4 ms·

This is such a disingenuous bit of info just juuuust skirts the boundary of outright lying. Sure, there are a bunch of "empty houses" in Detroit: which have the

This is such a disingenuous bit of info just juuuust skirts the boundary of outright lying. Sure, there are a bunch of "empty houses" in Detroit: which have the wiring ripped out of the walls, no functional plumbing, and probably need $50-100,000 of work before they're fit for habitation. Does that mean we should round up all the homeless people in the Bay Area, ship them to Detroit, and put them in decrepit shacks? Nonsense. Flag this article; it's a cheap trick to distract from the necessity of upzoning and permitting reform to get more houses built where people actually need them.

jeron 3y ago
> Does that mean we should round up all the homeless people in the Bay Area, ship them to Detroit, and put them in decrepit shacks? This could be an interesting idea with a program that incorporates sweat equity and provides assistance to rebuild these homes
- tptacek 3y ago
  People have thought about things like this. There's lots of hard problems, among them the reason these houses are vacant to begin with: there isn't a local economy that supports them, let alone the huge social services fabric that'd be required to get unhoused people in a position both to rehab houses(!) and then thrive in Detroit metro. Here it's worth remembering, just as a single data point, that most unhoused people in California are Californians. They didn't migrate to California to be homeless in the sun. You can't generally move them around the board like chess pieces.
- housemusicfan 3y ago
  Do you think the guy wearing his underwear outside his pants and muttering to himself is a candidate for "sweat equity"?
tptacek 3y ago
Yeah. It looks like you can roughly break vacant homes into thirds: * Vacation homes (ie, in places with only seasonal demand for housing) * Abandoned homes (due either to death & title issues, or condemnation) * Temporarily, transactionally vacant homes (currently up for sale, currently up for rent, or recently rented/sold and not yet occupied)
- legitster 3y ago
  For the actual census data HUD was using, they really just ask "does someone live at this address". But, like, yeah. No one is shocked that Detroit has tons of homeless and tons of abandoned houses.
legitster 3y ago
Yeah. If you actually take a step back and look at the trend from the HUD data, apartment vacancy rates have dropped down to about half of what they were during 2009, and homeowner vacancy rates are a third. https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/current/index.html https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/current/index.html This is just a "gotcha" data trick to distract from the fact that we are dealing with real supply constraints.
- lusus_naturae 3y ago
  I am confused because a lowered vacancy rate does not necessarily imply lack of homes for housing as the rate is not 0% or even approaching that. Lower vacancy rate is also a by-product of historically lower interest rates. If you scroll to the homelessness trends plot, the incidence of homelessness has decreased since 2007. Overall, I note that CA and NY seem to have especially egregious issues with homelessness, https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness/ https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homeless...
  - legitster 3y ago
    > the rate is not 0% or even approaching that 0% is an impossible number to hit. Even in a perfect world you need some fluidity in the market. For comparison, Japan is considered to have a fairly tight housing market and they still have a 13% vacancy rate. The US on average (which includes Detroit) is less than half of that. CA and NY have the worst problems with homelessness because they have the worst time adding new units. There are 4x as many college graduates in California every year than their are new homes or apartments being made.
Modified3019 3y ago
Yeah this is like those heartstring tugging “facts” that sum up food waste and compare it to a hunger statistic, as if it could all just get scrapped together and handed over in consumable condition to a group that also happens to be perfectly organized and located for mass distribution to.

jeron 3y ago

> Does that mean we should round up all the homeless people in the Bay Area, ship them to Detroit, and put them in decrepit shacks? This could be an interesting idea with a program that incorporates sweat equity and provides assistance to rebuild these homes

tptacek 3y ago
People have thought about things like this. There's lots of hard problems, among them the reason these houses are vacant to begin with: there isn't a local economy that supports them, let alone the huge social services fabric that'd be required to get unhoused people in a position both to rehab houses(!) and then thrive in Detroit metro. Here it's worth remembering, just as a single data point, that most unhoused people in California are Californians. They didn't migrate to California to be homeless in the sun. You can't generally move them around the board like chess pieces.
housemusicfan 3y ago
Do you think the guy wearing his underwear outside his pants and muttering to himself is a candidate for "sweat equity"?

tptacek 3y ago

Yeah. It looks like you can roughly break vacant homes into thirds: * Vacation homes (ie, in places with only seasonal demand for housing) * Abandoned homes (due either to death & title issues, or condemnation) * Temporarily, transactionally vacant homes (currently up for sale, currently up for rent, or recently rented/sold and not yet occupied)

legitster 3y ago
For the actual census data HUD was using, they really just ask "does someone live at this address". But, like, yeah. No one is shocked that Detroit has tons of homeless and tons of abandoned houses.

legitster 3y ago

Yeah. If you actually take a step back and look at the trend from the HUD data, apartment vacancy rates have dropped down to about half of what they were during 2009, and homeowner vacancy rates are a third. https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/current/index.html https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/current/index.html This is just a "gotcha" data trick to distract from the fact that we are dealing with real supply constraints.

lusus_naturae 3y ago
I am confused because a lowered vacancy rate does not necessarily imply lack of homes for housing as the rate is not 0% or even approaching that. Lower vacancy rate is also a by-product of historically lower interest rates. If you scroll to the homelessness trends plot, the incidence of homelessness has decreased since 2007. Overall, I note that CA and NY seem to have especially egregious issues with homelessness, https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness/ https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homeless...
- legitster 3y ago
  > the rate is not 0% or even approaching that 0% is an impossible number to hit. Even in a perfect world you need some fluidity in the market. For comparison, Japan is considered to have a fairly tight housing market and they still have a 13% vacancy rate. The US on average (which includes Detroit) is less than half of that. CA and NY have the worst problems with homelessness because they have the worst time adding new units. There are 4x as many college graduates in California every year than their are new homes or apartments being made.

Modified3019 3y ago

Yeah this is like those heartstring tugging “facts” that sum up food waste and compare it to a hunger statistic, as if it could all just get scrapped together and handed over in consumable condition to a group that also happens to be perfectly organized and located for mass distribution to.