The reading, Banking on Vacancy: Homelessness and Real Estate Speculation, a report by Picture The Homeless (PTH) effectively summarized the many issues with the housing crisis. The data and statistics discussed in the report are all incredibly striking. It introduces the topic with the statistic of vacant buildings and lots and the amount of people that potentially can be housed in these spaces: 3,551 vacant buildings and 2,489 vacant lots can house a total of 199,981 people. How can a city permit this to happen when homelessness is on the rise?

The city has been developed to promote a free-market economy and the commoditization of property. These spaces are primarily privately owned buildings and lots, with a mere 10% of these properties being owned by the government. Even the vacant publicly owned buildings are not being renovated and developed into function public spaces or affordable housing. The vacant spaces that are privately owned are nearly impossible to overturn into affordable housing and remain as unusable structures. These real estate tycoons warehouse these properties as investments that they sit on until the market deems it profitable to convert these spaces into market-rate real estate. Frequently these buildings will have a commercial tenants, but vacant apartments because the owners obtain enough profit from the store-front without dealing with the “hassle” of residential tenants. Property warehousers do not provide any benefit to the community, they only neglect the needs of the community and the people by maintaining these properties for their personal gain. Additionally, PTH points out the correlation of the location of homeless folks and vacant property. The 10 community districts from which the majority of homeless folks come from also have the highest density of vacant property in the city. Finally, the expense of the government for the homeless shelter institution is dramatically excessive. The city spends about $3,500 a month to house someone in a shelter which accumulates to an annual expense of $856 million. Clearly, the system in place does not solve the housing crisis, but simply diverts it with temporary housing. The government must begin developing permanent affordable housing for homeless folks which will ultimately reduce the annual expenses of the city for the shelter system.

Picture The Homeless’s report also details numerous solutions and policies that could be enacted to solve the housing crisis. Their recommendations, as listed in the report are: end warehousing, pass legislation that would mandate a city wide count of vacant property, introducing three year vacancy limit on private property, developing more Community Land Trusts, make information on housing and ownership more available, altering the Area Median Income policy for affordable housing, exposing the true identity of private owners of vacant property, and cataloguing a thorough data set of partially vacant building. All of these recommendations must be set in place in order to adjust the housing system to provide better housing. However, not all of them can be enacted on at the same time. In my opinion, the most effective method would be targeting the government’s budget for the homeless shelter system. There has to be a progressive rotation of shelter properties into affordable permanent housing. Before affordable housing is developed, the city must localize the AMI policy so that the rents are not incredibly skewed by higher income residents as well as introducing an annual vacancy count.  Once all affordable housing is truly affordable, then the government should begin developing affordable permanent housing from the vacant properties that it owns as a way to test out if it is effective. Once it is proven to be an effective policy, then the government should begin acquiring properties that have been vacant for excessive periods of time so that private owners begin renting out vacant apartments and more affordable housing can be developed from the appropriated properties. Thousands of New Yorkers have been anticipating the adjustment of the housing system in the city, which is finally so close to happening.