What's more, it's almost certainly not the last word on that subject when you just compare empty homes to population as it's also about the sheer, absolute scale of China's literally cities—not scattered homes or towns—that are near 100% unoccupied. Also the figure for SF might be a bit out of proportion b/c the city limits are just a slice of the Bay Area (1 out of 9 counties); from https://www.trendstatistics.com/real-estate/bay-area-vacant-...:
1. San Francisco had 38,651 empty homes in 2018
2. The Bay Area has over 46,000 vacant homes
Now the Bay Area has a population of ~7.75 million people (Wikipedia), so San Francisco has only ~10% of the BA population, but the percentage of BA vacant homes located in SF is a staggering ~84%. None of these figures is terribly precise, but 46e3/7750e3 is like ~0.6% (~half a vacant property per 100 people) for the entire Bay Area. Not sure what you calculated or whether it's just too late over here for me to do maths, but I'm getting 38651/860000 * 100 == 4.49 for San Francisco (4 and half vacant homes per 100 people), while for China I get 65e6/1400e6 so ~4.64% (~5 vacant properties per 100 people), which is nearly the same when you compare the small-ish city to the huge country, and China having ten times as many vacant properties when compared to the Bay Area.
Lastly, the proper interpretation of the figures plays a role, too as discussed in https://socketsite.com/archives/2022/02/there-are-not-40000-... which article points out that e.g. homes only used during the week but not on the week ends are listed as vacant. In China you're looking not at single apartments but entire city wards with high rise next to high rise that are not. occupied. at. all.
Regardless of the specifics of which is worse with housing in terms of vacant housing. It is not the only housing issue with the Bay Area, SV, and SF. That entire area is an awful neoliberal NIMBY dystopia.
Overall, China’s ghost towns and the entire Bay Area are bad in terms of housing.
I don’t know enough about housing, but from the outside, the housing issues of the Bay Area seem arguably worse. The NIMBY behavior and the leeching of the well off from others and the house or cards that is the way things are financed in the Bay Area and other major parts of the US with many cities and towns being close to Ponzi schemes because they are made for cars aka sprawl which is unsustainable. And then the NIMBY in suburbia sprawl and in the urban cities isn’t good either.
Again without knowing a lot, I think I’d take ghost towns over how the Bay Area and much of the US is
What's more, it's almost certainly not the last word on that subject when you just compare empty homes to population as it's also about the sheer, absolute scale of China's literally cities—not scattered homes or towns—that are near 100% unoccupied. Also the figure for SF might be a bit out of proportion b/c the city limits are just a slice of the Bay Area (1 out of 9 counties); from https://www.trendstatistics.com/real-estate/bay-area-vacant-...:
Now the Bay Area has a population of ~7.75 million people (Wikipedia), so San Francisco has only ~10% of the BA population, but the percentage of BA vacant homes located in SF is a staggering ~84%. None of these figures is terribly precise, but 46e3/7750e3 is like ~0.6% (~half a vacant property per 100 people) for the entire Bay Area. Not sure what you calculated or whether it's just too late over here for me to do maths, but I'm getting 38651/860000 * 100 == 4.49 for San Francisco (4 and half vacant homes per 100 people), while for China I get 65e6/1400e6 so ~4.64% (~5 vacant properties per 100 people), which is nearly the same when you compare the small-ish city to the huge country, and China having ten times as many vacant properties when compared to the Bay Area.Lastly, the proper interpretation of the figures plays a role, too as discussed in https://socketsite.com/archives/2022/02/there-are-not-40000-... which article points out that e.g. homes only used during the week but not on the week ends are listed as vacant. In China you're looking not at single apartments but entire city wards with high rise next to high rise that are not. occupied. at. all.