this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 93 points 4 days ago (2 children)

No, it's the consequences of capitalism.

There are over 15 million empty houses in America, over 5 million of those are in the 50 largest metropolitan areas of the US.

770,000 people were counted as houseless in 2024.

Sure not every house is in great condition, and not every house is in a major city - but there is surely enough that people could use to if not house everyone, at the very least make a huge dent in that figure. The issue is people cannot afford to buy them because housing is seen as an industry not a basic life need.

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 24 points 4 days ago

Precisely. This is extreme inequity. There are plenty of resources to go around.

The future was stolen.

[–] arrow74@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You know I see this figure a lot, but I wonder how many of these are actually liveable.

My grandfather's old home is unoccupied, that's because the roof entirely collapsed. The county refuses to remove it from the property taxes. Based on all available records it's an unoccupied home, but it's a total loss in reality.

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 5 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Who knows, but you only need 5.13% to be in good condition to house everyone.

[–] fort_burp@feddit.nl 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Plus getting them all up to code is huge job creation, so it's win-win.

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Also many people would volunteer to help restore these places for people’s use if it was actually a legal option.

[–] fort_burp@feddit.nl 2 points 3 days ago

Maybe, but a local credit union could create the money as a loan and it gets spent into the economy for a socially necessary purpose, which, counter-intuitively, does much more good than volunteers (setting aside the idea that paid workers are more reliable than volunteers). Technical solutions for all our problems already exist, finding them is not the issue, the issue is the political will to enact these ideas, which is just not there as a result of class war (which imo has also created the conditions that you can't find enough people with the time & money to volunteer for this size task). My 2c.

[–] arrow74@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago

Oh yeah we certainly have that many homes ready to be occupied tomorrow

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 78 points 4 days ago (2 children)

There is enough housing. It sits unoccupied and sometimes disrepair.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 27 points 4 days ago (1 children)
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[–] BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Yes, though also some are in such economically depressed areas that you can barely get a job.

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

We also need to organize for clean public transit; in the meantime, there's often plenty in bustling areas, as well.

[–] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Lots of empty apartments are in luxury buildings right in the best parts of big cities.

Fully furnished too, just empty tax shelters to be traded back and forth by billionaires and their kids when they need cash.

We need to convince the desk staff and security in this buildings to help people squat in them indefinitely.

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 6 points 4 days ago

Knowing how poorly these employers tend to compensate the staff, they may be happy to accept roommates in the accommodations.

Which is a concern, but can largely be mitigated by encouraging work-from-home jobs. If people are able to reliably WFH, (and COVID proved that many jobs can be done entirely from home), then the local job market doesn’t tend to matter as much.

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 days ago

But a lot of them are in densely populated suburbs or cities, driven out by the artificially inflated rental costs. The owners would rather have a few units empty than lower the rent.

[–] Aljernon@lemmy.today 28 points 4 days ago

A lack of housing is not the problem most places. The problem is that housing shifted from being a place for people to live to a way for people to acquire "passive income". Hell, the very design of housing changed in a noticeable way: houses shifted from being homes to being feature laden investment vehicles.

[–] fort_burp@feddit.nl 14 points 3 days ago
[–] ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 36 points 4 days ago

That is not the consequence of enough housing. It's from wealth hoarding.

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 19 points 4 days ago

I'm not really buying the no housing thing now. The thing is, it turned into a commodity. If you just build more, then those with all the money (because that gap is pretty damn vast nowadays) will just buy and hold and rent them

Wait till air comes next, or some stupid ass shit.

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 34 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (6 children)
  • Crack down on price fixing
  • Don't let corporations run AirBNBs or similar
  • Don't let corporations own any rental building under approximately 10 units.
  • Don't let rental buildings have more than a low percentage of empty units for turn around. They have to lower the rent then. If it goes to $200/month, then so be it.

There are so many things to try, but Trickle Down Housing never works.

[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 22 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Don’t let corporations own single family homes. Drastically increase the tax rate for more than 3 houses by any single person. A landlords income is not producing anything useful, it’s stealing income from people actually providing society with something useful.

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 days ago

Drastically increase the tax rate for more than 3 houses by any single person.

I would say that it should start building the tax after one house and go drastic like you said on the 3rd.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

Ratcheting taxes for unoccupied houses and apartment units. Allow a grace period of one year, to allow for flips. But after that, every home you own after the first is considered unoccupied if it is vacant for more than three months of the year. And taxes on vacant homes become increasingly expensive as you own more and more of them.

Like the first vacant house you own may be near a normal tax rate, the second makes both more expensive, the third makes all three super expensive, etc… And these tax penalties should get expensive fast. Like up to (or even over) 100% if you’re sitting on more than like five or six properties. Then take the proceeds of these higher taxes, and put them towards first time homebuyer assistance programs. I’d even go so far as to say that renting a single family home shouldn’t totally eliminate the tax, only reduce it. This would solve the three largest issues with the housing market right now.

First, it solves the “sitting on vacant houses to drive up the price of rent” problem. Actively force landlords to keep their apartments and houses full, driving down the price of rent. If the unit is occupied, the tax is lower. And again, even the most expensive landlords should only be able to feasibly own three or four extra properties before the taxes get prohibitively expensive, even after being mitigated by occupation.

Second, it solves the “buying a dozen houses and only selling one of them” problem. Corporations do this to be able to game the market and drive up prices on the few they do sell. But by making it prohibitively expensive to sit on vacant houses, you preemptively wreck any kinds of profits they would make by sitting on them.

Third, it would allow for more low interest loans for first time home buyers, and could even be used to offset the potential downpayment costs.

But of course, this will basically never be implemented, because the lawmakers are all bribed by the corporations that own thousands of vacant homes.

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[–] bountygiver@lemmy.ml 6 points 4 days ago

hell yeah, rentals should be made prohibitively expensive to keep empty, if the city don't have the demand to rent it? Then you should sell it at a price people will buy in a short enough time.

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[–] dp@thebrainbin.org 28 points 4 days ago

Damn that backpack looking spacious af

[–] ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 17 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

IMO: do what Vienna is doing: state provided apartments and flats, competing with everyone else. Try price fixing now, corpos. If Vienna did not have this, it would be at the same level as other european metropolises.

Edit: typo

[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

2030: a tent

2050: a cardboard box

[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 13 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Residential housing shouldn't be owned by corporations. It should be built by them and then sold to individuals.

[–] Aljernon@lemmy.today 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

A co-op could handle it without much problem.

[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, anything that prevents the financialisation of residential housing floats my boat. In Iceland we have big corpos selling each other houses at over market price to increase the average m^2 price in an area. It's pretty bonkers.

[–] Aljernon@lemmy.today 2 points 2 days ago

In the US, money laundering accomplishes essentially the same thing.

[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 14 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

We have plenty of housing. The problem is its all tied up with money hoarders. There are several times the number of empty houses than there are homeless. If we got rid hedge fund scumbags ability to horde everything including single family dwellings it would go a long way toward fixing this inequity.

[–] SnarkoPolo@lemmy.world 16 points 4 days ago

Building it isn't the problem. My Republican shithole burb just bulldozed the last of our open space, to build 600 single family units starting in the "low one millions." Can't afford that? No problem. They're also building 2000 condos, starting in "the mid 500s."

Starting to see the real problem?

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 16 points 4 days ago (2 children)
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[–] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Haha

I was just watching a YT travelogue of a US guy in his 50s (Gen X) who was travelling the world frugally with a backpack because he can't afford rent in the US. He had some investments and spent less travelling then working and living in the US, so his investments have grown in the 3 yrs he's done this.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuNKV0CMgcVUiJNdA-JNlJA

Plent of US retirees in Cambodia for the same reaon, can't afford the US anymore.

[–] D_C@sh.itjust.works 7 points 4 days ago

After the embarrassment of the last ten years, and the ongoing embarrassment until the fat orange child rapist dies, then I'd say getting a backpack and leaving the Nazied States of America is probably the best move.

How about taxing owners of unoccupied homes?

[–] bajabound@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago

Obviously fake and misrepresented. The paint isn't peeling off that van.

[–] Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 6 points 4 days ago

Another cyberpunk come true scenario that involves absolutely no cool cybernetics

Can we get some information on what's the ratio of total houses/people in the country, from 1960 to today?

[–] Smart_Penicillin@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago

In Europe we have already achieved the backpack level. We are winning. 💪

[–] ObtuseDoorFrame@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 days ago

....you cross-posted from "Neoliberal" and tried to pass it off as a shitpost? For fucks sake. They're not even trying anymore. At least we don't have to look at a pedophile in this particular political post. Are the mods ever going to do something about this shit?

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago

The consequences of letting companies buy up residential homes.

[–] wander1236@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

There's plenty of housing, it's just not profitable to let people live there, so obviously it's better to just leave it all empty.

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

The backwards thing is, it probably actually is profitable, but we can’t see beyond the next quarter. We don’t understand that you can invest in your people.

I might have kids if I had the space for it. You know, future taxpayers.

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