Over 11,000,000 homes lie empty across Europe – enough to house all of the continent's homeless twi - Polidicks

[quote] More than 11m homes lie empty across Europe – enough to house all of the continent's homeless twice over – according to figures collated by the Guardian from across the EU. In Spain more than 3.4m homes lie vacant, in excess of 2m homes are empty in each of France and Italy, 1.8m in Germany and more than 700,000 in the UK. There are also a large numbers of vacant homes in Ireland, Greece, Portugal and several other countries, according to information collated by the Guardian. Many of the homes are in vast holiday resorts built in the feverish housing boom in the run up to the 2007-08 financial crisis – and have never been occupied. On top of the 11m empty homes – many of which were bought as investments by people who never intended to live in them – hundreds of thousands of half-built homes have been bulldozed in an attempt to shore up the prices of existing properties. Housing campaigners said the "incredible number" of homes lying empty while millions of poor people were crying out for shelter was a "shocking waste". "It's incredible. It's a massive number," said David Ireland, chief executive of the Empty Homes charity, which campaigns for vacant homes to be made available for those who need housing. "It will be shocking to ordinary people. "Homes are built for people to live in, if they're not being lived in then something has gone seriously wrong with the housing market." Ireland said policymakers urgently needed to tackle the issue of wealthy buyers using houses as "investment vehicles" – not homes. He said Europe's 11m empty homes might not be in the right places "but there is enough [vacant housing] to meet the problem of homelessness". There are 4.1 million homeless across Europe, according to the European Union. [/quote] [url]http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/europe-11m-empty-properties-enough-house-homeless-continent-twice[/url]

Gee, sounds like Vancouver.

but those leeches gotta [I]earn[/I] those homes. bootstraps bootstraps etc.

Holy crap if you gave them away you'd still have more than half left over being completely empty. [editline]23rd February 2014[/editline] o title says that wow i slow

Is there any reason [I]not[/I] to give these homes to the homeless?

o title says that wow i slow

[QUOTE=wooletang;44021518]Is there any reason [I]not[/I] to give these homes to the homeless?[/QUOTE] Nope but greed trumps all so it won't happen.

[QUOTE=wooletang;44021518]Is there any reason [I]not[/I] to give these homes to the homeless?[/QUOTE] Money.

[QUOTE=wooletang;44021518]Is there any reason [I]not[/I] to give these homes to the homeless?[/QUOTE] Pure greed. Edited: Or they'll gut the place of anything of value and it will look like a Roma camp.

[QUOTE=wooletang;44021518]Is there any reason [I]not[/I] to give these homes to the homeless?[/QUOTE] Yes. The homeless will probably trash the place, costing the the actual owners money.

[QUOTE=wooletang;44021518]Is there any reason [I]not[/I] to give these homes to the homeless?[/QUOTE] Yeah. People spent money building these homes and expect something in return

[QUOTE=DuCT;44021556]Yes. The homeless will probably trash the place, costing the the actual owners money.[/QUOTE] Let me rephrase: Is there any reason for the people who own these homes, that they have no use for, to not get some sort of government compensation (small, not necessarily the rest of their mortgage) in order to house the homeless?

[QUOTE=DuCT;44021556]Yes. The homeless will probably trash the place, costing the the actual owners money.[/QUOTE] Being homeless, broke, ect, doesn't mean a person is going to be a destructive jerk. My grandmother had a house trashed by renters. Some people are just assholes, and it doesn't matter what their financial situation is.

[QUOTE=wooletang;44021518]Is there any reason [I]not[/I] to give these homes to the homeless?[/QUOTE] It would cause a huge deficit. It would solve some of the problems of the millions of homeless but cause massive economic problems for the entire continent.

[QUOTE=wooletang;44021619]Let me rephrase: Is there any reason for the people who own these homes, that they have no use for, to not get some sort of government compensation (small, not necessarily the rest of their mortgage) in order to house the homeless?[/QUOTE] It worked in Utah, they pretty much eliminated homelessness by doing this, obviously economic situations may be different somewhere else, on a larger scale.

[QUOTE=wooletang;44021619]Let me rephrase: Is there any reason for the people who own these homes, that they have no use for, to not get some sort of government compensation (small, not necessarily the rest of their mortgage) in order to house the homeless?[/QUOTE] Will the compensation be at least half of the home's price?

[QUOTE=DuCT;44021556]Yes. The homeless will probably trash the place, costing the the actual owners money.[/QUOTE] In the UK (I don't know about elsewhere), just having properties there is going to be costing them money in the first place. They'd have to be paying council tax, since the empty property exemption only lasts so long, plus any money for maintenance if they intend to rent/sell the place in the first place.

[QUOTE=wooletang;44021518]Is there any reason [I]not[/I] to give these homes to the homeless?[/QUOTE] well considering they've been sitting empty for years, they probably are infested with something, the pipes/wires are probably stripped and if they were built durring the housing boom of the early 2000's they are probably built really cheaply plus 7+ years of no maintenance means these houses are probably trashed

[QUOTE=wooletang;44021518]Is there any reason [I]not[/I] to give these homes to the homeless?[/QUOTE] Imagine you spent money to build or renovate the home. You spend roughly $20,000 to $50,000 to repair this house, and bring it back to its former glory. Now while you wait for buyers or renters to come along, a group of people tell you that you should give this home up to the homeless for no-expense, and expect to see no compensation. It's a morale quagmire situation. You don't do it, you are without a heart. You do it, you lose what you put into that household. What needs to be done is the government purchases these households at the producing value and add ten percent on top of that so the current property owner can at least make something on the property. From there, use these properties to act as a financial netting system. Some groups pay increased taxes, and we have less homeless, as well as better off workers. Once again, it ain't socialism, it's common sense capitalism. I'll be the first one to say this without caring: Apartments and Project Duplexs are fucking stupid. Housing needs to be done with houses, and some minor property(at the very least a 3.5 meter by 5 meter back yard/front yard), this allows for someone to feel like they can at least live a semi-healthy life, and give a good upbringing to children they have brought into the world. Another method is to also provide that these yards must be catered for with some method of farming. I'd actually like to say that should be made law to a certain degree. Everyone should have a farm or garden of some sort in their backyard, or some method of food, product, or otherwise growth. If you have the land given to you, use it.

[QUOTE=JoeSkylynx;44021709]Imagine you spent money to build or renovate the home. You spend roughly $20,000 to $50,000 to repair this house, and bring it back to its former glory. Now while you wait for buyers or renters to come along, a group of people tell you that you should give this home up to the homeless for no-expense, and expect to see no compensation. It's a morale quagmire situation. You don't do it, you are without a heart. You do it, you lose what you put into that household. What needs to be done is the government purchases these households at the producing value and add ten percent on top of that so the current property owner can at least make something on the property. From there, use these properties to act as a financial netting system. Some groups pay increased taxes, and we have less homeless, as well as better off workers. Once again, it ain't socialism, it's common sense capitalism. I'll be the first one to say this without caring: Apartments and Project Duplexs are fucking stupid. Housing needs to be done with houses, and some minor property(at the very least a 3.5 meter by 5 meter back yard/front yard), this allows for someone to feel like they can at least live a semi-healthy life, and give a good upbringing to children they have brought into the world. Another method is to also provide that these yards must be catered for with some method of farming. I'd actually like to say that should be made law to a certain degree. Everyone should have a farm or garden of some sort in their backyard, or some method of food, product, or otherwise growth. If you have the land given to you, use it.[/QUOTE] The Massive public spending increase funded by raised taxes and direct government intervention into the economy that you propose sounds like textbook socialism to me.

[QUOTE=Laserbeams;44021656]Will the compensation be at least half of the home's price?[/QUOTE] Let's cruch some numbers. The average price of a house in England is $416,000 according to the [URL="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26239609"]BBC[/URL]. Half of Europe is rich and half of Europe is poor, so I would say $300,000 - $500,000 is a good estimate for an average European house price. There is no indication in the article of the quality of the unsold houses, but the case often is that the more expensive houses are the ones that don't sell, so $500,000 is probably a closer estimate than $300,000. Nonetheless, lets go with this presumed average. The article states there are 4.1 million homeless people in Europe. If each homeless person gets one house each, and the government pays half of that, that's 650 billion to slightly over 1 trillion dollars. Assuming four homeless people live in each house that's 153 billion to 256 billion dollars. It's not an impossible sum, but it excludes upkeep (which is the only way to make it feasible in the long-term), as well as heating, water, electricity and other home necessities. And that money must come from somewhere. Many of the houses are likely to be trashed, as seen in Detroit - stripped of anything valuable. I really can't say what the best solution would be. Perhaps it would be better spending that money on education and job programs for the homeless, or on building cheaper, more durable communal homeless shelters, or perhaps this is the best solution. (Though I highly doubt it) I don't know, but those numbers are something to think about.

[QUOTE=Aidan_088;44021830]The Massive public spending increase funded by raised taxes and direct government intervention into the economy that you propose sounds like textbook socialism to me.[/QUOTE] Socialism and Capitalism swim in the same river in my eyes. Without good public health, you cannot have a population to consume products. Likewise most attempts at socialism or communism have tended to end with a government oligarchy.

[QUOTE=Laserbeams;44021601]Yeah. People spent money building these homes and expect something in return[/QUOTE] They expect something called profit

[QUOTE=wooletang;44021518]Is there any reason [I]not[/I] to give these homes to the homeless?[/QUOTE] Well the article said a lot of them are holiday homes, so they could be 10 miles away from anywhere else, not the kind of commute you can make if you've got no money if you were to get a job offer.

[QUOTE=wooletang;44021518]Is there any reason [I]not[/I] to give these homes to the homeless?[/QUOTE] For instance the fact, that most of those places are closer to holiday|weekend homes (incredibly common in Europe actually) and as such they tend to be far from any kind of services, hospitals or things that the homeless might actually need. [quote] I'll be the first one to say this without caring: Apartments and Project Duplexs are fucking stupid. Housing needs to be done with houses, and some minor property(at the very least a 3.5 meter by 5 meter back yard/front yard), this allows for someone to feel like they can at least live a semi-healthy life, and give a good upbringing to children they have brought into the world. Another method is to also provide that these yards must be catered for with some method of farming. I'd actually like to say that should be made law to a certain degree. Everyone should have a farm or garden of some sort in their backyard, or some method of food, product, or otherwise growth. If you have the land given to you, use it.[/quote] Apartments being stupid? Hell imagine the commute in cities if everyone lived in a house of some sort. You're looking at insane massive sprawls, subburbs of untold dimenions. Just consider this. Let's say an apartment building has 20 3+1 apartments on 4-5 floors. Imagine cutting each of those floors into a new building, and adding at least 15m^2 extra for a backgarden of somesort. (though you're probably looking at something like 20-40m^2. Just this means you take something like five to six times the same footprint, which grows even larger when you include the need for more roads to service all this area. Add to it the fact that due to commutes being big, you probably need to start adding more local stuff like stores and similar, which now service much fewer people if they have the same density as before, and you're looking at a further increase in space taken. I have nothing against growing my own food, but enforcing a village or suburb paradigm into a city is just stupid. Instead the focus ought to be on vertical farms and gardens, which are completely viable and I agree, should become much more common.

It's surreal in Ireland, driving across the midlands at night you see the silhouettes of entire housing estates, lovely houses that were built during the celtic tiger years and just abandoned completely, tape still around the edges of the windows, streetlights not even switched on.

In other news; Many hundreds of tons of food is wasted monthly, enough to feed the hungry twice over. It is let to rot to keep the prices from going down.

[QUOTE=mac338;44021859]Let's cruch some numbers. The average price of a house in England is $416,000 according to the [URL="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26239609"]BBC[/URL]. Half of Europe is rich and half of Europe is poor, so I would say $300,000 - $500,000 is a good estimate for an average European house price. There is no indication in the article of the quality of the unsold houses, but the case often is that the more expensive houses are the ones that don't sell, so $500,000 is probably a closer estimate than $300,000. Nonetheless, lets go with this presumed average. The article states there are 4.1 million homeless people in Europe. If each homeless person gets one house each, and the government pays half of that, that's 650 billion to slightly over 1 trillion dollars. Assuming four homeless people live in each house that's 153 billion to 256 billion dollars. It's not an impossible sum, but it excludes upkeep (which is the only way to make it feasible in the long-term), as well as heating, water, electricity and other home necessities. And that money must come from somewhere. Many of the houses are likely to be trashed, as seen in Detroit - stripped of anything valuable. I really can't say what the best solution would be. Perhaps it would be better spending that money on education and job programs for the homeless, or on building cheaper, more durable communal homeless shelters, or perhaps this is the best solution. (Though I highly doubt it) I don't know, but those numbers are something to think about.[/QUOTE] That's the problem, the government can't pay at-least half or pay the production value and 10%. The latter is preferable as it at least gives back something to the home/property owner for their work and time.

This is what happens when you let unfair economics benefits the greedy minority instead of the majority.

The prices for housing in the UK are ridiculously high.