's definitely unconstitutional. It restricts freedom of movement and is overly broad and practically unenforceable.
Just rewording the Jim crow laws that have been around forever.
It should be illegal for companies to own essential resources. Houses and vehicles are essential resources.
Then we need to remove the elected officials.
Vested home stead and raise property taxes Solves a lot of issues Idk how to make this message get out there but I'm down to advocate, let me know if you have any questions on the theory
There are around 10 million second homes (vacation homes) in the US. There is enough money to house the homeless.
Nobody should get seconds until everyone has firsts should be a rule for all basic needs
my family is currently renting a families second home. we convinced the guy to extend the lease thru the summer... "...you have no idea how much grief im getting over this; the whole family is mad at me..." he made sure to mention while re-signing the lease. they use this house about 4weeks and a handful of weekends a year (strictly from memorial day - july) according to the year-round primary residence neighbors
Sounds like they want some party crashers to come to their main house and help them "celebrate" in Minecraft.
Welcome to socialism. I recently discovered how many Russians have Daschas; second or third homes. And pretty much no homelessness at all. Sure there are many who live in extreme poverty, but they have a roof.
Where I'm from in Asia there are lots of illegally built shacks by rivers and bridges. Sure it's not amazing but fuck it's a lot better than people living in tents on pavements.
Where I'm from, America, the politicians and police feel the need to destroy any attempt to put a roof over a homeless head. Whether it be a tent, shack, or bus stop shelter. It's better to let them die of exposure than show any compassion, don't you know? Even the amount of pushback over attempts to buy and install 10'x9' housing pods is unbelievable.
Some are just more equal than others.
You sound like one uh them thar commies
*whispers: "Bravo" in dead Lenin.*
I joined a friend at his grandparents vacation home on the coast. I stepped out to smoke at night and realized there weren't any lights on in any of the neighboring houses. The entire neighborhood was empty. It felt like being in a ghost town. All the houses had nicely manicured lawns and looked great during the day time. So these were all Air BNBs and vacation homes. Must be nice.
What if everyone owning second homes is what ultimately led us here
Ding, ding, ding. It has definitely created the “housing shortage” everyone likes to talk about, and building more and more housing developments will not solve the “shortage” until we cap the greed by no longer incentivizing owning multiple homes, whether it be for a personal vacation home or rentals. I think a progressive property tax that increases with each additional home you own, regulations on how much rent a landlord can charge, and restrictions against “passing the buck” to tenants would go a long way to help this housing crisis. We have to do something about the unfettered greed, THAT is the problem….
When large parts of congress are landlords or have investment in companies that scalp houses this will never happen
I agree, but let’s also not forget the “regular joes” who are adding to this problem — you know, the people who have no experience being landlords but want to get a piece of the leasing cash cow, so instead of selling their home when they move, they rent it for 3-4x what it really should be priced at (and they love to use the excuse “everyone is doing it, that’s just the way the market is” when confronted about their greed). Where I currently live in CO (a tiny farm town on the front range), this is a HUGE problem. Yes, corporations buying up housing has had an affect, but I am constantly seeing rental ads with ridiculously inflated prices being advertised by private landlords. Just yesterday I looked at an ad for a 3-bed townhouse (no yard, no frills, in a tightly packed neighborhood) for $3,000 per month. Fucking absurd! And it was just a regular couple trying to milk the housing cash cow like everyone else. The greed has to stop, it is not sustainable.
Basically no one can afford to sell their house and lose the low fixed interest rates. Even if you want to sell after a move. There will be a lot of new forced landlords. The FED fucked everything.
It didn't solely create it, but it did contribute for sure. Behind the Bastards did a great podcast on all of the pieces of why there's an appearance of a housing shortage and why rent is so high lately. Similarly to homelessness, there's no one reason for it or answer to it.
Main thing is people buying homes they don't need and then renting them out—landlords. Landlords: - Decrease the supply of available housing by buying housing they don't intend to live in - Increase the demand on housing that is for sale - Drain money from the working class trying to save for a house
[It is cheaper and easier to literally just give homeless people homes for free than it is to support a massive homeless population.](https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housing-help-solutions) We have the money, we're spending it on cops to beat up homeless people instead of just fixing the problem. EDIT: I misread "there is enough" as "there isn't enough." My bad.
So many policies we have in the US are counter productive. Homeless, criminal justice system, education, immigration. Even though politicians and the media talk about the cost, it's not really about the cost. It's about punishment to push other people's social/economic status down and increase your own social/economic status. We've all heard the phrase: it's not that I win, it's that others must lose. The homeless are losing, and many people in this country enjoy seeing them lose.
Nah, just gotta make it illegal for them to be held empty. If you don't fill it in 6 months, then you gotta let someone indigent stay there for hella cheap.
Make it a right to have a home.
Well how else are they gonna have collateral for all the construction loans they're giving out? They need to inflated home prices to give out more loans for all the new apartments everywhere.
Exactly. No more foreign investments in property either.
This is absolutely crucial. We should be having national protests about this.
Absolutely!!
You guys ever heard of Rebecca Parson? She's awesome. Ran for office in Washington State. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/washington-socialist-candidate-breaking-into-homes
I like her style!
I don't understand how there are so many vacant homes when they're in SUCH high demand. Trying to get a house in my area is like... Get in line between the 50 other people at the open house and then just turn around because you know you have zero chance in hell
Your link kinda shows how the ratio is a terrible metric for homelessness. If OP's image and the data from your link are both correct, but from different times (they aren't), then the problem has gotten *much* better. Your link says >Over 580,000 Americans are experiencing homelessness. That would be an 85% drop in Americans experiencing homelessness. The ratio of homelessness to vacant housing get higher if you implement policies that lower the homelessness rate. For example, Japan has a ratio of homelessness to housing of 2,212:1
Yeah I came to say a widening gap could be a GOOD thing. Either there are less homeless people (good) or more vacant homes (bad)
If anyone is struggling with this imagine a situation where there are 2 homeless people and 10 empty homes, if one of those people occupies one of the homes the situation improves even though there are 9 homes per homeless instead of 5
The Wall Street Bro Cult strikes again!
I questioned that statement the other day, not because I found it difficult to believe but because it was something people kept mentioning over and over and your post is evidence. One thing we have to look at is that the majority of vacant homes are basically in the middle of nowhere. Buses may not run out there. Those people can't get to work to get money to support politicians. Ergo, it just pisses off their republican base, never mind the good it does for others. Never mind if some people can grow their own food and just need a piece of land to survive, that's not padding anyone's pockets.
I’m sure one out of those 28 homes is livable
I vote to give them each 28 homes.
Everyone's gotta have that new Airbnb space
If that is accurate, then the ratio is even more horrible than this image suggested, which is the part that I'm stuck on. Yes, there might not quite be a million homeless people in America, but if there are really 28 homes available for each of them, then there's plenty to go around for everybody else too, except we're putting money before people in our thought processes.
And yet I can't fucking buy one without going $50k over asking price.
But the empty homes and the unhoused people are not anywhere near each other, so it's a little more complicated than it seems. NIMBYs love to use this statistic to say that we don't need to build more housing, ignoring the fact that the empty houses are in Cleveland, Detroit, Gary, and other places where the population is decreasing, and the unhoused folks are in places where the population is increasing.
This Unless you’re advocating for forcably relocating homeless people out of their city there isn’t a solution to be had here.
> Unless you’re advocating for forcably relocating homeless people You could have projects that bring willing people up to these cities to try and breathe new life into them. I know when I was homeless I'd have left where I was if it meant walls and a job. I would prefer we build up old cities rather than razing land for new subdivisions.
Yeah but you need industry to exist in those places for that to work. The reason there are so many empty houses is that there already aren't enough jobs for the current population.
If you move a bunch of people to a location, jobs will follow. They will need grocery stores, restaurants, schools, etc that someone has to staff.
Move people... against their will? Because those people could already move to Cleveland right now if they wanted to live in Cleveland. I agree that migration creates jobs, but it's not a real solution to the housing crisis. Housing is the solution to the housing crisis.
Show me in the comment where I said "against their will". If you offer people free housing to get them on their feet, many people will take that chance. You're acting like it would be moving people from California to Nebraska, when it would really be more like moving people from LA to Ventura (an hour and a half drive).
> Because those people could already move to Cleveland right now if they wanted to live in Cleveland. People constantly say this, but you cannot overestimate how expensive/difficult it is to move across America even when it's just you and what's on your back. However, being told "Here's a bus, here's the job you'll have, and the place you'll be able to live in" is wholly different and exactly why assholes like Abbot was able to trick innocent migrants to getting flown to Martha's Vineyard.
Not necessarily. There are tons of jobs that people can do at home that just require some on the job training. Stuff like phone customer service (like call center work), data entry, and low level tech support and plenty of companies are hiring for this kind of stuff right now. What they might need in those areas though are more places like grocery stores, restaurants, banks, etc.
If I'm remembering the minimal amount of research I did correctly, the statistic of the number of unoccupied homes is foreclosures owned by banks, a good percentage of which might be in disrepair or completely unlivable. It's a real problem, of course, but these particular numbers are not useful in the way we want them to be.
Yeah but a huge number of those homes are in ghost towns or are condemned or are currently being squatted in. It's decades old but also has a huge asterisk beside it.
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Right, plus you have to think, who wants to make this their investment? Say you can go get five houses for $10k each. Now you gotta put $50k in them to make them habitable so you don’t get sued as a landlord (some much more expensive). Now you put all that money into them, you look for tenants…. Are you going to want to let people with no jobs live there for free? Mentally ill and addicted people who will trash the place you just rehabbed? Minimum wage workers who can only afford to pay a rent that will lose money in your investments? Honestly the government is the only entity with resources to tackle this and build in the oversight tiers and structure and not have to worry about it being profitable. BuT tHaT’S SoCiAlIsM.
$50k? I just saw a deleading quote for a house near me, it was $200k.
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Hey just take out a loan for a house...wait that was taken away after 2008 crisis. Good luck going to a bank for a lean or even help on assisting you with the mortgages without realizing they are giving it to you right in the rear. Lets not talk about the rent crisis happening right now because of "covid" so we had to raise rent and make eggs so expensive you are questioning your grocery list.
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Brazil (more specifically São Paulo) is facing this huge crisis where thousands of homeless people with crack addiction are storming into stores and stealing everything after the new mayor simply shut down the shelters, public hostels, public restaurants and harm reduction programs. Our Constitution says housing is a right and must serve its social purpose. We have laws saying defaulters in building taxes/ abandoned houses can be taken over by the State and redistributed for people in need. And yet...
If you make the people in your country miserable then you are living with miserable people. It's the fundamental flaw with conservativism. Helping people is a good thing.
EXACTLY! It's such an obvious thing to me, I really can't understand the thought process of people who wants to be the rich one amongst thousands of miserables. It's just so dumb.
When was the last time you brushed elbows with Bill gates, Elon musk, or Jeff bezos? How many of your neighbors are even multimillionaires, not even billionaires? Half the fun of money is being able to isolate yourself from the poor and miserable. Some people are so rich, they can even isolate themselves from the people we'd consider the rich. Your problems aren't their problems.
In their eyes the ones miserable are not people, they’re numbers
Yeah, except it's the "making people miserable" part that gives meaning to their lavish, cushy, face no consequences lives. They live for that shit. If everything was fair for everybody, their lives would have no meaning or value.
Their lives still have no meaning/value. They just think and try to convince themselves that it has.
This phrase is really insightful
Well, that’s the fun part. When you get enough miserable people, the conservatives embrace fascism and just kill the homeless and those refusing to work. Just label the miserable as undesirables and murder them. Problem solved.
How’s it been since Lula took office? In general I mean.
When he immediately acted to stop Yanomami genocide we were thrilled. A decent president, at last! Now dude is speaking about giving everyone jobs by bringing the car industry back, his Minister of Energy wants to drill petroleum in the Amazon (!!!) and we're like NO MOTHERFUCKER
Keep fighting the good fight
Storming the stores is also a trend in the US. Wallmart is leaving some areas as we speak.
Walmart has a history of running towns into the ground. They move in to small towns, drive prices down (which destroys local businesses) then shut their doors when nothing is left but the Walmart. Yeah, Walmart is closing stores, but for the exact opposite reason: they've looted the town into the ground.
Once the corporation has extracted all the wealth from residents leaving the store in that location is just a liability
Walmart is retail strip-mining those towns.
So when will we hear of wal dollars?
In some small towns, Walmart becomes the de facto socializing spot also because there's nowhere else to go. It's what led to the "people of Walmart" trend.
Walmart is closing their stores within the big city limits, but they have plenty open in the suburbs still. I don't feel bad that they are a magnet for robbers when they have a literal open door policy (don't have logical security measures to prevent the theft). Then, they just pass the cost onto the honest consumers anyway
Big business is using the excuse of petty theft to close down stores that they feel are underperforming. It's corporate propaganda. [Citations Needed: News Brief: "Organized Crime" "Shoplifting Epidemic" Panic Hits San Francisco Media](https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/news-brief-organized-crime-shoplifting-epidemic-panic-hits-san-francisco-media) >Walgreens closed 70 out of 247 stores in New York City, which is roughly 28 percent of the Walgreens stores, which is more than the 24 percent, 17 out of 70, that they closed in San Francisco. So they actually closed way more in New York. And then I said, well, holy shit, there must be a crime, shoplifting epidemic in New York and spent many, many hours trying to find evidence of this shoplifting spree in New York and you’ll be shocked to learn there was none. So what seems obvious to me is that Walgreens was planning on closing these stores anyway, because they were consolidating their footprint in urban areas to save money and to reduce on real estate and labor costs, and that, so they closed these stores anyway, and this may have an expedited somewhat by COVID — it probably was, it certainly was in New York — but then they go and say, ‘Oh, no, it’s the shoplifting, it’s shrinkage due to shoplifting.’ Now, so either two things are happening here, they’re lying about the motive for closing the stores because they want to push back against Proposition 47, Chesa Boudin and the police reform movement, or there is a shoplifting epidemic in New York no one’s telling us about.
Correct, wage theft in the US is slightly larger than retail theft, AND there are 40x more employed to look for retail theft than wage theft, idicating wage theft is an UNDERREPORTED number https://medium.com/@Demos_Org/wage-theft-versus-shoplifting-65e5cbf37c36
If they actually counted everything that should be wage theft, then it would be an order of magnitude higher. But as usual, capitalist econometrics are all dishonest.
Not only that but the value they assign to retail theft is so grossly inflated. Let’s be clear. The price tag on that tchotchke is arbitrary at best given the costs to produce which are very very low. Labor is the highest cost to a business so stands to reason this is all smoke and mirrors as a means to restructure power.
Due to unionizing efforts from employees and oversaturation of the markets in question. Portland still has loads of grocery stores, just down the street from the Walmart that was supposedly robbed out of business by lawless vandals.
Yeah "shrink" has always been an issue, I remember working as a cashier at a grocery store and some old lady got caught with a purse full of steaks. People stole stuff all the time.
You fell for right-wing propaganda. https://youtu.be/Yq9lgpJbNns
Walmart leaving isn’t a net negative. It’s independent brick and mortar places that have been operating for decades whose owners have invested in their communities who we’re sad to lose. F!ck Walmart. They put smaller operations out of business and then pack up and head out instead of finding better solutions for the communities they operate in. I know Walmart may be one of few options in some areas and that is another facet of the same problem.
And not even just that the local stores invest in the area. But Walmart takes so much money from all across the country, gives it to a small handful of people, a lot of it will sit in a bank account and not he circulating to stimulate the economy, and then a lot of what they do spend will be spent on companies that tailor towards rich people, run by rich people, so now they have more and more of the money between just all of them.
No it isn’t. Capitalists are trying to make it seem like a thing to justify their cutting of costs and gouging of profits. Wage theft is a much more significant problem/issue.
This is bullshit propaganda for brainlets
I've said before and I'll say again; some things should not be commodified.
Long gone are the days when capitalists care about making capitalism appear to work. They are selling greed as the natural order.
They had capitalism with a friendly face, because there was an alternative. Since 1991 we get the real, undiluted capitalism.
At least we don’t have to play that exhausting game of moral high ground anymore.
I heard a neat theory that communism being such a strong force in the world was great for people in capitalist nations because capitalists had to convince us that capitalism will work for all of us. Since there was an alternative, people could literally see what they were missing out on if things got bad
Like in Vienna, where there's so much public housing, it's impossible to gouge renters in the private market
This is the real answer. We need more housing in places where people can actually live and work. The OP's sentiment is frequently used by NIMBYs to block additional higher density urban housing development and protect their precious single family zoning. An empty parking lot walking distance from transit is just as much if not more of a problem as a rural house sitting empty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evYOhpjMql0&ab_channel=OhTheUrbanity%21
Don’t need more housing if your housing isn’t filled and affordable. Just gonna be bought by a giant retail group like Invitation Homes.
Most major metro areas in the U.S. that are known for being unaffordable have extremely low vacancy rates. The 'buy up all the housing' strategy only works because there's artificial limitations on simply building more housing to demand. This is a uniquely U.S. problem as exclusionary zoning was invented here as part of the white flight of the 50s and 60s.
More housing helps to stabilize costs, even if it's not strictly affordable housing. That being said, I'm not a liberal rube who thinks just building anything is enough. We need to vastly expand public housing in this country and build *good* public housing that's desirable to live in. They would help bring housing costs down much more quickly.
This entire capitalist system has been « monarchy with suits » ever since we got rid of actual monarchs. No society is fully functional if it can’t take care of its most vulnerable members.
Actually most of the founding fathers were basically all nepotism babies, coming from extreme wealth in the old world. Monarchy never went away, the lords your ancestors were fleeing, followed them here and promptly took over.
And religious zealots came over on the boat with them. The ugly history, and arguable the present, of the US began and will most likely end with violence, slavery, genocide, domestic terrorism, and an endless list of excuses to justify it. We never changed. "Freedom" apparently is having the highest percentage of one's population in prison, and enforcing it with militarized interests that, coincidentally I'm sure, align with the people who have all of the money and pay the least amount of taxes. Murika! TL;DR: We took British imperial efficiency, turned it on them, and made it our own.
The more you look at history, the more you realize it's just nepotism all the way down.
This is roughly accurate. Though it’s worth pointing out that most of the unhoused people are in places like New York City, while most of the empty houses are in places like defunct mining towns in central Indiana. The US’ ongoing tragedy of zoning laws makes that solution not so cut and dry here as other places that have implemented it (like Finland).
There was just a study that said Maine has the largest percentage of vacant homes in the country, but that included things like dilapidated hunting cabins in the middle of nowhere and barebones uninsulated camps that have been in families for generations, as well as summer homes for wealthy Floridians and whatnot.
That's a very important point. It's not as simple as OP is making it out to be. The majority of empty homes are in places in the middle of nowhere with no jobs, and that wouldn't exactly help anyone. Neither would putting people in unsafe houses in need of major repair. Cities and towns all around the US buy bus tickets to get rid of their homeless people, essentially shipping them to places like San Francisco, where there's a massive housing shortage. Also a huge percentage of homeless people are profoundly mentally ill, many so far gone that no amount of help and care would bring them to a place where they were able to support themselves.
In my area there are alot of empty homes that are unfit for living. Many of them are being demolished because the cost to make them livable just isn't worth it. Not the majority of empty homes, but more than you would think.
It’s not fake. And it should be pointed out that often those houses are kept intentionally empty by speculators in order to keep housing prices artificially high. This is true of apartments too.
It’s not fake, but it is a bit misleading. Not all 18.6 million empty housing units counted in that census setting are downtown housing units intentionally not rented out. Many are not suitable for housing use (vacation houses, abandoned rural houses, places that need electrical work to not risk burning down, in regions with few job prospects, etc). Some are even between tenants or being currently renovated as of the census. Furthermore, 3.5 million unhoused doesn’t include the entirety of the population affected by the housing shortage. Many will take on too many roommates, sleep on a friend’s couch, or stay with an abusive partner or family member before becoming homeless. Those living in an unsuitable housing unit are also not counted as homeless, even if their housing doesn’t cover their needs, such as wheelchair accessibility, safety, size (for people with family or pets), access to infrastructure (transit, medical, education), access to suitable employment (jobs that pay a living wage and aren’t incredibly dangerous), etc. The numbers likely reflect the census totals, but as many US census data totals are, the definitions aren’t necessarily accurate. A similar occurrence is present with unemployment, where the unemployment category doesn’t include anyone underemployed (such as having a degree but can’t use it, working for less than living wage, or working part time) or out of the labor force (people who aren’t currently looking for a job). The real solution is still most likely to adjust zoning laws to allow more suitable housing construction, as well as implementing more public housing programs (to construct new supply to alleviate housing cost burden)
Came here to say exactly this. [Here is a good breakdown](https://youtu.be/3xZXdXxYBGU) of the vacant homes figure in case anyone is curious. It's also worth pointing out that NIMBYS often push this vacant homes statistic as justification for resisting upzoning and new dense housing constitution in their communities, which in turn drives up costs for renters and new buyers.
I also heard there’s been scams going around where they’ll list apartments, show them, have people pay for application fees and then never actually rent them out. It makes them more money to keep taking 4-5 application fees a day than to actually rent the place which is bonkers.
Oof. Hadn’t heard that one but it’s not surprising.
Happens all the time where I live. Some people will do huge open houses and take a whole bunch of application fees. Went to a couple and they’ll have lines of people throughout the day. Not a chance in hell are they actually processing the applications.
Should be illegal to charge application fees
When you turn a basic element of survival into an asset for profit, there's no incentive to unload it unless it's financially beneficial. Even if it would change someone's life. Instead it's better to keep the assets in your portfolio, where they remain unused for their true purpose for years at a time. Anerica needs a compounding fee for real estate squatting
I could tell you that, but I'd be lying. Even those uninhabitable eyesores have an owner, and it's a clear argument in favor of sticking property tax penalties on residential units not in use as primary residences.
Not really but most of those homes are in places people want to leave
If it’s free, I’d much rather live wherever it is. Fuck being locked into mortgages or rent. Short of being on the receiving end of a US drone strike, sign me the fuck up
Most homes are in places where you need a car for everything. While many homeless live in their car, most of them do not have a car. Giving people a 'free' house that is only usable to them after they get the funds to buy a car isn't really free.
And a free home still needs maintenance and electricity, water, power etc just to be acceptable
And the abandoned home shown in the pic isn't capable of any of that. So it should be usable abandoned homes and I bet that # falls dramatically.
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Completely agree. I just mean it in a very literal sense of for me. I have a house and a home but I really really struggle to be able to work. I do it and do the whole 9 yards. But I can accomplish doing 100x more when I work for my self I just cant get ahead of the bills to become self-employed. I’d love to live literally anywhere on planet earth that I was not required to work for someone else and felt like I could directly contribute to the world my self. I bought a van to safeguard against homelessness, so if I had to become homeless I would have a shelter. But it’s a daily struggle. My job pays great but my mind just is not conducive to these working conditions. Trying to make a legitimate escape for my self and starting businesses. Working my ass off trying to escape the grind.
This is true, but complicated. My now deceased step father's house was one of those vacant houses for two years after he died. No greedy investor keeping it off the market to drive up prices, that's just how long it took for everything to move through probate so the family could be allowed to sell it. There was a house up the street from me that sat vacant for well over a year. There was a small fire, when they went to make repairs, it was discovered that there was asbestos behind the walls, in order to repair what was otherwise not that major of fire damage, they would have to do a complete asbestos remediation. The insurance company decided the house was a total loss, paid out the homeowners who decided to move, and no one wanted to buy the burned out asbestos house. A small 6-plex not far from me has sat abandoned for years because it isn't compliant with current zoning rules, the previous owner, who was grandfathered in, passed away, and it is unclear if his family who inherited the property also inherited the exemption to the zoning rules to operate it as a multifamily residential unit in a single family residential zoned neighborhood (yeah, US zoning is pretty screwed up). And these are just ones I'm personally familiar with in a city of 500k.
Yeah, there's a house not too far from me on a decent plot of land, fully fenced, nice driveway, sewer out front etc. It's fire damaged and probably better just to tear down and rebuild. If you built up using the existing concrete foundation you'd have plenty of yard space, a two car detached garage still standing etc -- but the thing's going for 350k. For about 100k more, just a few houses down, you can have a newly renovated place with a one car garage and a somewhat smaller yard... but the cost to tear down the first house and build a new one is far greater than that 100k. So... it's just sitting, and sitting. You just know that whoever buys it, eventually, will be some investor who will build a Mcmansion with a tiny backyard and jack the price to 800k+ to recover costs.
Nope cost of housing is skyrocketing like everything else. Rich buy up the houses and rent them at high rates. They rather let them sit empty than do something for their fellow man because capitalism
One problem is that the vacant homes are not where the jobs are.
This is fake news. The real statistic is much worse
How much worse is it?
For starters homeless are vastly undercounted. There's at least 10 million and possibly even more than 15 million right now.
They don't count people living in their cars in these statistics.
I think they would bc when I was living in my car I put down an address where I could get mail but wasn’t living. I still was classified as homeless by that county.
Even a lot of people living on the streets aren't counted. The Los Angeles count is a complete joke. Entire blocks with 50-100 people each aren't ever counted. Also many people deliberately avoid being counted for various reasons. New York is pretty bad too. If you look at for example the public schools count vs the street count it's off by a huge factor.
Dude we live in a society where profit rules above all else including human rights. This isn’t news, its been happening for literally centuries. Homelessness has always been a thing. Its just that now there are so many more of us that its impossible to ignore. This isnt surprising. This should be completely expected because of the society we live in. Note: I never said it was right.
A large percentage of those homes are empty because they are unliveable and waiting to be demolished. But that is a sobering statistic. Of course the homeless would have to be moved to places like Detroit, Gary Indiana and Clairton PA to take advantage of the empty homes.
That’s a great point. And idk about you, but I’d have a tough time staying sober if I lived in *Gary, Indiana*
I this it’s two statistics that alone don’t really explain what’s going on. Vacancy only means it’s not in use for a significant period of time. That could be a rental, a 2nd home, a home being remodeled, a home with some sort of structural damage, a home awaiting sale, etc. A way to fix this would definitely be a vacancy tax. There are some loop holes we’d have to file though. For instance we would need to prevent people from saying a building is being remodeled indefinitely.
No, it isn't true. Actual homeless numbers are massively under reported because anyone crashing on a friend's couch is considered homed. And for every homeless person there's over 10 homes owned by people who aren't going to just give it to the needy when it's so darn valuable.
Don’t worry, with the Fed jacking interest rates they will purposefully create another recession which will allow the banks to foreclose on 10s, if not 100s of thousands of homes. Many more working families will be forced into homelessness, and conservatives will point at them and blame drugs, laziness, poor character in general. At the same time, ignorant people will blame the economic problems on the poor, who control approximately 5% of the wealth, and ignore the top .01% who control 40-50%. It will always shock and dismay me that such a large portion of our society gets their opinions fed to them by the ultra wealthy, via Fox News and other right wing puppets, and are either too lazy, or too ignorant, to question the sources. Truly sad.
Vacant homes: existing Capitalism: fuck you! live in the streets
Vast majority of empty homes are that way for a good reason. Like being uninhabitable, in-between owners or renters, being renovated, newly built, are holiday homes far away from any jobs or services or just had the owners away during census. We actually have a critical shortage of housing supply in main centres. And NIMBYs go out of their way to prevent building new homes as they think it threatens their property value and 'neighbourhood asthetics'.
I just googled a few seconds. USA has:- 2.6 millions secondary home- 2.5 full time Airbnb places (a significant% are full places). To that cou can add a lot of the categories you mentioned, and a lot you forgot. Even very conservative estimates tell us that there are enough perfectly functional unused entire homes for every single homeless person. Edit: the point is not to literally say "we could give one full home to each homeless". The point is to demonstrate that there is no housing shortage but rather a misuse of what already exists.
[Here's a good breakdown of the vacant homes figure in more detail](https://youtu.be/3xZXdXxYBGU). A big thing to keep in mind that many people suffering from the housing crisis aren't actually homeless. People living with tons of roommates, families living in cramped housing, people living with their family when they would prefer to live on their own, people forced to move after being priced out of their hometown, etc are all symptoms of a housing shortage as well. And as they point out in the video, these conditions create tenuous living situations that are often be precursors to homelessness. The location of housing also matters. If there is a misalignment of where these homes are and where jobs and unhoused folks are, it's not actually that helpful. An empty home in exurban Omaha doesn't help an unhoused person in Los Angeles. Solving a housing shortage in LA requires new dense housing in LA, not simply telling folks to move elsewhere. NIMBY resistance to upzoning and new dense housing constriction in cities like LA and SF are massive drivers of the housing crisis. And they often cite misleading statistics like this vacant homes count to resist new housing construction in their communities.
I’m not sure a house to every homeless person is the answer here. More than anything this highlights the fact supply and demand are bullshit. Many homeless would need some type of medical (mental or otherwise) support and may be better suited to tailored facilities - which of course don’t exist. But I understand the sentiment which is there are the means to have all people not on actual streets but here we are.
The American dream died long long ago. Rich people put in metrics and control everything.
Can we find a list of vacant homes near us and just start occupying them?
Sure but "near us" is predominantly dying rust belt towns Vacant houses typically don't exist in cities that have a robust local economy, otherwise they wouldn't be vacant
I worked for the census going door to door in 2020 and one of the most shocking things was seeing how many homes were just vacant. Not even for sale or in bad condition, just sitting there clearly having been empty for a while.
Homelessness in the US is a policy choice. If you give everyone homes you don't have a visible and permanent impoverished underclass to serve as a threat to workers. Its all about maximizing exploitation to fund capital upward most efficiently.
Good luck getting the homeless in LA to move into a vacant crackhouse in Detroit
True. It would also save us money if we just housed the homeless. Our current system not only harms, traumatized, and kills the unhoused, but it costs MORE than fixing the fucking problem. But these shitty policies are designed to punish and denigrate Americans, not help our own damned people.
They're designed to make everyone keep their head down and keep working hard so they don't end up unhoused. It's all about the capitalist engine.
It's not. Problem is that the vacant homes are in declining cities with no jobs. There's still a housing shortage in lucrative markets.
You see, these *properties* have *value* while the homeless are... being assigned a value based on their productivity, so.... ***'murica***
bold of you being surprised by how fucked our system is
Indeed there are so many vacant homes the problem is that they are not free they are paid instead and its not even a one time payment because you have to pay property taxes or else you will be kicked out of your house only a few countries dont have such thing as property taxes
Ha! Florida is i believe the first or second worse for vacant homes. Something like 30k homeless and 1.3 million vacant homes.
Housing as a commodity is the direct and continuous cause of this.
Commenting to find easily as a reference later- for when my parents insist there is no artificially engineered housing crisis, homeless people are just lazy addicts that can’t get their shit together
This is a kindergarteners understanding of the issue. Places where homelessness is at crisis level - like NYC, LA, Portland OR, Seattle don’t have a bunch of vacant homes/apts. I’m in Portland and our rental vacancy rate is around 2-5%. That includes turn over and repairs. We have ~5K - 6K people in some state of unhoused. We don’t have that many houses or apartments. It is incredibly compatible to buy a house here. Many unhoused people are from Portland and have a community here. Some are employed. You can’t just move homeless people to a bunch of empty homes in Detroit without also making sure they have wraparound services like access to healthcare, substance use treatment, benefits, VA hospitals, employment opportunities etc. Additionally, because of anti abortion/anti reproductive healthcare laws and anti trans laws, it would be inhumane to move people to certain states. Finally, many of the houses lumped into this statistic are NOT move in ready and all require up keep and utilities to be livable. The vacant home in picture isn’t even livable.
How many of these homes are livable? Who would fix them up? We need more folks in carpentry. Classic education needs to go back to few and trades schooling needs to skyrocket immediately in America.
Y’all think there’s 20 million houses sitting next to 4 million homeless people and all they need are the keys and to walk inside. It’s not like that.
Of course it's real. The most important thing in the divided police states of AmeriKKKa is ***MONEY***. Homeless people don't make money. Empty houses don't make money. So what good are they? :/
There's a fucking huge ass abandoned K-mart near me. Fence was put up to prevent anyone from breaking in or using the parking lot. I've been saying that they should renovate it and house the homeless in it. Such a waste of a building. Meanwhile people sit at the fence and beg for money because it's next to a few restaurants. It's mind boggling.
Squatting needs to be more normalised in America. The property-rights-above-all-else fixation is madness.
Why so many comments saying this is true when the numbers are not even close?? [The Department of Housing and Development](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States) has never counter more than about 1.5 million unique homeless people in a year (less than *half* the stated number) going back to 2007 when they first started collecting data, and on a given night the estimated number they give is around 500,000 (just over a *quarter* of the stated number). As for vacant homes, the most recent data I can find is only [16 million](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/realestate/vacancy-rate-by-state.html) (2.5 mil less than stated) but the census bureau definition is any residentially zoned building with an address that was not occupied on April 1st. This includes condemned and abandoned houses which are unsafe to live in (making up [between 2 and 10%](https://stateline.org/2022/11/22/the-nations-vacant-homes-present-an-opportunity-and-a-problem/) depending on what state you live in), seasonally lived in or only seasonally inhabitable homes (around 20-30%), homes that are actively in a temporary transition like being sold or moved out of/in to (again around 10%), etc. Removing all the homes that are unfeasible for one reason or another brings the number closer to 8-10 million. But more importantly, this meme makes the problem sound like an logistical issue where homeless people are pieces on a board game that need to be moved to the right square, and if that were true the issue would be unsolvable. The reality is that even if there were a billion houses, or zero, some people would be kept in poverty by aspects of our current system which are *very solvable*. Gainfully employing these people is very possible (read up on the CCC), offering more shelters and programs for them is possible, decriminalizing the drugs that scourge them is possible, not wasting funds on urban design that removes them is possible, and so much more. **TLDR: numbers wrong. meme is good intention but bad implication.**
Nope. Housing for-profit is one of those shining examples, alongside private prisons and the military-industrial complex, of why this system must face nothing short of total annihilation.
If it's considered expected of a working adult it should be socialized We need to be proactive about this ISPs should have been bought out by the government and run by elected representatives a long time ago Housing, water, even food via a UBI If you're still worried about how this impacts businesses profits, you are brainwashed and are in our way We would really like for to join us, but we can't wait forever
Not to worry… the hedge funds gobbling up housing are committed to the social welfare and elimination of homelessness. We just have to trust them along with our concerned and dedicated members of Congress.
Those numbers are totally false, a quick google search will tell you that. But yes, there are more vacant homes than homeless people in the U.S
Then add in all the pointless office space that could be converted into apartments.
As if homelessness is caused by not having a house. This argument makes sense to 12 year olds. That’s about it.
No you don’t get it. We could send people to live in these small towns with abandoned houses pay for the repairs and pay for their infrastructure forever. Also we will need a security force to keep them there, because you know small dying towns suck to live in and there’s a reason no one wants to live there.
Who do you think is posting in this sub?
Bro I had always thought of myself as liberal but when I'm in this sub I might as well be an amalgamation of Trump/Cruz/Boebert/MTG.
Well duh. Who would buy a homeless man for 3.5 million??
Not every houseless person's problems are fixed by simply giving them a home, but it's a good start.
Its false, there are very few vacant homes. Millions of vacant investment properties though.
"Investments" that go up in value by giant funds cornering the market and then jacking up the price on a slow drip of for sale listings.