This isn't really a great metric. The majority of vacant homes have been vacant for less than a year, which typically means the vacant homes are either being renovated, newly constructed and have yet to be sold, or seeking rent. Some decent percentage of those are also not livable -- they're condemned, they aren't up to code, they're flooded or damaged in some way. These homes count towards vacancy rates, but they aren't livable and you can't just throw homeless people into them.
This comes up fairly often, but it's also frequently debunked as a viable metric for tackling the homelessness problem. Yes, we need more places for homeless people to live. Vacant homes are typically not going to satisfy that particular requirement.
It _is_ an interesting metric with respect to population and the increasing rate of homelessness, but it's not particularly interesting with respect to solutions, imo.
> which typically means the vacant homes are either being renovated, newly constructed and have yet to be sold, or seeking rent. Some decent percentage of those are also not livable -- they're condemned, they aren't up to code, they're flooded or damaged in some way
Table 3 has a section called "Vacant - Held Off Market" which shows the number that are held off market for whatever reason. It's a relatively small number, but it does comprise tens if not hundreds of thousands of units across the country.
Here's another report from Berkeley that has some graphs that describe "rented or sold but not yet occupied" rates, as well, which would be emblematic of the renovations and such.
I would be very skeptical of how comprehensive that data is. Are they counting the empty "bank account" condos that have flooded every major metro downtown as vacant? Doubtful, because they're not on the market even though no one lives there. No is reporting that data-- in fact, there have been efforts to kill such proposals.
If you have countervailing data, present it, but it's not reasonable for a thread to demand evidence of someone, see the evidence, and then attempt to refute that evidence with supposition.
My understanding is that short term turnover falls under the "vacant year-round" number. It doesn't mean that a given house has actually been empty for 12 months. A house that is currently for rent and has been uninhabited for 1 month counts in that category because there's no long-term residence.
for example, the average time between rentals may be 1 month, but replaced by a new rental coming on market after that month. Therefore, the average is 1 vacancy year round.
The census provides the average vacancy duration as 2.7 months. Of the 11.5M vacant year round, 15% have been vacant longer than 12 months. So this means about 1.6M houses. The majority of these houses are outside of metro areas.
This is such a disingenuous bit of info just juuuust skirts the boundary of outright lying. Sure, there are a bunch of "empty houses" in Detroit: which have the wiring ripped out of the walls, no functional plumbing, and probably need $50-100,000 of work before they're fit for habitation. Does that mean we should round up all the homeless people in the Bay Area, ship them to Detroit, and put them in decrepit shacks? Nonsense.
Flag this article; it's a cheap trick to distract from the necessity of upzoning and permitting reform to get more houses built where people actually need them.
Yeah. If you actually take a step back and look at the trend from the HUD data, apartment vacancy rates have dropped down to about half of what they were during 2009, and homeowner vacancy rates are a third.
I am confused because a lowered vacancy rate does not necessarily imply lack of homes for housing as the rate is not 0% or even approaching that. Lower vacancy rate is also a by-product of historically lower interest rates.
If you scroll to the homelessness trends plot, the incidence of homelessness has decreased since 2007. Overall, I note that CA and NY seem to have especially egregious issues with homelessness, https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homeless...
0% is an impossible number to hit. Even in a perfect world you need some fluidity in the market. For comparison, Japan is considered to have a fairly tight housing market and they still have a 13% vacancy rate. The US on average (which includes Detroit) is less than half of that.
CA and NY have the worst problems with homelessness because they have the worst time adding new units. There are 4x as many college graduates in California every year than their are new homes or apartments being made.
Yeah this is like those heartstring tugging “facts” that sum up food waste and compare it to a hunger statistic, as if it could all just get scrapped together and handed over in consumable condition to a group that also happens to be perfectly organized and located for mass distribution to.
People have thought about things like this. There's lots of hard problems, among them the reason these houses are vacant to begin with: there isn't a local economy that supports them, let alone the huge social services fabric that'd be required to get unhoused people in a position both to rehab houses(!) and then thrive in Detroit metro.
Here it's worth remembering, just as a single data point, that most unhoused people in California are Californians. They didn't migrate to California to be homeless in the sun. You can't generally move them around the board like chess pieces.
Japan is weird in that they build cheap homes they expect to tear down and replace every decade and the ones they don't tear down they sell for the price of a car in the USA. There's just way too much supply with IMHO isn't a bad thing because I don't think real estate should be an investment, unless we can make it more fair like it was decades ago.
I grew up in Detroit and saw this first-hand. It's even worse when you consider the number of people just barely treading water.
I think a huge part of the problem is that as a society we're okay with this. It makes me sad when I think about it- I'm smart enough to acknowledge the problem but too ignorant/stupid/afraid to be a part of the solution.
Most of the completely vacant homes in Detroit that were there when we were growing up have since been bulldozed or renovated and inhabited in the last ten years.
Like 75-90% of them are gone now, either as $600-700/mo rentals, or empty lots (many of which people are now farming).
Tell me about it: I'm a grown man and legit broke down into a sobbing fit after visiting the house I grew up in a few years ago and it was pretty much gone. Roof gone, siding gone, even the fir tree in front of the house is gone. I may not have had a stellar childhood but... That was my home for most of my life, you know? We knew it likely wouldn't last since we couldn't afford to take care of the house the way it needed when we lived there but that doesn't make it hurt any less.
The only house still left on my block in Brightmoor is my neighbor's house and his house looks like it's falling down, too. He's still living in it as well because all of us were just barely making it.
I wish I made FAANG money. After taking care of my own debts I wanted to buy our build as many houses for my block as I could and then just let people stay in them no matter how much it costed me ("a fool and his gold are easily separated" and whatnot). I know it's stupid but the one thing I always wanted growing up was just for someone- anyone- to come in and say "we can't treat people like this" and help without considering the business value of helping. So many people spend so much time thinking about how to help (rightfully so) that nobody ACTUALLY ends up helping.
Thank you for writing the only comment here that expresses any amount of compassion. I believe this is the true root of the homelessness problem in the US. American society values compassion at just about zero.
To be fair, most people don't have to deal with this and they shouldn't have to. I have compassion because I've personal experience with it. I'm an outlier here.
Still, I do think the US (and the world) should really put the "Golden Rule" as a top priority. So many problems would be non-issues if we did!
Imagine how many "vacant" cars exist for every person who can't afford a car. There is guy "Jay Leno" who hoarded a lot of cars. Someone should transfer them to people without cars. Simple solutions for simple issues.
> While cities like Syracuse and Detroit have a staggering number of vacant housing units per unhoused person, the largest populations experiencing homelessness are in the American West.
> Both Los Angeles and San Jose, California, have two of the largest populations experiencing homelessness in the country, including many unhoused people between the ages of 18 and 24.
Demand and supply. Many vacant homes in places people don’t want to live I guess..
In the reality of the world for virtually all animals, if you don't/can't find food & prepare it to eat
(also known as "work"),
you don't eat.
I've lived in a tent long term while studying a skillset, and now, a few years after breaking into good paying work, I almost have enough money to purchase a tolerable enough piece of property and build a cabin on it.
Having lived on communes, including one where even felons were allowed, know now that I would perhaps offer free or low cost tiny houses to people, but only if I knew they were working towards something positive.
... I'd like to know how many out of the 28 are expending effort towards earn a house or rental in some way, such as working, studying, or building skills. pro-social stuff.
And how many are doing the opposite: drugs, crime, etc. anti-social stuff.
Because although houses exist, they require effort to keep: taxes, maintenance, etc.
If a person isn't willing to expend effort, how can it be justified to give them a regular ol' house?
Perhaps a tiny house as part of a government or NGO-funded social safety net program.
"Designed to be representative of all adults 18 years and older experiencing homelessness in California, CASPEH includes nearly 3,200 administered questionnaires and 365 in-depth interviews with adults experiencing homelessness in eight regions of the state, representing urban, rural, and suburban areas. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish, with interpreters for other languages. In partnership with a wide array of community stakeholders, the UCSF BHHI team collected data between October 2021 and November 2022. CASPEH was funded by UCSF BHHI, the California Health Care Foundation, and Blue Shield of California Foundation."
https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/our-impact/our-studies/califor...
This report is kind of implying a fantasy where we can just start moving people into vacant houses, even though it's clearly aware it's not a good idea:
> Vacant homes and buildings often succumb to the elements and deteriorate due to leaks, damage and general lack of maintenance before ever finding a buyer willing to pay their inflated prices. An abundance of vacant homes on the market are also attributed to rising rent and home prices.
Part of the issue is that nearly every federal or government program for low-income or first time home-ownership has stringent requirements on the livability of the home. An FHA loan cannot be used towards property repair. Which makes sense - the government doesn't want people moving into unsafe hovels.
So that means there is not really a legal mechanism to get low income families into vacant real estate. So the only people who can realistically take over the vacancies are cash-rich buyers.
While it's easy to shake your fist at the sky and yell "capitalism!" I am sure banks would love to write off their foreclosed properties in Detroit. But it's probably pretty clear that homeless people would rather not and the city would rather not.
How many less rentals are there now than there were before Airbnb? how many are foreign investor owned?
Personally I think you should not be allowed to own a property without citizenship and without a primary residence within 1k mile radius. Also businesses should not be allowed to own residential unless they're a bank and it's a foreclosure. How many investors set up shell accounts just for real estate investments?
If Airbnbs were having a significant impact forcing people out of homes, we would see it as an increase in the vacancy rate - but overall vacancy rate is still dropping like a rock in the US: https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/current/index.html
The foreign ownership thing seems like a bit of a distraction. They don't seem to have significant impact on vacancy rates - they are still insanely low even in places like NY and SF. And to the extent that they are buying up properties as speculation that seems like a symptom of supply constraints more than a cause of.
What? Real estate interests are notoriously and by their nature NIMBY. Almost all opposition to upzoning comes from homeowner groups to protect property values.
Not surprising even if the numbers are a bit off. Almost none of the new housing stock being built is affordable (thanks, YIMBYs!). It all comes down to affordability, as seen in the recent major study discussed on Ezra Klein's July 18th podcast:
> or are they “experiencing” unchecked mental health issues and addiction?
Some are also experiencing that, as are some people who are not homeless.
Yes, those problems reinforce each other, and not dealing with either makes the other more difficult to deal with where they co-occur. Behavioral health support is for a large segment of the affected population an important part of dealing with homeless, and housing is an important component of dealing with a significant set of behavioral health issues.
They aren’t mutually exclusive problems, nor is addressing one exclusive of addressing the other.
I've lived in multiple places in downtown Seattle for the last ~15 years and I can count on one hand the number of homeless people I've seen during that time that aren't either completely drugged out or without serious mental health issues. It's, in my first-hand experience, the overwhelmingly top deciding factor in their situation.
Homeless advocates like to paint this pretty (propaganda) picture of people that, shucks, are just down on their luck, shucks, their rent went up and now they're homeless and if only we gave them (steal from others) some money or a house or whatever, that'll be the help they need to get back on their feet. The vast, vast, majority of the current homeless population will just destroy the house and then move on whenever they're eventually kicked out.
There's the confirmation bias right there. You aren't "seeing" the people who are homeless but don't have other issues going on, because they can take more care of themselves and so look "normal".
if you lost your home tomorrow and had to live on the street, even without turning to alcohol would your mental state be happy and enthusiastic or depressed?
So.. we're back to the beginning. Did they lose the home and turn to drugs, or did drugs eventually lead them to a place where they couldn't keep their home? If it's the latter, then simply gifting them a home changes nothing.
Further.. you're suggesting that without a home people _cannot possibly be mentally healthy_ and will ultimately be forced into alcohol or drugs. Do you really believe that? And again, if so, why do you believe this and did it come from some particular source?
> So.. we’re back to the beginning. Did they lose the home and turn to drugs, or did drugs eventually lead them to a place where they couldn’t keep their home?
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. The systems problem of what is causing their current problems is often more involved and more complex than the historical question of what was the root cause (or were the root causes) of their current situation.
> If it’s the latter, then simply gifting them a home changes nothing.
In software (as long as its not self-modifying), the root cause(s) of an incorrect behavior are also, pretty much by definition, exactly the things you need to fix to achieve the correct behavior.
With systems where problems change the the system, the cause or causes that the problems trace back to in time doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about what you need to do to resolve the problems that are currently present.
its true that “simply gifting them a home” (or “simply gifting them behavioral health treatment service, on the other side) isn’t going to solve the problem with co-occurring homeless and behavioral health (mental health and/or substance use disorder) problems. But the degree to which each of those is true does not depend on which problem is the historical antecedent of the other. Homelessness doesn’t stop being a complication to behavioral health treatment because the behavioral health problem occurred first and caused the homelessness, and behavioral health problems don’t stop being a complication in addressing homelessness because the homelessness occurred first and created the behavioral health problems (and those are all true combinatorially if you throw in the physical health problems that are also likely co-occurring, which may either have preceded, or been caused by, or in part each, the homelessness and/or behavioral health problems.)
There are domains where “what came first” is the key question to ask in solving a mixture of current problems, but that’s not generally the case, and its not specifically the case with the kinds of problems at issue in this thread.
> Further.. you’re suggesting that without a home people _cannot possibly be mentally healthy_ and will ultimately be forced into alcohol or drugs. Do you really believe that?
"People experiencing homelessness" is a dog whistle used by the homeless industrial complex [1] to distract from the reality and root causes of the situation.
In Seattle, warring groups of vagrants are bombing each others' camps with explosives. [2] Do not adjust your sets ladies and gentlemen, this isn't a news story from Beirut in the 80s.
Anyone that thinks that a warm shower and free apartment is going to solve this problem is delusional. These people do not want help and actively refuse it. These are the harsh facts.
[1] The large network of grifters and organizations that continue to profit off this human suffering, under the guise of providing help. Instead they secure themselves and their friends cushy jobs and squander millions of dollars while the problem continues to fester and destroy their city.
I'd love to know how this number changes for different vacancy durations. I'm really curious how many of these are in the process of being sold or rented out or similar and won't be vacant in a month.
I don't know about the US, but in my country the issue is home near a job. Or rather, near a place that propose a lot of jobs than can make you enough money to live well enough.
This comes up fairly often, but it's also frequently debunked as a viable metric for tackling the homelessness problem. Yes, we need more places for homeless people to live. Vacant homes are typically not going to satisfy that particular requirement.
It _is_ an interesting metric with respect to population and the increasing rate of homelessness, but it's not particularly interesting with respect to solutions, imo.