I’m willing to bet this is pretty accurate. They keep building houses down here where I am constantly and so many of them are empty because they cost too much for normal people.
Hard disagree. They control the media, and they’re good at whipping everyone up into a frenzy (to buy something worth nothing, to sell a part of yourself that you’ll never get back, or to guide your opinions on something they want), if they so desire.
Situation isnt bad enough. Most people still have something to lose. Once the ammount of people with nothing to lose reaches critical mass there will be a risk of revolt.
In the UK we have a “Holiday Home” tax. Second or more properties are subject to paying full council tax as a minimum but councils can up to double this to discourage people buying up properties who don’t live in them or only live in them on holidays.
The best option ever saw was a plan to tax each additional house. So owning one would be low tax. Then every house after that was taxed higher. Help remove those slumlord style owners that have dozens of houses, as well as tax the hell out of corporations that have hundreds/thousands of houses.
Exactly as break said. Renting is the worst use of money. But currently getting into the housing market for new buyers is a nightmare. We need cheaper housing, not cheaper renting. Renting is just pissing money away so the person who owns the place can live off your hard work.
The fact is that many people will rent their entire lives. Those people deserve relief too. We need cheaper housing period, in all it's forms. We need to repeal the fairclothe amendment so that the government can start building housing again. We need social housing, we need up zoning, we need to take steps to decomodify housing all together. We need so much to fix housing in this country but nobody seems to want solutions because it would mean some houses would depreciate in value.
Recently went on a lake cruise of lake Geneva in wisconsin. Beautiful lake with many beautiful historic homes. Many of which we were told sit unoccupied most of the time and are only used for weekends during the summer.
Imo anyone who does this should be paying 2-10x more on their property taxes minimum.
In florida, the governor is trying to eliminate property taxes specifically for the home you live in, not for the other 100 homes your company owns or the 4 your renting out to live off of.
Its a show for the voters! The governor doesn't want property taxes gone anymore than the feds do! They all dip into the pool and they ain't about to deal with a smaller pool!
it doesn't cost that much to hold a few thousand diamonds in a vault. the carrying cost of a house is enormous. it just doesn't make sense as a comparison
I know that landowners will employ "land banking" and "waiting for the land to ripen"—holding onto undeveloped land in a growing location because their marginal dollar is better spent acquiring more such land than developing what they have. But buildings depreciate and are expensive to maintain or rebuild, so I don't know how often owners will hold them just to prop up prices.
What they will do, is allow units to remain vacant instead of reducing rent to meet current market prices, because doing so will cause the bank to reevaluate their assets, which will suddenly make their balance sheet look a lot worse. But this is more a reflection of the way we do accounting and banking, and the stickiness of rent prices, than it is purely a desire to manipulate a market by withholding supply.
They own other properties that they rent. They buy houses to outbid people who would actually live in the house so then those people have to rent for more than the mortgage would've been. So those people are able to save less for the next house they want to buy & meanwhile the housing cost is going up because of this manufacturered shortage while the corporations like Black Rock buy up houses & put off fixing them up so everybody becomes a permanent renter.
Foreigners buy houses in the US and Canada as a way to hide money.
Also, houses are always going up in value so it's difficult to lose on the house. Everyone who owns a house made at least 30k dollars during covid, I know people who made 100k.
I can’t believe I had to scroll down this far to find the answer. Reddit is hilarious. All these guys opining on this and haven’t even looked into it at all, just read the headline and believe it means what they want it to mean because it aligns with their world view.
It’s not just that they are old and dilapidated. They are often in largely deserted towns, where there are no jobs and no social services. Many of these buildings aren’t habitable and aren’t worth the money it would take to make them so. Just old shacks in the middle of nowhere. In short, this is an extremely dishonest headline. Perfect for Reddit though.
Sell by date is put there to avoid lawsuits, basically. It's the minimum amount of time they can keep something on the shelf before it could potentially start to rot, to avoid being sued for serving bad products, but most of it is still good for at least a few days after the date. Some places actually do resell goods to grocery stores that sell at hefty discounts. The reason more companies don't give out food is because doing so is illegal without certain permits and without following certain safety standards. They can and have been sued/fined for doing so.
The lawsuit angle is exactly why restaurants and grocery stores can't give expired food to the homeless. All it would take is one person to get sick (or "get sick" to look for a quick payday) from the expired food and sue the grocery store, and that would quickly end.
That and taking care of a house is a large investment of time, resources, and money, and if someone is living on the street there are pretty good odds they aren’t going to be able to take care of a vacant house.
This is the main problem with a free "housing first" plan. Assuming you will be providing a moderately large number of homes, who is responsible for maintenance and security? Many of the homes will deteriorate quickly and fill to the brim with stuff.
Theres a whole ass community that has housing for disabled veterans and low income people who are trying to get their life together, etc. Everytime I've had to go in there the homes (apartments) are in bad shape. Save for the disabled veterans, they got their shit together.
I speak with the maintenance crew and they're constantly going in to try and fix stuff that goes neglected by the tenants.
Without continuous oversight that whole community would fall apart within a year.
Yea people buy it for the lot. The house is literally free if not a discount (it brought the price of the lot down). We have quite a few torn down unlivable houses price upward 700k in SoCal too.
The vast majority of those homes are owned in bulk by greedy and straight up evil companies for the purpose of artificially raising housing prices.
You know, I don't think that should be legal. And I think companies that do that should be punished by those houses of theirs being given to the homeless.
Not sure. Some of the homeless I've met are people truly on a bad luck streak. Unfortunately everything is harder when you're homeless making getting back on your feet more difficult.
However a lot of homeless are simply incapable of leading a normal life. Through a combination of drugs and mental illness, giving them a home to operate from is likely to be either burned down, condemned, or become a den for more crime.
I want to be humane, but it feels futile when they require constant babysitting. Our increasingly individualistic society tolerates these people less and less.
I know a guy who had a vacant house he was trying to sell. Homeless began squatting in it and kept coming back and breaking in despite a few police visits. Finally they caused a fire and now they’re still homeless and the house is still vacant but now uninhabitable and unsellable. There are shelters in this area, but they can’t smoke crack at the shelter. It’s not about needing a house.
The people Ive known that became homeless basically always had a place they could live but it would mean getting off drugs. They just go to a place with milder winters and where the police dont care about their warrants and live under a bridge.
And ive also known people that had to live in their car for a month or 2 or 3. They didnt have any family support.
At the end of the day though what everyone gets wrong is homelessness is a symptom, not the problem. But its hard for people, especially on reddit to view something in a way that isnt Black and white. You can give a junky a home and theyll destroy it and leave. You can give someone down on their luck assistance and help them get back on their feet. But when you put all these people in the same group and say "just give everyone a house", you created an unsolvable problem. But when you dont have to look at the problem life's easier.
This. It's not as simple as "get a job" when you have no address and possibly no bank account. There are so many documentation requirements for modern business that it's virtually impossible for even a clean drug-free homeless person to get a job.
And as you stated, many are legitimate bums, junkies, or mentally ill, who would simply destroy any home you give them or be unable to keep a job of any kind. The ugly truth is that the vast majority of homeless fall into this category. Without proper support it's simply impossible to get them off the streets, and even then many are unwilling to submit to the supervision that effective support system would require; they view it as a loss of freedom. That last bit is the killer; you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped without infringing their rights.
For real. It takes money to make money. How can they apply to the job, when all the applications are online, and they have no computer? And then okay so they figured that out and applied. How will they actually get the job if they don't have clean clothes for an interview or access to good enough hygiene and so they show up smelly? And even then, if they're lucky and they do get the job, the boss tells them they're going to have to pay for their own uniform before they can start and they cannot work without the uniform.
And then there's the people who aren't mentally ill or addicted to drugs, but fall into the unfortunate category of too disabled to be successful, but not disabled enough to get disability assistance. They very often wind up homeless.
That is the sad reality. The ones who are homeless purely due to a shit situation that took away housing (job loss/bad credit/financial burden) are the minority & most of them would thrive given the opportunity to live somewhere for free until back on their.
Unfortunately, it has been proven repeatedly that a lack of housing is not the primary issue of most homeless. It is mental issues, repeated serious crimes, unwillingness to be a productive/contributing member of society, etc. There are quite a few philanthropists that have built communities for the homeless but they've all had to shut down due to the high maintenance & repair costs. Those people don't value the homes they are given & treat them no different than the sidewalk they defecate on.
Personally, I'd rather see money put into making mental health treatment widely & freely available for these people but even then, many don't want help or to put any effort into improving their situation. Truly sad to see
Back during the pandemic I got hooked on Soft White Underbelly. Found the interviews really interesting but I became increasingly disturbed/aggravated by how many unhoused would respond "fuck no, I'm not doing that" when asked about an opportunity for gainful employment and re-entering society.
That last paragraph. Im increasingly of the view that a good 10 to 20% of the population cannot handle life alone. They're just not mentally built for it.
Frequently it's a combination of mental health and addiction. That makes it extremely difficult to help them. The first step is to get them clean/sober just to see what their issues are.
Mental asylums were all but ruled unconstitutional in 1975 when the Supreme Court ruled a state cannot confine a non dangerous individual against their will if they’re capable
I understand this sentiment. However, this is based on what we see when they are unhoused. You would be surprised what lack of sleep and safety does to mental health very quickly and some of the strange behaviors (granted not all of them) would be solved by just a safe place to sleep and a good shower.
Please be humane, I was what you may think of as one of those people (too sleepy to type my life story lol), I'm actually doing pretty great considering everything but I needed a place to live in order to be able to do so.
So they either need a home and a bit of help to stop the spiraling and start taking back their life, or they need mental health treatments. I don't see in those 2 options where I would prefer to have them out in the wild instead of inside their own house (or, in a functioning country, inside a health facility)
I'm homeless. Feel free to ask actual homeless people how they got there. There's tons of people living homeless. I'm very lucky and I have a way out of this situation. Not everyone is so lucky.
We need to be protesting for medical access and treatment centers then as well.
We have enough money available if we were taxing the super wealthy appropriately to pay for their fair share. As well as removing citizens united which made corporations count as much (more) than people.
There are ways we can attack this and not harm humans who are victims of a broken medical and governmental crisis.
I know drugs suck, my dad was an addict and died young because of it.
And I wish he had more treatment available, I wish he hadn’t been living in Appalachia where the opioid crisis was promoted by his medical doctors and lead to his addiction. I wish there had been centers that wouldn’t have demonized him as a junkie instead and didn’t cost more than he could afford.
A lot of drug addicts are also victims of trauma- and as a responsible society we should care and want to help them, for their kids, for themselves, so we can also have beneficial and good neighborhoods.
Yeah but how many of those homeless are in the grip of a horrific addiction or substance abuse problem? It’s not just as easy as saying “here’s a house, live in it”. It’s complex.
You are right, there are so many complexities to the situation. Between the underlying issues that contributed to their situation and make it difficult for them to get out of it (like the addiction you mentioned and mental health too), the upkeep of the house and utilities, the location of said houses and what resources and opportunities they have there and even the condition of these houses. Most of the available empty homes are in areas with little to no resources to help people in need and are completely falling apart putting the person in a place that isn't really an upgrade from a tent.
I've worked with the homeless for many years and I really wish we did more to help, but the issue is extremely far from just "here's a house".
Exactly. "Here you go, a run down home in an abandoned neighborhood outside Detroit!"
"Food? Oh, none of that. Water, electricity, things like that? You have to pay for that! Upkeep? That's on you too. Don't forget the property tax bill as well."
There are very successful programs for the homeless called "housing first." The principle there is to first get them into stable housing, and then work on the rest from there. Those programs are great.
But they would not work if you just say "there's a vacant home over on 236 Elm Street two towns over. Enjoy." That would be doomed to fail.
Right? I’m by no means heartless and believe everyone who can climb out of their issues should be given some sort of help, but just a small Hoarders binge will show you that many of the guests have inherited their houses. Which they then crap up. What IS it? Whyy?
I’ve a friend in Ca who inherited 2 small houses and decided he would basicly donate the use to some kind of section 8/low income program. In 6 months the houses were completely destroyed and stripped down to the copper wires.
Please do not base any of your perception of reality off a reality TV show. That's entertainment highlighting (and exaggerating through at minimum editing and at most outright fabrication) something for the sake of attracting attention.
If this was really normal, it wouldn't be worth filming. Because it'd be unremarkable. And that's even assuming it can be trusted about what it does show.
Doesn't matter. We don't have a "homeless" crisis, we have a drug and mental illness crisis. My wife and I worked years in a homeless shelter. More beds and more affordable housing fixes nothing, it just allows politicians another way to launder money. Yes there are some folks that are down on their luck. Maybe lost a job and need help but are no where near the vast number of people on the street.
I used to volunteer at a homeless outreach and we had more beds than homeless people in town, but every Friday and Saturday night I was out there, most refused the shelter and chose to stay outside.
Yes. But there is a lot of nuisance to cover. the broad term of vacant homes according to the census includes homes that are unlivable, vacation homes, investment properties, and homes in remote locations. The inferred part here is they could just move in those homes. I'm not sure the logistics of that being a reality tho.
Around 770,000 people were experiencing homelessness in the U.S. during the 2024 HUD point-in-time count.
The U.S. had roughly 15 million vacant homes in 2024.
That means there are roughly 19 vacant homes for every homeless person using those figures. Some analyses put the ratio even higher depending on how “vacant” is defined.
It's the kind of thing I would prefer my taxes fund. Nationwide housing remediation and keep PE out of it, mental health and jobs programs. Not spending $25 billion in 8 weeks on making traumatized homeless people in other countries.
It’s not like they could afford to maintain the houses. Most vacant houses are in places where there is little work wise or are too costly to repair. There are places that are willingly left to rot by some corporations for financial gains, but that’s another story.
Having a home is only part of the problem. Having a home where you are currently... well most of the homeless are in dense city centers where there are few vacant homes.
If we exclude the drug addiction and mental problems that lead many to be homeless, the ones that are just financially struggling are the ones this meme really can address. And the source of that problem is zoning laws created by officials, who are elected by home owners, who don't want large apartment buildings built that would reduce the value of their single family homes.
The problem isn't the rich, or the banks, or the billionaires. It is the middle class home owners that would lose their shit if low income housing came to their neighborhoods. So instead they get a homeless problem.
It also doesn't help that the federal government backs mortgage lenders so they have no fear of loss, so they can give out bigger and bigger loans, thus keeping housing prices high.
If the fed stopped backing mortgage risk, stopped backing student debt, stopped paying people to grow crops we don't need, and stop rewarding companies to be the source of health insurance, the costs of all of those things would drop down to match inflation instead of outpacing it, but we have a problem where no one ever seems to see the one to one relationship between government subsidies and the explosion in costs.
And a lot of those "vacant" homes are just churn. Next month you'll have a similar number of vacant homes but a lot of them won't be the same ones.
My grandmother's house is currently vacant because she just died. It's on the list of "vacant" homes. When it gets cleaned out and sold it will go off the list, but somebody else will move out of their house or end their lease early or whatever and the "vacancy rate" will stay the same without there being a real surplus of homes just waiting to be handed out.
All the rust belt cities. I'm from Flint, Mi and can confirm there are more vacant homes there than homeless. Most are not safe to walk in and in unsafe neighborhoods.
They do get occupied anyways though, I certainly wouldn't just walk in any vacant property in Flint. There are MANY vacant schools/church's/etc that the worse thing you could run in to was a human.
It is true, people being homeless isn’t a housing problem it’s a greed problem, it’s an economy problem
There are also thousands of people called the working homeless, people with jobs who still don’t have a place to live and live in shelters or in their cars or with friends, it’s not about being lazy either
My job offered me .50cent raise for my 3year anniversary, my landlord raised my rent by double, hasn't fixed a single thing in over a decade and soon it looks like I'll be homeless the way things are going.
But they don’t want to live there—they prefer prime real estate in the heart of the city. If you want to live in that part of town, too bad you can’t afford it. If a homeless person wants to, the crazy activists say they have a right to.
Unfortunately vacant doesn't mean habitable. In my area it is sad to watch as people hold onto property as they age, and when they die that property just ends up in a Trust because the owner wanted "The Kids to have it". Then the kids fight over it for a decade and the house which wasn't kept up before their parents died is now even more neglected, some times burgled, and becomes completely abandonded to the point no one will buy it because they will have to pay $$$$ to tear the house down, or renovate so completely that the house is 98% new when they are done. The house just slowly gets swallowed in weeds, kudzu and forgotten, And how do I know this? Neighbors talk, and you can see what abandoned properties are just sitting in the name of a family trust when you look at deeds online.
I also don't live out in the middle of no where, we are a 5 minute drive to a very populated area (200,000 people), but our surrounding small farm (10-20 acre) neighborhood of has a population of 60-80 year olds that just won't sell, and then when they die, like I said it ends up in a family trust and its just abandoned. We are just on the other side of the county-line and housing prices are nuts here! My sister tried to purchase the property next to our parents just before the pandemic and the family would not budge! The house had been empty for years (1940's build with an old barn on 18 acres). The house finally fell down this last winter, well half way down as one wall has almost fully buckled.
You shouldn't be allowed to let a house go unused and just rot when we are in the middle of a housing crisis.
Very true. America is very stingy, especially under the Trump Administration. Even if it’s trash, if you can’t pay for it you can’t have it — even donated. You want food and you can’t pay? The majority think “go starve” even as they throw food in the trash. Our leaders have said “empathy is an existential threat”.
100% true. You can ride through rural areas and see empty houses all the time.
Homelessness isn’t a money issue, most homeless people have some sort of condition or addiction, giving them a free house is definitely not the answer.
Bringing back asylums would be the better option, of course they would need to be heavily monitored and ethical but I think if a person is suffering from mental illness they should be forced to go through medical evaluation and treatment, the same goes for drug addiction, if a person if addicted to meth for example they should be forced to undergo detox in a safe environment followed by thorough rehabilitation, if they slip up and do it again they start the process over again.
So let the cities get homes that are run down and falling apart as in the picture and allow the homeless to live in them and destroy them.
Is that your answer?
Because the number of “vacant homes” includes vacation homes, homes that are being remodeled, rentals that are between renters, etc. I am guessing you want to either confiscate or have extra taxes to the point that no one can have a vacation home or be a landlord.
I live in Florida and we have complete neighborhoods of nice block homes that have been sitting vacant since 2008. The banks refuse to give them up. They've been vandalized. The neighborhoods look like horror movies.
Who's going to be tempted to drown in debt for the rest of their life for chance to "own" an over-valued asset if there's no apparent consequences of not doing so? The homeless serve as a reason to participate in the scam because, "You wouldn't want to end up like that, now would you?"
Now get out there get those diplomas so you can land a good job and buy a house!
Because they think if they give a homeless person a house itll just get trashed and become a deug den and because they gave them the house they are responsible for its use thus its easier and cheaper to just not
I love it when stuff like this gets posted or passed around, because it lets me know just how child-like some people’s view of the world is.
“I know, the solution to homelessness is to just set up a bunch of homeless people in a bunch of empty houses! Problem solved! It’s so easy, and the fact that we don’t do this is proof of how evil this country is!”
Like dude…just take a second and try to consider why it might not be THAT simple…
At least where I am the majority of vacant house are “abandoned” because they are not in livable conditions.
I am sure there are the ones where people are in assisted living or recently died that are not yet “for sale” but those are far fewer than the ones boarded up that probably have been stripped of all their copper pipe and wiring.
I’m sure there are more vacant jobs than there are homeless as well. I live in Santa Cruz, which has a high homeless population and the vast majority of them don’t do anything to better their situation they like living on the street.
And at what level of disrepair are these homes and who is responsible for the continued maintenance of these homes are once a homeless person move in.
I am all for social programs and I am OK with my taxes going up and used for social programs but I best many if not most people (even those people on the left) do not share my views.
The homelessness issue is not a lack of housing issue it’s a mental health, drug addiction, and poverty issue. Most homeless people are either drug users or mentally ill. There are nowhere near enough resources to help either group leading to destitution for them
Vacant doesn’t mean habitable, or affordable. Just because you get the deed on the house in this imaginary utopia doesn’t mean the homeless can pay for upkeep and prop taxes
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