There are 27 Empty Homes for Every Homeless Person

mozz , 1 month ago

I’m not sold on this as a metric because it’s comparing the ratio of two bad things

Like, if homelessness started going down, then we would have 50 empty homes for every homeless person. Oh no! Things got even more unequal!

Homelessness is bad + empty homes because of equity real estate are bad. Just bring them both down. We can still have 27 homes per person and there be 100 homeless people and 2,700 empty homes.

technocrit , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

if homelessness started going down, then we would have 50 empty homes for every homeless person.

Who cares? Who is upvoting this wacky math?!?

Imagine there’s one homeless person and 27 empty homes. If we put the homeless person in the home, there are zero homeless people and 26 empty homes. And we would have INFINITE empty houses for each homeless persons. What a tragic situation!

The point is not to adjust the ratio but to house people when there are 27 houses available for each person. I can’t believe I have to explain this.

mozz , 1 month ago

that there are 27 empty houses for each homeless person

And my point is that that doesn't tell you a thing about whether there is or isn't a problem.

It happens that, in the US, there is a problem (way too many homeless people and way too many empty houses), but computing the ratio of those two bad things is inherently a pointless activity. That's my point.

Archelon , 1 month ago

See, I figured the point wasn’t so much computing the ratio, but the simple idea that homeless people and empty homes shouldn’t co-exist.