• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    18 hours ago

    Nah, the main problem is still supply of new construction. We’ve been behind pretty much ever since Covid, and demand has only increased. That has much stronger explanatory power than whatever BlackRock is doing, especially since treasuries are interesting again.

    • DeadWorldWalking@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      There’s like 17 empty homes for every homeless person

      We’ve built thousands of new units in my city since covid and all of them are apartment complexities owned by megacorps or SFH bought instantly by private equity. The price just keeps going up.

      The amount of homes we build has no effect on price if all the big players just get to buy them and increase their ability to price fix

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        2 hours ago

        We’re (likely) at record lows for housing vacancy rates (census.gov report from 2022), and the vacancy rate doesn’t seem to have meaningfully increased with higher mortgage rates (updated data for 2024 seems to be about the same as that report).

        And even if we did have a higher vacancy rate, that wouldn’t have any correlation to the homeless population, since I imagine many if not most of these vacant properties are occasionally used for vacations and whatnot (could probably figure that out from the data linked above), meaning the owner wouldn’t be interested in having it be set up for use by homeless people, and they’re probably in areas with a lower homeless population anyway.

        The problem of housing for homeless people is completely separate from housing vacancy rates. People aren’t going homeless because there isn’t enough housing available, they’re going homeless because they can’t afford the housing that’s available. Making more housing available that homeless people can’t afford won’t solve anything, we need charities and government agencies to provide housing for free or very cheap.