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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Approximately 15.1 million homes, representing 10.3% of the U.S. housing inventory, stood vacant in 2025. As evictions due to the current administration’s draconian cuts to social programs increase, the number of empty properties will continue to rise – along with the number of unhoused Americans.
HUD’s “2025 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report” released in May identified 745,652 Americans as homeless, double that when it takes into account those living in taxpayer-funded emergency shelters, temporary, and transitional housing programs.
As compared to 1,456,923 vacant homes, or 10.295 for every homeless person, unhoused or in shelters
From 2013, when HUD instituted its “Housing First” policy, the numbers of homeless have risen by 27%, the unsheltered homeless by 36%, the chronically homeless by 81%, and taxpayer funded beds by 151%.
A 3% drop in overall homelessness from 2024 to 2025 is attributable to a decrease in Sanctuary Cities, not improved housing policies.
California is home to 12% of the country’s population overall but 30% of its homeless population, and 50% of all unsheltered Americans.
In 2023, the Golden State topped the list of homelessness with 181,399 people unhoused, more than 14 times the 12,818 average of all states. As of January 2024, California was the second most expensive state in which to purchase a home (only Hawai’i is pricier), making the leap from homelessness to home ownership essentially impossible.
When wealthy purchasers buy part-time homes, too often they drive prices up beyond what local homebuyers can afford.
My home state of Vermont saw the largest increase in homelessness between 2010 and 2023, up by 170%, from 1,220 in 2010 to 3,295 in 2023. At that point, it had a 21:1 ratio of empty properties to people experiencing homelessness. A 2024 report found that rising rents and home costs have disproportionately impacted low- and middle-income residents which, along with inadequate housing quality, amplified Vermont’s rising homelessness concerns.
While California may have a 6:1 ratio, camping out in winter in Los Angeles is far less fatal. California also has the second highest number of vacant properties, after Florida and Texas, with over 1.2 million standing empty which still works out to over 6.6 vacancies for each of the state’s unhoused individuals.
About one-third of single-family vacancies in the country are part-time vacation or seasonal homes but almost half, or 7.2 million, are deliberately kept off the market; for too many owners putting them up for sale isn’t worth it.
For some, costs associated with selling including repairs and upgrades required by changes to building codes make it unfeasible.
For older homeowners who have paid off their mortgages, taxes triggered by a sale – whether capital gains paid on the profit or the depreciation recapture on rental properties – far exceed the cost of simply leaving the home empty. In the 49 most populous U.S. metro areas, data reveals a direct correlation between the number of vacant single-family homes and the and the age of their owners.
With spiraling values in recent years, the federal capital gains exemption – especially for single owners – does little to help and can easily eat $150,000 or more from the sale’s price. Especially when California’s FTB comes calling casting the seller into the state’s top tax bracket in that tax year.
In Los Angeles, this “exit tax” averages $185,000 compared to an annual outlay of less than $10,000 for insurance, maintenance and Prop 13-reduced property taxes. Alternatively, the house can be collateral for loans in an emergency or passed on without the capital gains burden for the inheritor to sell upon the death of the owner.
Prop 19, which allows seniors to transfer their property tax base to a new home within California may help the current owner but hardly helps with capital gains, sharply curtailing benefits for their loved ones.
In some markets people still have underwater mortgages feeding other debts or reverse mortgages allowing them to live rent free as rental rates keep rising.
Other contributing factors include the overall affordability crisis – again California ranks number one, rising inflation, and stagnating wages among middle- and lower-income households.
Public health crises, natural disasters like the Golden State’s now omnipresent fires and floods (along with earthquakes certain to come) that displaced people from their homes, the persisting effects of systemic racism stretching homelessness services, the rising numbers of people still immigrating to the U.S., and the end to homelessness prevention programs, including the end of the expanded child tax credit, put in place during the pandemic continue to exacerbate already stressed systems.
Despite millions of dollars and increasing numbers of programs to stem the tide the numbers of unhoused in America keep rising and will only accelerate in the wake of the administration diverting money for social services into wars, ICE, and the pockets of billionaires.
To expand availability of housing will require difficult decisions, primarily political and national, as well as a shakeup of the local approach of doubling down on expensive and fiscally irresponsible programs that just don’t work.
To start with, steps must be taken to remove homes from investors’ portfolios and remake them as basic human rights. This can range from stopping the slicing-and-dicing of mortgages on Wall Street and the banning of REITs to the establishment of land trusts so that only the house itself is purchased and with stringent covenants to ensure the outrageous disparities between income and home prices of today are “Never again” moments.
Yes, investors and hedge funds may scream bloody murder. But is there anyone involved in those activities who can’t afford a comfortable home even in today’s inflated market?
Yes, there are problems with permitting new construction in the NIMBY age: starts in California have dropped from over 200,000 homes built per year in the 1950s and 1960s to under 150,000 since 2007 despite escalating growth through 2020 when people finally started fleeing unaffordable cities.
It’s not so much what the point is of building a house if the supply chain can’t profit but about what’s the point of building a house if ordinary people can’t afford to buy it?
There is also a crying need to regulate the rental industry, both nationally and statewide, where abuses from untenable tenements to the surge of “take it or leave it” apartment fees are exponentially increasing in proportion to the amalgamation of corporate landlords, squashing the availability of affordable rental units.
As rents rise, homelessness rises in tandem.
What about out-of-the-box opportunities, some already being explored, from co-housing and intentional communities to conversions of now unneeded office and warehouse space into living quarters.
What about reviving the 19th century boarding house model into 21st century communal living? The Golden Girls and Facts of Life of the future?
How about re-allowing rooming houses, banned half a century ago to boost home values in most American neighborhoods? These provide far more reasonable and safer accommodation, especially for singles, students, and people moving from other cities.
It’s nice to have friends to come home to, share costs and chores. Let's put the insular American single-family home construct on the shelf as just one of a myriad of possibilities for housing.
For those interested in learning more about how using homes as investments is damaging housing availability and escalating costs, check out Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno now living in Vermont and a regular CityWatch contributor. She writes on issues she’s passionate about, including social justice, government accountability, and community empowerment. Liz brings a sharp, activist voice to her commentary and continues to engage with Los Angeles civic affairs from afar. She can be reached at [email protected].)
