There are enough vacant homes in the US to give every homeless person 25 homes. That is not the root cause of the problem.
Assuming by houses you mean the high-density housing people are actually saying would help alleviate the issue.
With the majority of homeless, the reason would be easier access to illicit substances.
And a large chunk of the homeless population are drug addicts with serious mental health problems. All the free housing in the world isn't going to help them. So what does an owner forced to rent his property to a homeless person do if that person trashes the place, doesn't pay rent, causes problems in the neighborhood, etc.? Evict them? That just means that some other homeowner is compelled to be a landlord for this person (in your system).
Interest rates have tripled, which should have dropped house prices. Construction is faster than it was before the 2007 Housing Crisis. Both of these factors should have drastically reduced housing costs, however, prices are still 40% higher than they were in 2020.
I'm not saying to confiscate homes. I'm not saying to force people to rent out their homes to homeless people.
>A large chunk of homeless people are drug addicts with serious mental health problems.
Only 26% of homeless people abuse drugs. A vast amount of homeless people are veterans who have complex mental health problems from their service in the military, elderly people who are trying to survive off of insufficient SSI payments, or LGBTQ youth who were kicked out of their homes.
This isn't a problem that can be solved with some witty one-sentence solution. This is a problem that takes layers of support systems ranging from health services, to public transportation, to subsidized housing, to job placement programs.
You were corrected on this above and chose to repeat it.
Concluding price from supply only is nonsense. In your interval, the population and real incomes rose. They rose faster than new housing formation, particularly in the cities which have a homeless problem.
Now plot post-War housing stock against population. We have more houses than ancient Egypt ergo supply and demand is fake isn’t an argument.
If you look at the places that people actually want to live in the US, there are housing shortages in every major US metro area (https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives...).
"My comment on this is that the statement "just build more homes" is not an effective solution to this problem. We have enough homes. The issue is that as homes are viewed as an investment, rather than as a necessity to live a decent life, they must maintain scarcity. If there is not a scarcity, then it will be created. Interest rates have tripled, which should have dropped house prices. Construction is faster than it was before the 2007 Housing Crisis. Both of these factors should have drastically reduced housing costs, however, prices are still 40% higher than they were in 2020.
I'm not saying to confiscate homes. I'm not saying to force people to rent out their homes to homeless people.
>A large chunk of homeless people are drug addicts with serious mental health problems.
Only 26% of homeless people abuse drugs. A vast amount of homeless people are veterans who have complex mental health problems from their service in the military, elderly people who are trying to survive off of insufficient SSI payments, or LGBTQ youth who were kicked out of their homes.
This isn't a problem that can be solved with some witty one-sentence solution. This is a problem that takes layers of support systems ranging from health services, to public transportation, to subsidized housing, to job placement programs."
We don't have enough homes in the right places. That's the point of the report in the article I linked, which lays out the number of homes in the major metro areas that people actually want to live and shows that literally all of them have a shortage.
The issue has never been housing inventory in an effort to making housing more affordable. If the past 4 years have shown us anything it's that even with skyrocketing interest rates and new construction matching pre-2007 levels, homes are still 40% more expensive than they were in 2020.