Even taking you at your word, just building more houses wouldn’t solve the problem unless the other existing issues are solved first. There are already more than enough houses, several times more unoccupied houses than there are homeless people in fact. If you just make it easier to build more, those new houses will just end up in the same situation as the existing lot: bought up by corporate groups as investments, held ransom by landlords, and generally NOT made available to consumers who want to buy a home.
So yeah. You’re gonna see some pushback if you’re only making that second argument, all that will do is make the investor class richer without solving any problems.
Not sure if it’s decent to reply on old threads here…
Anyways,
You’re right. The "millions of empty houses’’ argument is 100% misinformation. So many of those empty houses are either unlivable or in the middle if nowhere.
![[meme] Stop fighting over scraps and build more](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/597bdd5c-1f49-406f-8e8f-03980c02f47c.webp){kind=link}
Even taking you at your word, just building more houses wouldn’t solve the problem unless the other existing issues are solved first. There are already more than enough houses, several times more unoccupied houses than there are homeless people in fact. If you just make it easier to build more, those new houses will just end up in the same situation as the existing lot: bought up by corporate groups as investments, held ransom by landlords, and generally NOT made available to consumers who want to buy a home.
So yeah. You’re gonna see some pushback if you’re only making that second argument, all that will do is make the investor class richer without solving any problems.
A huge chunk of them are not where people want/need to live though.
Vacant housing in Detroit doesn’t help people living in SF
Not sure if it’s decent to reply on old threads here…
Anyways,
You’re right. The "millions of empty houses’’ argument is 100% misinformation. So many of those empty houses are either unlivable or in the middle if nowhere.
Oh The Urbanity! breaks it down well.
Whether intentional or not, this myth has pit progressives against policies they should champion and it’s so damn frustrating.