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this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
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Housing does not sit empty to extract rent, because then it would no longer be empty. The reason housing sits empty meanwhile housing prices in big cities are sky high is because the empty housing is in places nobody wants to live. Sure you could move to that empty house in nowhere, Nebraska, but then what will you do for work, groceries, how will you see your family?
It remains true that capitalism has failed to build enough housing - in places where it's needed
A relevant amount of housing in big urban markets is held empty as assets. The revenue possible from rent is low enough relative to asset appreciation that it makes sense to the owners to reduce maintenance costs by not renting. I think that's largely only true for high-end real estate in places like New York, San Francisco, and London, though.
There's another big block not on the regular rental housing market because it's used for short-term rentals. There are also services to help big landlords maximize rent by coordinating collusion to keep rental units off the market and raise market rates.
You might be able to get everyone living on the streets off the streets by redistributing these properties, but the most extreme forms of homelessness aren't the entirety of the housing crisis. You also have to deal with working class people living in overcrowded apartments, people forced to live far away from their work, young people unable to find suitable places to start families, etc.
These problems don't just disappear because you have a socialist government that redistributes all the rich people's property- housing was a constant problem in the Soviet Union all the way until its collapse, because despite building a massive amount of it, it simply wasn't enough.
It’s interesting watching people argue with you because I think this is the part they aren’t getting;
this is not true. even in cities like san francisco the actual unused housing stock outnumbers homeless people several times over.
People are roasting you but this is absolutely correct. Major US cities currently have historically low vacancy rates.
There are plenty of office buildings in cities that are empty. There’s literally a space in New York called billionaire’s row where billionaires buy and sell condos to each other while never actually living there whatsoever. They don’t even rent it out to anyone. These condos exist solely for speculation and circular trading and money laundering.
Maybe it’s not enough for every single homeless person or to support upward mobility for all, but it’s definitely not just some random crack house in the boonies.
Office spaces are not suitable for housing as-is, they have to be converted. So again, capitalism had failed to build housing where it is needed.
And regarding housing as speculative assets, another user pointed out there's not enough of those to actually solve homelessness
And those conversions are not easy. These buildings don’t have plumbing or HVAC for residential use, and they have huge internal spaces that leads to units with no windows which we don’t normally allow for good reason
Nah. For the most part people in big cities live somewhere, the problem is the places they lived are typically owned as a speculative asset by the rich.