[game-of-throws]

The US has a population of 329.5 million. Average household size is 2.51 people. So we need to house 131 million families - but the US already has 142 million housing units. The surplus is 3x the headline. What am I missing?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-h...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/240267/number-of-housing...

[aetherane]

The market isn't perfect. The houses might not be where the demand is or the type/size needed and there will always be some unoccupied percentage due to moves, investments etc.

I would assume 10% unoccupied is the minimum needed.

[sushisource]

Vacant units.

Which is to say, yeah, maybe we don't need to build tons more, but we do at minimum need to use what we have and we aren't.