Homeless and Empty Homes -- an American Travesty

About 3.5 million US residents (about 1% of the population), including 1.35 million children, have been homeless for a significant period of time. Over 37,000 homeless individuals (including 16,000 children) stay in shelters in New York every night. This information was gathered by the Urban Institute, but actual numbers might be higher.

Fox Business estimates, there are 18.9 million vacant homes across the country.

3.5 million people without homes; 18.9 million homes without residents.

While an array of legal and logistical obstacles present themselves, the math is staggering. It's time to sort out the regulations and rates that would facilitate the solution: turning empty houses into homes for those in need.

While subprime loans have justly captured much of the ink as the culprit, overdevelopment is a major factor in the dramatic number of vacancies there are today. These are not just the homes of people who took on a mortgage they couldn't afford; these are newly constructed houses without a buyer on the horizon. It's not about taking a residence from someone who can't pay his or her bills and giving it to another person who can't make payments either, it's about using resources we have in excess.

I've been in real estate development for quite some time, enough to know that regardless of which political party is in charge, the market will follow the same cycle: demand, saturation and then glut. A suburb will start to attract homeowners, developers will react by building new homes in that area, and inevitably the supply will far outpace the demand. I've seen it happen time and time again. Usually the cycle ends through absorption, after a lull the homes are eventually sold and the train starts rolling again. However, with the current economic climate, we appear poised to remain in the glut portion of the cycle for an inordinate amount of time.

Houses are unlike most products; they generally don't depreciate with time and use. A house will not suffer from wear and tear the way a car will. Actually, the opposite is true. An empty residence will quickly go to seed. If you lived in a neighborhood with an abandoned house you'll know what I mean. Without someone to take care of it, a property will decline steeply. But with someone living in the house...actually taking care of them...well, that's a far better situation. No one benefits from an empty house.

I'm not advocating giving houses away -- such a move would create a host of political and fiscal problems -- but government should be working toward a solution to match up the empty homes with those who need a roof to live under.

A homeless population equivalent to the size of Los Angeles is unacceptable, and with over five times as many empty houses, we have not only a moral obligation but also an economic imperative to come up with a creative way to fix this travesty.

 

Comments

[coloagnt]

08:08 PM on 09/05/2010

Dream on...
While I could not agree with you more, it is never going to happen.

[Y3rMawm]

05:25 PM on 08/27/2010

If the Gummint would just get the h3// out of the way, prices for these homes would fall to affordability levels. We've tried the heavy hand of government method for 80 years, getting progressively heavier along the way. The market is now saying prices must fall, and they will despite the machinations of the busy-body-do-gooders in DC.

[Y3rMawm]

05:21 PM on 08/27/2010

"Fox Business estimates, there are 18.9 million vacant homes across the country."

Oh Noes!! HuffPo quoting Fox Biz stats? Next thing you know, dogs will be sleeping with cats.

[urbanguerilla]

05:06 PM on 08/27/2010

Lets give them houses then, no strings attached? And they would treat them wonderful, having no skin of their own in the game? Nothing could go wrong there.. Blow back nation, indeed..

[willshetterly]

02:41 PM on 09/07/2010

If you think people shouldn't be given things, you should also think people shouldn't inherit things. I think humanity is one family, so everyone should inherit. Yes, give people houses with no strings attached.

[Sarah Morrigan]

02:44 PM on 08/27/2010

Important: shelter figures are unreliable since it does not account for those who are not in the shelter system. For a real number multiply it by 5 to 20 depending on which city you are in. I think the government should start seizing vacant houses and dormant properties left and right -- they can invoke humanitarian emergency to gain that authority.

[jaybeejayarh]

11:15 PM on 08/26/2010

Frannie Mea and Freddie Mac were in trouble prior to 2000 do to miss management as a federal Entity, we were warned repeatedly by President Bush about these twos insolvancy from 2001 until 2007 when the bubble finally burst causeing shock waves in every financial institution and this was all fortold by people some twenty years ago saying that the teaching in our highrer indoctrination campusses of get yours at the cost of others who are more gullible. I know because that was what they were teaching me in Business classes. It is precisely why I changed my major in the end.

[jaybeejayarh]

10:41 PM on 08/26/2010

The travesty here is that Frannie Mea and Freddie Mac lent mortgages to people who could not afford them atleast not the houses they were trying to buy. The two entities Franie Mea, and Freddie Mac should have advised these unfortunate people better helping them buy the houses they could have afforded and there would have been no chrisis now.

[O K]

12:37 AM on 08/27/2010

That is, perhaps, the biggest lie told about the housing crisis. The reality is, greed compelled banks and other lenders to sell high-risk mortgages to people who qualified for traditional mortgages. Think about it...why should real estate professionals sell "normal" mortgages to trustful, unsuspecting people when they could make a fortune selling them "exotic", highly profitably ones?

Granted, some people should not have been approved for a mortgage loan. But, when making lots of money is your only goal, who cares about details like that?

[Y3rMawm]

05:33 PM on 08/27/2010

Greed compels all human action. The danger lies in greed not being checked by failure. This is precisely what Fanron/Fredron represented...commoditized moral hazard, backed by the infinitely deep pockets of the US taxpayer.

[Asia Bizsetup]

02:17 PM on 08/26/2010

Many of these people are not long-term homeless they became overwhelmed by many different economic factors. Your emotional, reactionary bias speaks volumes and so does your lack of anything concrete to solve "long-term solutions to problems we face." I guess you missed the part about how these empty homes deteriorate, lose value rapidly the longer they're empty, not to mention bring the value of occupied homes down. Open your eyes.

-GAL of www.rikvin.com

[urbanguerilla]

05:11 PM on 08/27/2010

And moving homeless people into them will hold the property value? Whom might pay the property tax on it then? And we can presume your neighborhood is in consenses on this? As well, we can assume even though your homeless friends have no skin in the game, they will keep the property up?
O.k, can't see any blowback on this plan, move 'em in..

[rtb61]

05:54 AM on 08/26/2010

Americans cheered on a president who made decisions 'from the gut' and that president basically proclaimed flatulent thinking as superior to science. The American public routinely attacks intellectualism when ever it gives them answers they don't want to hear and then cheers anybody that attacks those answers. The accepts completely and utterly empty rhetoric, like, 'yeah, we will make things better by gosh darn it by simply making things better, you betcha', giggle wink as somehow being a solution to their problems.

[Sarah Dees Art]

05:41 PM on 08/25/2010

Mr. Bronson clearly stated, "I'm not advocating giving houses away". It's a knee-jerk reaction to say right away that slackers, drug users, etc. will be "given" houses while other people must work to pay for them. I've long thought this was a good idea. I've worked hard all my life, paid taxes, done a ton of volunteer work to contribute to my community. Now, I'm facing losing my home to foreclosure because I'm a divorced mother, and I had to battle colorectal cancer recently, which made it impossible for me to work for a year. Bad side effects due to chemo and radiation went on for another couple of years. I'm really having a tough time getting back on my feet financially, finding a job, coming back from cancer in this economy. I'm one of the "new homeless", people who have job skills, college education, and are highly motivated. Life can bring hard circumstances, and there doesn't seem to be anywhere to go for help with housing. I run a cancer group online. Do you have any idea how many cancer survivors have to sell their homes to pay for treatment, or have them lost to foreclosure? These are good people who have lost everything, totally wiped out financially because they happened to get sick. We need a creative program to help people work their way back from illness and this would be a great help.

[isjois]

03:38 PM on 08/26/2010

Well said. Nobody should lose their home because they get sick. Thank you for sharing your story.

[lightningbolt]

04:57 PM on 08/25/2010

Homeless people should just take over empty homes. If they don't help themselves, nobody will. The government is too concerned with the profits of the megabanks who own the empty homes.

[Aneesia]

04:37 PM on 08/25/2010

Well, we could always create jobs by bringing them back home and penalizing those companies that have sent them overseas. Then people would again have good paying jobs and could afford to buy a house.. Of course I doubt if Congress gives a damn since they are the ones that passed the laws to allow such a travesty to occur...with corporate $$ of course.

[urbanguerilla]

05:17 PM on 08/27/2010

Given that Walmart, and Home Depot, the first and second largest retail importers of chinese products in the country, had double digit profit growth, in the second quarter, maybe you should get american consumers on board with you, before you " penalize " anything..

[calihere]

04:11 PM on 08/25/2010

Those empty homes once belonged to someone, who lost it in foreclosure, they put their hard earned money into those home, if anyone should get a home it should be those who lost the home.

[urbanguerilla]

05:19 PM on 08/27/2010

Yes, lets completely eliminate any consequence, for anything, then. Why make that family pay anything in the first place then?
Free money for everyone, forever!!

[calihere]

04:04 PM on 08/25/2010

Havent' you been reading about squatters, those empy homes are being occupied by people. These people set up residence and live there as long as possible. Across the street a couple of families, relative to the owner who foreclosed on the home.

[martintillier]

03:16 PM on 08/25/2010

Housing co-operatives whereby private investment buys houses to rent to legally established co-ops that rent them out to welfare recipients as well as destitute families and individuals who can earn their rent by becoming welfare recipients and by the maintenance of said properties and their surrounding neighbourhoods. Instead of welfare prisons, welfare housing, paid for by the co-ops, who, ideally would be able to raise funds from any legitimate sources and by any legitimate means. Instead of the money that goes to maintaining the homeless shelters being used in that inefficient way, the same money could be used to establish and run the co-ops. Tenants that successfully run their housing and maintain it and their neighbourhoods physical infrastructure, could graduate to working for the co-ops, earning enough to move on to a regular rented property thereby creating a vacant property for the inevitable new tenants of the co-op housing. The savings generated by the subsequent reduction in crime and other problems associated with homelessness could easily be ploughed into the co-op system and the welfare-rent-check could be paid direct to the co-op or to the actual owners of the property, cutting down on paperwork and therefore cost, and cutting out the temptation of tenants to spend the rent-check on something else A federal housing bill that legally obliged both co-op and tenant could ensure the owners would never have to worry about their property being vacant and profitless.