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> What is an ‘empty home’? >An empty home is what the government refers to as a ‘vacant housing unit’, which, for whatever reason, is not occupied by a citizen
by wbsss4412 5y ago
> What is an ‘empty home’?
>An empty home is what the government refers to as a ‘vacant housing unit’, which, for whatever reason, is not occupied by a citizen. This can include vacation homes but also properties which have sold but are not occupied.
Not sure this implies what you believe it to imply.
If you actually look at the data they’ve mapped out in that article, you’d see that California actually has a shockingly low number of “empty houses” per homeless person - the lowest in the nation. Mississippi has 166, Indiana 151, and West Virginia 128!
- onion2k 5y agoThe point is that clearly there are enough homes, they're just not being distributed and occupied by people properly.
- wbsss4412 5y agoExcept your point isn’t at all correct. A home that has no one living in it because it is in the process of changing hands(sale, looking for a renter) is not something that signifies a distribution problem. Your number overstates the actual number that are habitable by those without houses by a unknown, but likely very large factor. Additionally, California is HUGE. Housing location isn’t fungible. You can’t address Bay Area homelessness with empty houses in Redding. The “we already have enough houses” argument is a gross oversimplification, that constantly gets rolled out by people who think the status quo is ok, when it clearly is not.