[socialismisok]

It absolutely kills me that there are approximately 30 empty homes for every homeless person in the States. (Roughly 550k homeless and roughly 16M vacant homes.)

Investors are part of the problem, but by no means the only part. Anything that reduces investor speculation on housing and returns units to the rental or purchase markets is ok by me.

[WalterBright]

My neighbor's house is empty, as he just moved out. It's for sale, and it's far easier to prep a house for sale when empty. As soon as they finish the prep, a for sale sign will go up. Then it will sit empty till it is bought, and will then sit empty until closing and the new owner will move in.

It may sit for a month or 6 waiting for a buyer.

Now, multiply this by all the turnover in the housing market, and there will be many "empty" homes at any one time.

[bmitc]

In my area, homes sell over a weekend and typically the owner lives in them until closing basically. The open houses are nearly always done with the owners’ stuff still in the house. The houses sit empty for maybe a week. Is it really that common for a seller to move out while it is trying to be sold? Such a person would need a lot of money to do so.

[WalterBright]

If you're moving, it's kinda hard to buy a new house the same day you sold the old house.

In the car dealer business, cars usually sit for a month on the dealer's lot before they sell. Car dealers hate that, because they borrow money to put the inventory on the lot, and pay interest on that money.

It's the same for house sellers. Leaving a house vacant cost thousands of dollars a month. Sellers aren't letting it sit vacant for fun. When I've sold a house, I was painfully aware of the vacancy costs, and always tried to price it to get it sold ASAP.

[bombcar]

If I remember correctly the house should sell in 2-3 months (earlier and it was priced too low, longer and priced too high).

Interestingly realtors houses stay on the market longer and sell for more than their customer’s houses …

[WalterBright]

Realtors have different incentives in selling other peoples' homes than selling their own.

[dagw]

In my area, homes sell over a weekend

That was true in my neighbourhood as well, up until a few month ago. Now I know two or three people around me that have moved and have been trying to sell their houses for months and aren't even getting low ball bids.

But even if you manage to sell your house within 24 hours of putting it on the market without having to do any work on it, there can still be a few months lag between you actually moving out and the new owner moving in.

[joe-collins]

> It may sit for a month or 6 waiting for a buyer.

Gotta love that oh-so-efficient market.

[motoxpro]

The wait just means there is low liquidity i.e. the spread is wide. They could sell it this minute if they offered it for 100$ but they are in "no rush" so they are willing to wait. Opendoor is trying to solve this by pretty much being a market maker for homes. This comment is independent of "should the housing market be more liquid" just a general "markets" comment

[WalterBright]

People who price high usually will have to wait longer for a buyer. In a hot market, the times will be less, in a cold market, more.

[hackeraccount]

Like Democracy the alternatives are worse.

[squokko]

There are some percentage of those 550K homeless who just need a home, but it's much lower than 50%. If you've seen a homeless person screaming at their reflection in a car window and then punching it repeatedly until their hand seems broken you will realize that that particular person's problem is not the lack of a housing structure.

[advael]

As anyone who's ever tried to study any complex phenomenon in a rigorous way knows, determining causality is fraught. But I think it's fair to say that most mental illnesses are exacerbated by living in stressful and uncertain conditions, and having shelter is a basic need no matter how crazy you are. Thus, this seems like a poor argument against providing housing

[qqtt]

But basic shelter is frequently available but ask homeless individuals why they don't use it. It can be unsafe, even trying to learn about the shelter or queuing up for access is unsafe as these areas are frequently overrun by dangerous elements for vulnerable populations. Ask hotel owners how it worked being forced to house homeless during the pandemic and various other times.

This is a complex issue no doubt, but it is the height of nativity to think we can use existing underutilized housing stock to solve or even help the existing homeless crisis. We have frequently tried it with poor results and poor outcomes. It is very very very hard to meaningfully address the existing homeless epidemic, which is intimately tied up with the opioid, general drug, and mental health epidemics, none of which we have any reasonable answers for.

[magicalist]

On the contrary, we've found as you actually build housing, prices go down (or at least rise more slowly) and homelessness goes down.

This argument is a variant of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. You can improve the lot of many long before you need to solve all addictions.

[imtringued]

You can also solve the problem before people get addicted. It won't turn up in any statistic, people will simply take it for granted.

[advael]

This sounds a lot like what we're trying is solutions that put the people the state is helping under their power and observation and do not give them ownership, autonomy, or any sense of stability surrounding their living situation. I'm not surprised that this kind of intervention often leads to abuse, nor that it's not desired by most people affected

[JauntyHatAngle]

Having a roof + support is one of the fundamental parts of treating mental health however.

Can't just shove them in a house and all good, but its a fundamental part of treatment along with social programs. Without stability it's tough to change much in someone's life.

[yardstick]

It sounds like what is needed is a holistic solution that provides both accommodation and other support services all in one.

Agree just because a property is vacant it doesn’t make that property suitable for anyone. Does it need ground maintenance. Does it need furniture. Is it in a very high cost of living area. Is it near where homeless people and their associated support groups and family are. Etc

[magicalist]

Greater than 50% of your comment is given to an embellished anecdote that is not, in fact, representative of the majority of homeless people.

You'd do better to stick to facts, like most homeless people are recently homeless and locals, and homeless rates correlate well with housing availability/prices.

[durnygbur]

Let's see how your mental well-being change or certain issues escalate once you become homeless.

[pydry]

>If you've seen a homeless person screaming at their reflection in a car window and then punching it repeatedly until their hand seems broken you will realize that that particular person's problem is not the lack of a housing structure.

Spending a decade without a housing structure and self medicating away the depression that comes with it is precisely how you end up like that.

[archagon]

Where exactly did you pull that number out of?

[ncallaway]

Every time I hear this statistic it drives me insane.

I really wish there was an exponential property tax based on the number of properties that someone or some entity owns. I don’t think it would actually be feasible to implement, but I wish something like it existed.

Owning one property? Reasonable/cheap property tax. Own two properties? Pretty expensive property taxes. Own three properties? Eye watering property taxes. Own more than three? Truly insane property taxes.

Especially for vacant properties

[WalterBright]

> Every time I hear this statistic it drives me insane.

It's because while the statistic may be correct, it is a misrepresentation, as a lot of those "empty" homes are awaiting a buyer.

[ncallaway]

> it is a misrepresentation, as a lot of those "empty" homes are awaiting a buyer.

Which means as a society we've chosen to value the liquidity of the housing market (something that I think is really good!) over the basic dignity and needs of human beings (something that I think is even more important!).

That's a societal choice. In a society that absolutely has enough wealth to shelter and feed every person, the fact that we've chosen not to is simply a disgrace. That people die in the cold in America is a moral failing. If we were a poor nation, and couldn't afford otherwise that would be one thing. But we aren't, and it's simply a choice that we make to let people die in the cold.

[WalterBright]

Is it your proposal that any house going on the market should install a homeless person in it until it sells?

[ncallaway]

No.

I made a proposal above (though, you’ll also not that I said I thought my proposal was unlikely to be workable in practice).

But, if you review what I wrote, you’ll note I never proposed anything close to what you asked about.

My actual proposal would be this: we should invest heavily in a housing first approach to homelessness at both the federal and state level. We should invest in this as a priority, as if it will save lives because it will.

Along with that, we should invest in mental health and addiction treatment programs as a supplement.

We should tax the fuck out of the rich to do so in a revenue neutral way.

[WalterBright]

> We should tax the fuck out of the rich to do so in a revenue neutral way.

That's what California does, and the homeless problem in CA just gets worse.

[_puk]

"I don’t think it would actually be feasible to implement, but I wish something like it existed."

It's feasible (in some contexts), and has been implemented in Wales in recent years [0] (though not exponential, there's nothing stopping it from progressing that way).

There used to be reduced taxes on second homes, recently changed to 100%, and now changing to max 300% (set by councils).

They've also closed a number of loopholes to stop owners passing these homes off as dysfunctional businesses (listed to let without taking any lettings).

There's a large disparity in wealth over a relatively short physical distance, resulting in a large number of homes in "idyllic" but poor areas being bought as second homes and spending the majority of the year empty.

They've also moved to a land transaction tax that makes the second home purchase more expensive [1].

I'm not saying they are pulling the ladder up, and good to see these initiatives being put in place, but they don't necessarily solve the issue with existing vacant second houses which most likely have benefited from the lax taxation over the years combined with increasing property values.

0: https://gov.wales/new-tax-rules-second-homes

1: https://gov.wales/land-transaction-tax-guide

[simon_000666]

I Wonder if there are some simple legal solutions to this. Like only individuals and non-profits are allowed to own houses or you can only own a property if you are registered as a resident of the city. I like the sliding scale tax idea but I think the firms would just find ways to continually invest in new properties and use that to dodge tax until a point where they offshore :(

[paulgb]

> Like only individuals and non-profits are allowed to own houses or you can only own a property if you are registered as a resident of the city.

As a renter, I’m not a fan of this. The worst landlords I’ve had have been local and the best has been a corporation based in another city.

The problem of vacant apartments is that as long as there’s a shortage of housing in places people want, housing that has been built will increase in value. If we reduce the artificial constraints on building more housing, it will also remove the incentive to leave housing vacant.

[snovv_crash]

People will just tear down the extra building rather than paying the tax.

This happened in Switzerland, where towns with more vacancies were assigned a higher number of refugees. In order to avoid this the towns demolished the empty buildings.

[deadbolt]

Well then I suppose we could write a better law than the one Switzerland created?

I don't think anyone is recommending we reimplement failed efforts, line for line.

[snovv_crash]

I don't think this is an issue that can be solved by authoritarian thinking. If politicians do something people don't like, people will vote them out next time around.

[kiba]

You don't need to overcomplicate things by draconianly taxing corporate entities if you implement the land value tax, which taxes land, but not property, and set the rate at a high appropriate level.

That's what the georgism advocate.

The problem of property as investment is not so new as a problem.

For my part, I am against the over ever evolving taxation schemes such as setting property tax sky high to deter speculators but not homeowners, without addressing the root cause of the current crisis.

First, homeowners are still incentivized to support housing supply restriction. Second, improvement on said properties are disincentivized. Which is why you want to tax land, but not property.

This is a systematic problem, not going to be solved by merely targeting a small part of the landowning population.

[socialismisok]

Aggressively tax vacant units is the simplest to implement, but there's a lot (lot) more that could be done.

[yardstick]

How does one determine if it’s vacant?

I could just leave a PC on mining some random coin to ensure there was always a bit of power going on. Likewise leave a tap slowly going. Cheaper than any tax most likely.

[socialismisok]

If it's not vacant, it's someone's primary residence which is recorded, but also the landlords will have receipts and be taxed. If there is a vacant unit, the landlord's income with be smaller than expected and can be used to ask the landlord to attest to the occupancy of their units.

[Ekaros]

Some level of registration of population. Have to have a legal resident residing in the home with the address or it is vacant.

[hugh-avherald]

What if you go on holiday?

[jedberg]

Usually it's based on where you file your taxes. You can only file taxes from one address.

[yardstick]

Would this mean an end to holiday homes and second homes?

[aaronbrethorst]

Build more homes.

[jasonkester]

Why?

I have two houses: one in England, one in France. I live in one during the year and one in The summer. Neither one is an investment. They’re both our home. Combined, they would sell for less than a cheap house in Southern California.

Why do you want me to pay extra property tax because my home is split in two?

It sounds like hold this view that anybody who owns anything is necessarily evil. But most of us are just people living their lives as best we can.

[ncallaway]

> Why do you want me to pay extra property tax because my home is split in two?

This is like asking why I want to make sure everyone gets a slice of cake before you go for a second slice.

I absolutely have nothing against you having two properties, but while homeless people exist in these societies, I absolutely think it should be expensive for you to do so. If we get to a place where homelessness doesn't exist, then I'd absolutely want you to be able to own a second property at no financial penalty.

> It sounds like hold this view that anybody who owns anything is necessarily evil.

I never said any such thing. I described adding taxes to a behavior that I think leads to a bad social outcome.

There are lots of things that I think we should tax as a means of changing behavior without saying someone who engages in those behaviors is evil.

Frankly, I don't know why you'd have this perception from my comment, but it's certainly not accurate. I own things! I don't think it's evil. There are lots of activities that I personally do that I think should be taxed at a higher rate.

I own a home, and think my property taxes should be higher. I own a business, and think my business taxes should be higher. Just because I advocate for higher taxes on things I personally do, doesn't lead me to believe I'm evil.

[magicalist]

Land is finite, desirable land even more so. You can summer in France but you can pay more to do so than if you lived there year round. Call it an incentive, not a punishment, if you want.

[jasonkester]

But I do pay more. I had to purchase an entire house and pay taxes on it.

There is no shortage of houses here in farmland France or up in rural north England[1], which explains why houses are cheap enough that you can buy two of them. That’s the housing market working like it’s supposed to. Why does it need punishing or incentivising?

[1] there are towns within a few miles with hundreds of boarded up row houses that you could get for a few thousand pounds if you like. Our village in France is surrounded by fields as far as you can see in two directions. If you want to come live here, you can (and people often do) buy a small piece of that land and build a house.

[magicalist]

> But I do pay more

More per house. There's no natural law saying taxes need to be equal per house, or that they need to be commensurate with services consumed by those living in them. Taxes (and tax breaks) are also used to incentivize behavior, which is the answer to your original question of "why".

[taneq]

Your home isn’t split in two. You have two homes, one of which stands empty at any given time. That’s what they’re arguing against, some people owning multiple houses while others are homeless. They’re not saying it should be impossible, just more expensive.

[jasonkester]

But anybody with a spare bedroom is doing the same thing by your logic. Nobody is in the kitchen right now. You monster.

The solution isn’t to stick homeless people in every available space. It’s to build places for them to live.

In your case, if your hypothetical homeless person wants to live on my street, he can buy one of the three homes currently for sale there, for the same price mine would sell for. How about we at least wait to see if he buys one of those before you go kicking me out of mine?

[smileysteve]

You jest about the kitchen and rooms, but the 80s saw a shift away from communal boarding options while reducing mental health treatment. There's a portion of the housing market that should have a communal kitchen, bathroom.

San Francisco has started building these again as startup incubators, but that's not the only target market

[taneq]

The slope isn’t that slippery. It’s not unreasonable to consider a home as an indivisible unit.

> if your hypothetical homeless person wants to live on my street, he can buy one of the three homes currently for sale there, for the same price mine would sell for.

Haha oh those silly homeless people, they should just buy houses, right?

[alexvoda]

Exactly, the effect of such a law would be to incentivize building mansions. And the savvy owners may even go the route of forming collectives of mansion owners.

Therefore each owner only owns one massive house that friends can use part of and spends most of the time at other friends massive houses.

[ww520]

Who do you think own the rentals that people live in?

[SpaghettiX]

This happens in the UK, to an extent. Council tax (For a 3 bed flat in a good location, £2000/year) goes up, though not exponentially.

> You can be charged an extra amount of Council Tax (a ‘premium’) if your home has been empty for 2 years or more.

> You can be charged up to 4 times your normal Council Tax bill if your home has been empty for 10 years or more.

[refurb]

Or, stay with me here, you just build enough housing?

I know it’s a crazy idea, so go easy on me.

[mordae]

I've seen some calculations suggesting that the speculators will buy up anything at this point. It's impossible to build enough. Partly because buying up new houses protects the investment into the already owned.

Also, what makes you think the market is not working and new houses are not being built at the highest possible pace? Given the prices, that would be a sensible assumption, no?

[WalterBright]

> speculators will buy up anything at this point

The headline says "Investor home purchases drop 30%".

> Partly because buying up new houses protects the investment into the already owned.

That doesn't work. See the latest news on cryptocurrencies.

[refurb]

Houses aren't being build which is the reason we're in trouble.

And no, investors won't buy up all the houses. Blackrock's massive home buying fund was <1% of the total value of the housing market.

[paulgb]

I haven’t seen those calculations but I’m very skeptical. The reason people are profitably able to invest in housing is that it is scarce. If the supply increased, housing would no longer be a desirable investment.

> what makes you think the market is not working and new houses are not being built at the highest possible pace

There’s a lot of political pressure by existing homeowners not to green light additional housing in their neighborhoods, because it would bring the price of the homes they already own down. There are a number of high-density projects in NYC and SF that have been blocked by these efforts.

[aaronbrethorst]

Ah yes, the 'Ship Our Unhoused Neighbors to Detroit' 2022 Challenge.

https://www.businessinsider.com/abandoned-houses-detroit-201...

[socialismisok]

Abandoned homes aren't the same as vacant homes. Most cities have low double digit vacancy rates. Whatever city you live in, odds are good there are units sitting vacant while people are homeless.

https://anytimeestimate.com/research/most-vacant-cities-2022....

Edit: even in supply constrained cities like Seattle, there are ~10 vacant units for ever homeless person.

[aaronbrethorst]

Whatever city you live in, odds are good there are units sitting vacant while people are homeless.

100% true and while I appreciate your perspicacity, this will not resolve the issue.

Seattle has a vacancy rate of 3.6% according to your cited source. Cities need a supply of vacant homes, lest we all become New York (vacancy rate 1.4%): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-02-18/looking-t...

As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the only way out of this is to build more homes.

[eftychis]

It will kill you to know that in San Francisco it was reported that 61k houses were empty. Either vacationing or waiting for rents to rise again. P.S. https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/61000-homes-are-empty-in...

Yeah...

P.S. Not sure why one would pick San Francisco for seasonal use?!

P.S. 2 Let's see how the empty home tax works out https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/voters-approve-san-francis...

[refurb]

Someone did an analysis and the true number of vacant homes someone can move into is like 10% of that figure.

You figure the houses vacant because they’re sold/rented and waiting for move in, those under renovation, those where people have died and waiting to settle estate, etc and it’s 80-90% of that figure.

It’s really dishonest.

[ncallaway]

> Roughly 550k homeless and roughly 16M vacant homes.

> Someone did an analysis and the true number of vacant homes someone can move into is like 10% of that figure.

If that 10% figure from the analysis of San Fransisco applies to the entire country (and I recognize it may not), then the 550k homeless would be compared to 1.6M homes, or still ~3x the number of houses we would need to house every homeless person in the country. That 3x gives us a fair amount of wiggle-room, for the analysis not being replicable across the country.

My main point is not that we should seize an arbitrary number of houses and house homeless people in them, but rather that homelessness is both a choice that we've made as a society and as government policy.

We absolutely have the wealth that we could choose not to have homelessness in the country. And it's a stain on our society that we choose to have homelessness.

[refurb]

Well, as you point out, assuming the SF stats apply to the entire US is a stretch.

But regardless, do you think the only reason why people are homeless is because they can't afford a home? They did a survey in SF and 60%+ were homeless due to mental health and/or drug and alcohol issues.

Building more houses won't fix that.

[ncallaway]

It won’t. But it sure will help a lot.

Housing First approaches have found much better outcomes for mental health treatment, and addiction treatment.

It’s so hard to address mental health issues with a population that’s homeless. Simple things like weekly visits with a therapist become much much more difficult. Keeping medication safe and secure is much more feasible when someone has stable housing.

You’re absolutely right that housing people won’t necessarily fix all their problems. But it makes those other problems much easier to address, and leads to better outcomes [1].

And it can drive down other costs (like healthcare costs specifically) to the point that it’s cheaper [2].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2916946/

[2] https://www.bluecrossmafoundation.org/publication/preventive...

[WalterBright]

Reminds me of the figure that made headlines a few years back - "50% of Corporations Paid No Income Tax!!!"

There was much outrage, until the IRS said that the reason was that 50% of corporations lost money. Corporations are taxed on profits, not losses.

[enraged_camel]

They "lost money" because they moved their profits to their subsidiaries abroad, where it is either not taxed, or taxed at much lower rates.

[refurb]

No, not in this case. They literally made no profit.

[trasz2]

Except those losses are often purely virtual.

[bennysonething]

Reducing what you call investor speculation us very likely to also reduce investment in building houses. I want house builders to speculate on building homes. The profit incentive drives to create more homes. This is a good thing.

[CaptainNegative]

Isn't that ratio being high a good thing? For every person that becomes housed, that figure goes up.

[ozim]

Simply giving people homes is not a solution for homelessness.

It is much more complex problem. Homeless people need more help than just giving them flat or even a room.

[Fargren]

I have a hard time reconciling this comment. If you gave each homeless person a house/apartment, in what way wouldn't you have solved homelessness? Are you saying many/most of them would abandon, destroy or otherwise not use those houses?

[nathanaldensr]

Many people--perhaps the majority, even--are not homeless simply because they ran out of money to pay for housing; instead, they are homeless because they made life choices that led to them not being able to hold a job and pay for housing, or they have mental health issues that make it difficult for them to participate in a society where only those best able to adapt can afford good housing.

[ozim]

I like wording as in my opinion you managed to write it in a way where people are not to blame for their choices.

Yes they made choices in life that led them to not be able to hold a job and pay for housing - but to say it was "bad choices" one need context of their lives to judge that and in addition it might be the case that choice was made for them and they could not do much about it.

[ozim]

Maybe many would not destroy or abandon more like neglect or facilitate illicit activities. There is a lot of social work to be done but no one wants to pay for it.

There were (I think still are in many places) projects where municipality in Europe would create social housing and putting let's say "not that lucky people" in one place does not help but creates its own problems. Where just providing flats was not enough because later no one had time do social work or money to pay social workers.

I can say as a kid I was living in such a project, all of the "normal-city" people would refer to us as "special place" or "street of magic". Many people made their lives better or at least make it stable there. Some managed to burn down their flats creating problems for their neighbors. Then there was loads of shady stuff going on.

[JamesianP]

Are these houses or apartments?

I don't see a problem with these real estate developers that are building and managing large apartments complexes themselves. Seems like they're doing a lot to add supply at the lower end. Even if they do maintain a certain vacancy rate.

[throwaway9870]

Giving a non-functional person a house would be a great way to destroy it.