Affordable housing crissis is spreading

[snikwahpn]

There's prob around 140 million housing units in the US. If 10% of those are vacant(the actual % is higher), that's 14 million empty housing units. Homeless numbers in the US range from 500k to upwards 3 million. Hard to find good numbers on low income housing, but prob around 5 million households get rent assistance. Not sure what my point is, but something to do with there's enough housing for everyone.

"There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed." - Mahatma Gandhi

There may be 140 million “housing units” in the US, but how many are occupied—and how many are not even habitable?  We live in Indianapolis, which is one of those cities that has ended up dough-nut shaped.  Most people actually live around the fringes, even in Marion County itself (like many big cities, the surrounding counties have been absorbed into the “metro area.”). There are a couple of trendy neighborhoods close to downtown, but there are a lot of empty houses in Center Township.  They are small houses, on small lots, with no driveways or garages.  The majority are run down, and the costs of fixing them up would be high—they’re old enough to have a lot of lead paint, bad plumbing (if the pipes haven’t been stolen—there was a lot of that in Indy 10 years ago)...etc.  The lots are small enough that if you tore one down, you would not be able to re-build under current setback rules—if you could get a permit to tear it down.  Indianapolis actually has more empty houses these days than Detroit—they just don’t make the news about it much.

Part of the problem is a lot of the older housing stock in some places is houses nobody wants, in places nobody wants to live in.  Another part is the high cost of building, both because of the labor shortage and because of the increased regulations, especially in the cities like Indy—it’s easier to build out in the surrounding counties.  They have their own issues, with HOAs and local zoning, but better than the central city.