America is the only country in the world where 700 billionaires can become $1.7 trillion richer during the pandemic & pay a lower tax rate than a nurse while 46 million owe $1.7 trillion in student debt, 113 million struggle to pay for healthcare & 600,000 are homeless.

Unpopular Fact: There are 16 million vacant homes in the US

You can find the same or a comparable number many many other places.

In the Silicon Valley, the San Jose Mercury news published an article in January 2020 that there were anywhere from 2-6 vacant houses per homeless person in the Bay Area...

Yes, there are a variety of reasons that lead a house to be considered vacant, but I knew many many families that had one house in the bay and one somewhere else.

Saying that there's a housing shortage is patently false despite everyone buying into it.

The problem isn't that.

The problem is that we let investors - individuals and companies - buy up available housing.

I don't blame some people for selling to Berkshire Hathaway's real estate business if they're getting paid insanely well to do so.

But there will always be a housing shortage as long as we allow those with money to make a significant gain off of hoarding property while many go without a home.

Build more housing and the prices aren't going down. Everything from inflation outpacing salaries, to an impossible job market, to those with money outbidding those looking for a home, will cause this to forever be a problem that we blame a shortage for it.

build 10x as many homes and you'll just get wealthy investors and companies to buy them up and get what they can out of it.

Also, it's important to note that some homeless people are homeless by choice. This isn't the "well those choices that you made (indirectly) chose this". No, these people deliberately choose to not have a home.

But for those who didn't make that choice. For the single mother of 4 living out of her van (good friend of mine), for that ex career professional who got laid off in a downturn and couldn't get a job, for countless new grads getting screwed in the job market, there is literally double the number of homes needed to cover our homeless problem across the US.

And that's EVEN IN POPULAR AREAS.

(Louis Rossman tackled this about vacant storefronts sitting empty for over a decade. People will write it off as a business expense instead of renting at a lower price than they could get. Same goes for housing. It's fucking stupid. And don't quote me "basic economics", if it were that simple we wouldn't be here.)

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