Based on currently available numbers, there are about 31 vacant housing units for every homeless person in the U.S.
If we had any sense, there would be crazy high taxes on unoccupied housing. There could be short term exceptions for things like remodeling and finding tenants. But it should be prohibitively expensive to sit on empty houses and apartments while people struggle to find affordable housing.
I have a family member that has empty houses. It’s immoral, and severely fucked up. He doesn’t give a shit and thinks he’s earned the right. He treats them like stocks so far as I can tell.
Take it a step further - decommodify all housing.
There is no valid reason why a handful of people should be allowed to own more than they could ever use, specifically so they can use the surplus to extort massive profits from others just trying to survive.
Housing is a human right, it’s time we demand it be treated as such.
I like the idea and I’ve advocated for it in the past. There’s one problem though- what about people who need to rent? Someone needs to own that property.
That is a manufactured problem.
How do you deal with it for now?
Social housing.
Government owned is the best we can do (and it has been done relatively successfully in the past) but just like all other housing, it has ended up being commodified for profit, because our governments are capitalist, and will always prioritise profit over anything else, which is why it’d only ever be a superficial solution.
In the long run?
Abolish capitalism and its artificial scarcity and commodification of all human rights (not only housing but food, water, healthcare…).
I’m an anarchist, in the future I want there is no money, so renting isn’t a thing, people have their own homes, and I suppose there will be communal property that would act as housing for people who for whatever reason aren’t there for the long term, and who would contribute whatever they were able to the maintenance and upkeep of the residence and/or community, but there really should be no need for anyone to “rent”, because no one will “own”, and permanent secure and stable housing wouldn’t be out of anyone’s reach.
