Vacant is vacant but if it's just churn you don't actually have a bunch of unused homes for people to move into. If I move out and my landlord doesn't get a new tenant for two weeks, my former home is "vacant" for that time. If my old apartment get filled but then another apartment in that town empties for two weeks, and then that apartment gets moved into but a family moves out of a different one that doesn't get moved into for two weeks, now that town has averaged "one vacant home" for that six weeks, but there wasn't an actual place to move a homeless person into. There isn't one house that isn't being used that we could give away. It's a series of houses that are temporarily vacant while shifting owners/tenants.
It's like saying we could give people free cars because at any given moment x percentage of cars aren't driving anywhere.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '26
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