Netherlands had this problem in the 60s and the solution came in the form of a squatting movement.
I feel in the US people are ok with corporations committing crimes but not humans. Weird seeing as the humans are the ones without a home and the corporations are just trying to get rich.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting_in_the_Netherlands
That already happens in the states. Sometimes, you just need to go on vacation for a couple of weeks and come back to find your home squatted with a fake lease drawn up in crayon to throw you into a civil legal process. You can find tutorials online.
Empty units stopped being a thing.
It isn't a solution to anyone's problems except maybe as a way to live free while doing lots of drugs.
Squatting is legal.
In the USA property rights are very strong. Read the article I posted earlier. Basically in Amsterdam a lot of companies were colluding to keep apartments empty which inflated the price. In response people were legally allowed to squat the apartments provided they were unoccupied.
This fixes the problem of empty apartments.
Comparing the rights of squatters in the USA to the rights of squatters in other countries is a non-starter. I'm saying if citizens in the USA had the same rights to squat as they had in the Netherlands in the 70's and 80's the problem would be fixed.