While I’m all for making it harder to just sit on housing, the “more empty homes than homeless” this, while technically true, is very misleading, and I wouldn’t want to try to force unhoused folks into the empty homes without a lot more pruning.
In-demand places don’t typically have much in the way of empty homes, as it doesn’t typically make financial sense not to rent them out. Empty homes in places like this are generally in between tenants or on the market to be sold. Meanwhile, there are places with huge numbers of empty homes, typically because of population drain. The homes sit empty not because someone’s hoarding them, but because people don’t want to move to places like Cairo, Illinois.
The statistic, whilst technically true, doesn’t take into account demographic and population changes. People want to live in places with vibrant economies and lots of job opportunities, and that’s not typically where the huge supply of empty homes is. So we can’t just redistribute our way out of this problem. Building, and especially infill in cities, is absolutely necessary in huge quantities.
Also homelessness is not simply lack of a home. It’s invariably more complex, and you won’t generally be successful with simply giving a property and washing your hands of it.
There may be disabilities, insufficient life skills, or vices and self-destructive behaviors that will fail this approach for all too many. A secure place to live is only the starting point
Having a home is not useful if living it in means you can’t feed yourself. You can find owned, unoccupied housing that’s been on the market over a year. The owners don’t want it, but no buyers want it either. If you freely gave a homeless man one of those houses without any further aid, he’d probably abandon it because he’d have to be within reasonable distance of a city to actually be able to survive.
While I’m all for making it harder to just sit on housing, the “more empty homes than homeless” this, while technically true, is very misleading, and I wouldn’t want to try to force unhoused folks into the empty homes without a lot more pruning.
In-demand places don’t typically have much in the way of empty homes, as it doesn’t typically make financial sense not to rent them out. Empty homes in places like this are generally in between tenants or on the market to be sold. Meanwhile, there are places with huge numbers of empty homes, typically because of population drain. The homes sit empty not because someone’s hoarding them, but because people don’t want to move to places like Cairo, Illinois.
The statistic, whilst technically true, doesn’t take into account demographic and population changes. People want to live in places with vibrant economies and lots of job opportunities, and that’s not typically where the huge supply of empty homes is. So we can’t just redistribute our way out of this problem. Building, and especially infill in cities, is absolutely necessary in huge quantities.
Also homelessness is not simply lack of a home. It’s invariably more complex, and you won’t generally be successful with simply giving a property and washing your hands of it.
There may be disabilities, insufficient life skills, or vices and self-destructive behaviors that will fail this approach for all too many. A secure place to live is only the starting point
Homelessness does not exist on this tier of Maslow’s hierarchy.
Having a home is not useful if living it in means you can’t feed yourself. You can find owned, unoccupied housing that’s been on the market over a year. The owners don’t want it, but no buyers want it either. If you freely gave a homeless man one of those houses without any further aid, he’d probably abandon it because he’d have to be within reasonable distance of a city to actually be able to survive.