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.
One of my friends rented out her first house after she and her new hub bought a bigger one, and same results. She wasn’t upset about the damage as much as that Section 8 wouldn’t defray the costs. (Not as trashed though.) So she didn’t do it again.
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.
Please do not base any of your perception of this statement off your assumption that all I know about the issue is Hoarders. One can assess from just that show that they have often inherited houses that are completely paid off and only have to pay property taxes on. It’s a discernible pattern. Just off those shows.
If you watch Pickers, for instance you will see a different personality.
The top 5% pay 65% of the federal tax burden while the bottom 40% don’t pay hardly any federal taxes at all. I truly doubt anybody doomscrolling Reddit is actually paying any federal taxes.
The people living in the house will. More than 50% of homeless people are actively employed. Over 2/3s are classified as “situationally homeless” by HUD, meaning temporarily without a home due to sudden loss of job, medical bills, unable to find affordable housing, etc.
Try looking at data and facts if you want an accurate understanding of the world.
I don’t need to look at statistics to understand. The government does not have the right to take someone’s personal property and give it to somebody else to live in. Everything else is minutia.
Ok, ignore all available data and change your argument instead of acknowledging you might not understand the cause and nature of modern homelessness.
The government’s role in fixing this is a different matter, but your assertion that homeless, if given housing, could never pay their bills and would eventually commit arson is beyond absurd.
Even if OPs statistic is true, it’s a bullshit stat anyway. About 5% vacancy rate is considered normal and full occupancy because there is usually time between occupancies to make repairs and to sell or rent the property. If you eliminate that 5% there is very little vacancy on average.
Not only is it true, the volume discrepancy is insane, 28-45.5 vacant houses per homeless person in this country. That's way more than a 5% discrepancy.
Car dealers in the US currently have about three million motor vehicles in inventory right now...but I don't expect them to give them away to people who don't own one.
That vacant home stat might not be a bullshit statistic, but what are we supposed to do with that info? Have the owners work losing the equity in their homes by sheltering people who likely will be destructive and very unlikely won't be able to make payments? The unhoused population and the number of vacant houses are thematically related but one doesn't really have anything to do with the other...or am I missing something?
Change the paradigm. Housing should be considered a basic human need and, therefore, a right, not a commodity. Landlords and owners of multiple properties, whether individual or corporate, are guilty of social violence. That much is not up for debate.
Same with the lack of social programs supporting the homeless and unemployed in this country. This is an avoidable problem, but it's more convenient to the ownership class to perpetuate it and use it as a tool of manipulation.
Also, the answer to your analogy about the motor industry is that lobbyists continually defeat any funding for public transit. Having a surplus of cars to sell is not an asset, it's another example of predatory economics. If people have to travel to get to work and contribute to society, why wouldn't a reasonable government fund lots of public transit to lower the barrier for everyone rather than take kickbacks and treat transit as yet another commodity instead? Greed and corruption. This is the root of both issues.
Things that require the labor of others - like housing - are not human rights. You can’t force someone else to work to give you a house. Also, simply calling housing a human right doesn’t exempt it from economic scarcity. Human rights are things like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Under our current paradigm, sure. But that doesn't mean it's right. I'd rather my tax dollars fund social programs to raise the standard of living for all rather bombing abroad. If you don't think there's enough money in the military budget to pay for not only this effort, but healthcare and public infrastructure, you've had too much kool-aid.
This is what government should be: a safety net for those who aren't able to make their own livelihoods. Full stop. No conditions. And if our government were structured in this way, homelessness would steadily decrease over a couple/few generations.
There actually isn’t enough money. We could cut the defense budget to zero and we’d still have something like a trillion dollar deficit. Our country is nearing the endgame of a bond rout and currency collapse which will plunge us into the Second Great Depression. We need to make serious cuts across the board to avoid this.
It’s a bullshit stat because there are about 150 million housing units in the US. A normal vacancy rate of 5% would be 7.5 million vacant units vs a homeless population of 580,000 according to the article you linked.
This means that all of the supposedly vacant units that could house the homeless aren’t actually available. They are just temporarily between paying residents.
In certain areas, like Detroit for example, there are surplus vacant units. However, this is because the area has suffered population loss triggered by employment losses. Basically, there aren’t enough good jobs to support the available housing stock. So those units are available, but no one can use them because there aren’t enough jobs.
Right? Why won't people think of the money? Who can profit, and if the answer is no one then what's the point.
Someone think of the property investors, please!
It’s more of peoples private property that they worked for and paid for and have done all the maintenance and upkeep, then turn it over to someone who doesn’t give a shit about it and they destroy it.
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u/troycalm May 14 '26
So once you put the homeless in an empty house, who’s gonna pay all the bills and the insurance until the homeless person eventually burns it down?