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To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

multifamilydive.com

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Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#71

Post by slt2021 »

DoctorNick wrote: post #11
arbuge wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vacant != abandoned. Right from the article you linked, 2nd parg: "But this doesn’t mean millions of abandoned and dilapidated homes are withering away in the suburbs. Vacant homes can be unoccupied for many reasons beyond being uninhabitable. For example, a house can be vacant because it’s still on the market to be sold or rented or it’s a vacation home not currently in use."

Yes, we know. They should be expropriated.

pay market rate for the house and do whatever you want with it

Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#72

Post by TedShiller »

mperham wrote: post #26
bluedino wrote: post #6

We're in luck. There are 16 million abandoned homes in the US https://www.lendingtree.com/home/mortgage/vacancy-rates-stud... Easily takes care of the half a million people experiencing homelessness as well.

Those houses, by in large, are not in places where people want to live. Per the first Key Finding in your article, are you going to force the homeless to move to Alaska, Maine or Vermont?

nobody is forcing

Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#73

Post by marcinzm »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #64
californical wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can argue that those homes wouldn’t have existed in the first place without wealthy people to commission them for vacation homes. After all, homes aren’t just built for no reason, but because someone is willing to buy it

How does that argument lead to more unhoused people having homes?

How does having fewer homes in total lead to more unhoused people having homes?

In these comments you seem more concerned about lowering the number of vacant homes than lowering the number of homeless people. I feel that's the wrong approach.

Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#74

Post by junofan »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #64
californical wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can argue that those homes wouldn’t have existed in the first place without wealthy people to commission them for vacation homes. After all, homes aren’t just built for no reason, but because someone is willing to buy it

How does that argument lead to more unhoused people having homes?

The argument is that vacation homes wouldn’t exist without vacationers, not that demand for vacation homes would lead to homeless people owning houses.

Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#75

Post by TedShiller »

kvetching wrote: post #9

Apartments are terrible for people. Why not talk about needs for homes? Why can't America make small 2 bedroom homes anymore as seen in 1950s suburbs. It's either a mansion or an apartment now for new housing.

Apartments are great. Maybe you haven't been to Europe where most people live in apartments

Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#76

Post by bitwize »

arbuge wrote: post #8
bluedino wrote: post #6

We're in luck. There are 16 million abandoned homes in the US https://www.lendingtree.com/home/mortgage/vacancy-rates-stud... Easily takes care of the half a million people experiencing homelessness as well.

Vacant != abandoned. Right from the article you linked, 2nd parg: "But this doesn’t mean millions of abandoned and dilapidated homes are withering away in the suburbs. Vacant homes can be unoccupied for many reasons beyond being uninhabitable. For example, a house can be vacant because it’s still on the market to be sold or rented or it’s a vacation home not currently in use."

If vacation homes are lying around unused while homeless people huddle in the streets, it means not enough expropriation from the rich is going on.

Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#77

Post by deepsun »

jlmorton wrote: post #68
deepsun wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broken compared to what? Homelessness is an ancient problem, noone was able to solve that yet. We need to look and take lessons from systems that at least somewhat helped the problem. Of course, adjusting for the US situation, which might be just different. Compared, to, say Eastern Europe, I feel like US can just afford having so many homeless (e.g. free food and medicine for homeless in California). In many other c…

> Homelessness is an ancient problem, noone was able to solve that yet. Out of curiosity, you do realize there are lots of countries without homelessness, right?

Interesting, I can only think of three cases: 1. Homeless were killed (e.g. nazi germany). 2. It's a family honor matter, like in Caucasus countries. There are no retirement homes as well, as every family takes the burden of taking care of their elder, because it would be very unhonorable. Although I still doubt they have 0.0% homelessness. 3. Official numbers don't reflect reality.

Really curious to learn other ways to solve the problem. What those other countries you mean?

Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#78

Post by tedunangst »

delecti wrote: post #65
tedunangst wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I move for work and can't sell the old house before my start date, I just lose it? What a system.

Do you think all of the millions of owned but unoccupied houses are just "whoops it took me a couple extra weeks to sell"? It's ludicrous to suggest it's a significant fraction of the total, or that the suggestion is to require the immediate forfeit of any house when the owner moved out.

Well, let's see the text of the proposed law and then I'll tell you whether it's ludicrous or not.

Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#79

Post by tedunangst »

bredren wrote: post #57
jsnk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think this should be done?

Strong financial incentives to not possess unoccupied homes. i.e. second homes are heavily taxed, out of state second homes are even more heavily taxed. Homes under management for long term housing or resale kept in unoccupied states longer than reasonably expected incur penalties. Homes kept unoccupied due to being priced out of reasonable band may do so for limited duration--every loophole has to be addressed with…

So if my wife moves to Boston to advance her career, we get taxed like crazy? By who? But if we get divorced, it's all good? Or will it be fraud for us to keep dating after the divorce?

Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#80

Post by jahewson »

chrisseaton wrote: post #34
hahaxdxd123 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because more and more of us want walkability and all the amenities that come with it. None of my age ~25 friends have plans about moving to the suburbs, but we are disappointed at how NYC rent increases mean we will struggle to afford a nice place in Manhattan.

People in the US don’t get there’s a middle way between high-rise megacity and suburban wasteland. In the UK I live in a walkable community of detached homes. There’s villages, towns, dense suburbs of cities. The US used to be famous for small town main streets!

There’s some of this on the East coast. But settlement patterns in the US reflect the era in which it was settled. No Roman roads. No Viking villages. No medieval Monasteries or Castles. No stately homes. The U.K. boomed in the Victorian era and is dominated by that kind of housing but the US did not boom until the post-war period so is dominated by car-centric housing.

I grew up in an English village that, apart from a handful of Tudor buildings, was entirely Victorian growth. I imagine that had that growth occurred in the 1950s then it would be a very different place. Indeed by the 1990s almost all the shops had closed and we were effectively a suburb of our local town.

Here in California they used to have main streets but they ripped them all out in the boom, replacing them with thoughtless concrete modernity. Then those all failed when malls were invented and if you’re lucky your city tore it out and you’ve got some fake 90s interpretation of corporate utopia as your downtown.

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