There are 28 vacant homes for every person experiencing homelessness in the U.S.

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.

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.

> Over 580,000 Americans are experiencing homelessness

That is a rate of ~0.18%, if my calculations are correct (600k / 332m).

Contrast to Sweden (population 10m) which had an estimated 33,000 homeless people in 2020, yielding a rate of 0.33%. [1]

Contrast to Japan, which has an estimated effective homelessness rate of 0%.

So Sweden has a worse homelessness rate than the US but we all suck compared to Japan!

1. https://www.homelessworldcup.org/sweden#:~:text=Country%20st....

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.

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.

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:

https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-ezra-klein-show/wha...

Are they "experiencing" homelessness or are they "experiencing" unchecked mental health issues and addiction?

Perhaps, counting homes isn't useful here.

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.

There are plenty of vacant homes in the middle of nowhere where there aren't any jobs. Exclude those and the numbers go way down.