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San Francisco has 100,000 vacant homes and 10,000 homeless people. [1] https://sf.curbed.com/2019/3/21/18276227/vacancy-rate-san-jose-san-francisco-lendingtree

San Francisco has 100,000 vacant homes and 10,000 homeless people. [1] https://sf.curbed.com/2019/3/21/18276227/vacancy-rate-san-jose-san-francisco-lendingtree https://sf.curbed.com/2019/3/21/18276227/vacancy-rate-san-jo... [2] https://abc7news.com/society/homeless-population-history-in-bay-area/5260657/ https://abc7news.com/society/homeless-population-history-in-...

wonnage 7y ago
Did you even read your source? 100k includes Oakland and Hayward. also, did you seriously think that the problem with homelessness is that they didn't have a house to stay in?
- newshorts 7y ago
  We should always be respectful to one another.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
epistasis 7y ago
Though you messed up the basic numbers, I think that the larger point needs addressing. Why are these homes vacant? Should people be allowed to take a month of vacation without losing their home? Is it ok for an apartment or house to be empty for a few months in between residents? One month in between tenants every two years is more than a 4% vacancy rate. What should the vacancy rate be? And what if in addition to housing the homeless we also want to house workers with unreasonable commutes? Every single person I know who has raise this X vacant homes and <X homeless has not bothered to ask these very basic questions. We need more homes. 25% more than we currently have, in the high demand areas. We don't need hem in Detroit or Stockton, we need them next to jobs. And we need to stop the profiteering home owners who speculate on the value of their homes by blocking others from living close to them.
- fragmede 7y ago
  Obviously there will be some time between renters where units will sit vacant, but that's not the issue. Units are vacant because landlords don't want to rent them out for various reasons. Totally different situation! So, during this housing crunch units sit vacant and very little supply is being added. Sure, owning property means they're allowed to do whatever they want with it (within reason), but we're also free to complaint about the situation. As to why landlords leave units empty; rent control. Rent control and strong renters protections, combined with dramatically increasing market rate, means landlords will get more money if they keep a unit empty for a year.
  - epistasis 7y ago
    > Units are vacant because landlords don't want to rent them out for various reasons. Totally different situation! Are they? I don't see much of the Bay Area but I haven't notice many vacancies at all, and the rates overall are low from what I've seen, something like 5%. I'm all for vacancy taxes, and actively looking to see how to get one passed in my city. But I don't think it's going to do much other than provide a revenue stream for homeless services, like Oakland's Measure W. I can't see them helping with the housing situation based on these sorts of low vacancy rates. We need 25% more housing than we currently have, and a 0% vacancy rate is pretty much impossible and a horrible situation for renters, so I would hate to see the vacancy rate go any lower.
- rmrfrmrf 7y ago
  LA and Boston did this and now just have vacant high-rises to show for it. And, really, greedy homeowners are the least of our worries compared to real-estate developers and landlords. I've seen the idea of a vacancy tax thrown around. Not sure how effective it would be, but might be worth trying.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - epistasis 7y ago
    For a city of 4 million people, LA is building something like 9 thousand apartments [1]. That's not a 25% increase in the number of homes, that's nothing at all. It doesn't cover the number of births, the number of immigrants. Building that few homes is a plan to displaced people from the city. It's time to stop treating housing as if numbers don't matter, and the only thing that matters is our feelings about seeing a crane. There is a massive housing shortage, and people that deny it are just as fact-free as climate deniers. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/d0a9wb/top_20_us_metros_by_projected_new_apartments/ https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/d0a9wb/top_2...
zelly 7y ago
If only apartments were 5k instead of 6k, then all the homeless would have houses.
aaronbwebber 7y ago
That's at best a misunderstanding of what that means, and a less charitable reading of your comment would be that it's deliberately misleading. "San Francisco" refers to the metro area which includes a much larger area. That includes 28K homes that are on the market right now. When people have studied why homes are vacant, another substantial fraction of it is homes being remodeled or otherwise uninhabitable. That's very much NOT 100,000 livable houses sitting around being owned by speculators. A much better way to look at it is vacancy rate. SF's vacancy rate is around 5%, which is very low and indicates that nearly all of the housing stock is being used. For a lot of the same reasons that a 0% unemployment rate is not possible, it's not possible to have a 0% vacancy rate, and in practice 5% is about as low as you can get.
- masonic 7y ago
  refers to the metro area which includes a much larger area No, it doesn't, because that larger area isn't famously dense. Famously dense clearly indicates SF proper, and only part of SF is densely populated.
masonic 7y ago
From 1: "Famously dense San Francisco also performed pretty well, coming in at No. 45 with 5.61 percent. That’s a little over 100,000 empty units." That's a crock. That computes to 1.78 million units in SF. That overstates the number of units by a factor of at least 3!

wonnage 7y ago

Did you even read your source? 100k includes Oakland and Hayward. also, did you seriously think that the problem with homelessness is that they didn't have a house to stay in?

newshorts 7y ago
We should always be respectful to one another.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

epistasis 7y ago

Though you messed up the basic numbers, I think that the larger point needs addressing. Why are these homes vacant? Should people be allowed to take a month of vacation without losing their home? Is it ok for an apartment or house to be empty for a few months in between residents? One month in between tenants every two years is more than a 4% vacancy rate. What should the vacancy rate be? And what if in addition to housing the homeless we also want to house workers with unreasonable commutes? Every single person I know who has raise this X vacant homes and <X homeless has not bothered to ask these very basic questions. We need more homes. 25% more than we currently have, in the high demand areas. We don't need hem in Detroit or Stockton, we need them next to jobs. And we need to stop the profiteering home owners who speculate on the value of their homes by blocking others from living close to them.

fragmede 7y ago
Obviously there will be some time between renters where units will sit vacant, but that's not the issue. Units are vacant because landlords don't want to rent them out for various reasons. Totally different situation! So, during this housing crunch units sit vacant and very little supply is being added. Sure, owning property means they're allowed to do whatever they want with it (within reason), but we're also free to complaint about the situation. As to why landlords leave units empty; rent control. Rent control and strong renters protections, combined with dramatically increasing market rate, means landlords will get more money if they keep a unit empty for a year.
- epistasis 7y ago
  > Units are vacant because landlords don't want to rent them out for various reasons. Totally different situation! Are they? I don't see much of the Bay Area but I haven't notice many vacancies at all, and the rates overall are low from what I've seen, something like 5%. I'm all for vacancy taxes, and actively looking to see how to get one passed in my city. But I don't think it's going to do much other than provide a revenue stream for homeless services, like Oakland's Measure W. I can't see them helping with the housing situation based on these sorts of low vacancy rates. We need 25% more housing than we currently have, and a 0% vacancy rate is pretty much impossible and a horrible situation for renters, so I would hate to see the vacancy rate go any lower.
rmrfrmrf 7y ago
LA and Boston did this and now just have vacant high-rises to show for it. And, really, greedy homeowners are the least of our worries compared to real-estate developers and landlords. I've seen the idea of a vacancy tax thrown around. Not sure how effective it would be, but might be worth trying.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- epistasis 7y ago
  For a city of 4 million people, LA is building something like 9 thousand apartments [1]. That's not a 25% increase in the number of homes, that's nothing at all. It doesn't cover the number of births, the number of immigrants. Building that few homes is a plan to displaced people from the city. It's time to stop treating housing as if numbers don't matter, and the only thing that matters is our feelings about seeing a crane. There is a massive housing shortage, and people that deny it are just as fact-free as climate deniers. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/d0a9wb/top_20_us_metros_by_projected_new_apartments/ https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/d0a9wb/top_2...

zelly 7y ago

If only apartments were 5k instead of 6k, then all the homeless would have houses.

aaronbwebber 7y ago

That's at best a misunderstanding of what that means, and a less charitable reading of your comment would be that it's deliberately misleading. "San Francisco" refers to the metro area which includes a much larger area. That includes 28K homes that are on the market right now. When people have studied why homes are vacant, another substantial fraction of it is homes being remodeled or otherwise uninhabitable. That's very much NOT 100,000 livable houses sitting around being owned by speculators. A much better way to look at it is vacancy rate. SF's vacancy rate is around 5%, which is very low and indicates that nearly all of the housing stock is being used. For a lot of the same reasons that a 0% unemployment rate is not possible, it's not possible to have a 0% vacancy rate, and in practice 5% is about as low as you can get.

masonic 7y ago
refers to the metro area which includes a much larger area No, it doesn't, because that larger area isn't famously dense. Famously dense clearly indicates SF proper, and only part of SF is densely populated.

masonic 7y ago

From 1: "Famously dense San Francisco also performed pretty well, coming in at No. 45 with 5.61 percent. That’s a little over 100,000 empty units." That's a crock. That computes to 1.78 million units in SF. That overstates the number of units by a factor of at least 3!