Would love to start by commandeering the apartments and other housing units that are already here, and sitting empty.

Enacting long-term solutions to ensure an adequate supply of safe, accessible, and affordable housing is both necessary, and complicated. Let's do it! But let's start by saying that no one who lives here has to go unhoused (during a pandemic winter, of all times).

Empty condo? House sitting waiting for flippers to get to it? For now, we're going to turn them into housing. Your tenant just left and you're looking for a new one? Go ahead, but you can't raise the rent beyond what would have been allowed had the tenant stayed. Abandoned storefront being rented out for an exorbitant price that no one can afford? Welcome to our new community space.

None of this is fair to the owners, but then again it's much less damaging (and/or deadly) than the current situation, which isn't fair either, anyways. Let's err on the side of humaneness while we figure things out.