Political Memes

While I'm all for making it harder to just sit on housing, the "more empty homes than homeless" this, while technically true, is very misleading, and I wouldn't want to try to force unhoused folks into the empty homes without a lot more pruning.

In-demand places don't typically have much in the way of empty homes, as it doesn't typically make financial sense not to rent them out. Empty homes in places like this are generally in between tenants or on the market to be sold. Meanwhile, there are places with huge numbers of empty homes, typically because of population drain. The homes sit empty not because someone's hoarding them, but because people don't want to move to places like Cairo, Illinois.

The statistic, whilst technically true, doesn't take into account demographic and population changes. People want to live in places with vibrant economies and lots of job opportunities, and that's not typically where the huge supply of empty homes is. So we can't just redistribute our way out of this problem. Building, and especially infill in cities, is absolutely necessary in huge quantities.