The United States is struggling with a huge housing shortage – more than 4 million housing needs to meet demand. Lack of affordable housing leads to record rental burdens and homelessness. There are officially 770,000 people Deemed homeless last yearthe highest in modern history. President Donald Trump is even wondering if Declare a national emergency Solve it.
At the same time, almost 15 million vacant houses across the United StatesAccording to Lendingtree, a platform that connects borrowers to banks that provide loans. More than one third of them – More than 5 million – Concentrated only in the 50 largest metropolitan areas of the country. Can existing homes become an easy solution to the housing crisis?
This idea sounds intuitive. Earlier this year, I wrote about Seniors rent their spare bedrooms. What seems to be feasible is that the same logic (by using existing vacancy to relieve stress) can be applied throughout the house.
But a closer look at the data shows why vacant housing is not a quick solution to the wider affordability crisis in the United States. Census Bureau’s Housing Survey Definition Classify housing units as vacant If no one lives in it during the interview – a category can cover everything from ready apartments to units on vacation homes or markets. Not all of this can easily become affordable housing. The problem is not just having enough physical structure, but also having the right home in the right place at the right price.
The push to restore vacant housing here makes sense
In places like Baltimore and Detroit, addressing abandoned houses is crucial to the future of the city. For example, Detroit used to have almost any 100,000 vacant houses The worst moment after the Great Depression. These usually disintegrating buildings have been empty for years, making the entire neighborhood unsafe and dilapidated.
The city’s Land Bank Authority provides a model for how cities respond to mass abandonment. Backed by a mix of federal and local funds plus property sales revenue, the Land Bank addresses ownership issues, demolishes or stabilizes unsafe buildings and then sells real estate “as is”, often requiring buyers to raise the code – dividing the work into work between public cleanup and private renovation. Since 2014, the Land Bank has acquired and disposed of more than 115,000 properties, demolished more than 27,000 buildings and sold 20,000 properties to new owners.
In places like Baltimore and Detroit, job openings come from public investment, subprime mortgage crisis, and residents leaving the city. But elsewhere, the vacancy stems from very different economic pressures.
These programs can not only repair individual houses. By cleaning up clusters of abandoned buildings, they also help stop other houses in the city from collapsing. They provide a better community for those who already live there and those who are more attractive to new immigrants. These cities still need to build new housing in other areas, but stopping the decay is an important first step to turn things around.
“Our goal, our mission is to address the pandemic nearby,” Land Bank CEO Tammy Daniels told me. Over the past decade, authorities have reduced their inventory from 45,000 vacant homes to less than 4,500, and there are nearly 1,700 properties in the sales pipeline.
Baltimore is now trying its own Detroit approach. There are about 13,000 vacant houses, and many occupied and attached townhouses are especially at risk of damage as they share walls and roofs with vacant units. When a house starts to collapse, it damages the next home.
Last fall Gov. Wes Moore promises cancellation The state has 5,000 vacant properties over the next five years. The initiative aims to combine state funding, urban resources and private investment, despite its significant bureaucratic barriers involving licensing and real estate acquisitions.
Developers like Fabio O’Donnell, who runs housing revitalization projects, highlight the challenges of amplifying these efforts. He said the level of funds to truly solve the epidemic and poverty is much greater than the funds proposed by decision makers. O’Donnell added that the dynamics of existing competitive funds often favor established housing aid organizations rather than developers like him who have added overall housing stock.
These plans may be important for revitalizing cities, but the limitations of the approach to affordable housing crisis become more apparent when you consider your location. But empty holiday homes in Ocean City or 13,000 abandoned boating houses in Baltimore are not actually accessible to New York City eviction families. An empty house in a place cannot easily help people in need of housing.
The challenge becomes clearer as you dig out why these 15 million houses are empty in the first place. In places like Baltimore and Detroit, job openings come from public investment, subprime mortgage crisis, and residents leaving the city. But elsewhere, the vacancy stems from very different economic pressures.
Why are there so many empty houses?
The 15 million numbers touted by sites like Lendingtree can be misleading. Most vacant houses are not empty because of some problem or scam, so they are ready to be reused – they are just part of how the rental market usually works. About one-third of the empty houses are in the middle of a normal rental process – some are vacant while landlords are looking for new tenants while others are temporary so repairs or updates can be made before the next tenant moves in. Typically, a healthy rental market will usually keep the vacancy rate between 3-5% to allow natural stirring to allow natural movement as tenants, striking, leased rent and new rents, and renting new rents. LendingTree data exacerbates this: 28% of vacant units in the 50 metropolitan cities are vacant because they are available for rent.
Another important part (20.7%) is seasonal homes, vacation properties or occasional homes. These are not abandoned or overlooked; they are just the second homes in places like beach towns or mountain villages that can see a lot of seasonal use but may be empty for months at a time.
This helps explain why cities like Portland, Oregon and Washington, D.C. (both below 5%) also tend to have higher housing costs. Few vacancies mean renters are stuck because they have nowhere to go.
Legislators can take over speculators who buy property and empty it
That is to say, some properties are indeed empty because wealthy investors mainly aim to make money. Resolving this speculation and making these homes available for people to live in – a profit margin is also a worthwhile effort, even if it is far from a comprehensive solution to housing shortages.
Looking at all the empty houses reminds us of a key lesson: our housing crisis has no silver bullets.
There is no doubt that speculation is the worst at the high end of the market. “In places like New York with data, you’ll find that when you go up the rental ladder, these buildings have higher levels of vacancy,” said George McCarthy, president of Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. These are not poor communities because people can’t afford the rent and apartments are empty. Instead, it’s expensive buildings, and wealthy investors are buying units that store funds and waiting for the right time to sell.
McCarthy noted that the phenomenon “has definitely got worse with short-term rentals”, noting that “many institutional capital invades cities” and investors convert homes owned by owners into rental properties.
Several cities and states have developed tools to address this speculation. this Vacant House Tax in Vancouver, British Columbiapushing thousands of apartments back to the rental market by making real estate empty and expensive. Oakland, California, Similar measures have been taken, while other jurisdictions use increasing property tax surcharges to make vacant properties.
Washington, D.C. illustrates how these policies backfire without strong enforcement. The city does have laws that impose higher property taxes on vacant buildings, but lawsuits filed in 2022 show that the building owner has been occupied by his property for more than a decade. Last year, New York City received A verdict of $1.8 million Oppose him.
Some of the most promising ways to address speculative job openings combine taxes with transparency. Letting the owner reveal who actually owns the building (including the actual people behind Shell and LLC) can help the city track speculation, while the policy of charging an increased fee for long-term vacant properties prompts the owner to use their buildings or sell them.
McCarthy suggested that reducing homestead exemptions to property taxes on owners could also effectively increase taxes on absent owners and speculators. “This is something to stick to financially to motivate the people who hold it,” he said.
Turning an empty office building into an apartment provides a promise
Aside from residential vacancy, the pandemic has created new opportunities to turn underutilized office buildings into housing. As more people work from home, demand for office space plummets – many cities are exploring whether those empty buildings can become apartments.
But there is a trap: most office buildings are not to be homes, but to convert them into expensive and complex. Office buildings usually require fewer bathrooms than apartment buildings, and most of the interior space is located far away from the windows, making it difficult to create a livable apartment for a livable apartment with natural light.
Last fall, I reported research on proposing models to make these models “Adaptive Reuse” Project More financially feasible. This opportunity is certainly important on paper: About 12.5% of office space is located in vacant nationwide, totaling nearly 1 billion square feet.
Nevertheless, even successful projects often require government subsidies to make math work. While these projects may be promising options to revitalize downtown areas and provide work near housing, they will not address housing crises everywhere.
Looking at all the empty houses reminds us of a key lesson: our housing crisis has no silver bullets. These various fixes are a valuable part of a larger puzzle, ultimately depending on the slow and boring work of actually building more homes in places where people are desperate to live.
