Homelessness and Housing, Part 1

I came across an interesting meme the other day that said there were 24 empty houses for every homeless person.  When I saw it my jaw hit the floor.  Could that really be true I wondered?  Naturally, I posted it on my own timeline and asked if anyone knew if the stats were correct.  I got a few responses but no one really knew it seemed like so I did a basic search on the issue.  This by no means is indicative of an expert status on homelessness, I'm just a guy that did about an hour's worth of research so please bear that in mind.

What I found was rather interesting.  The stat that the picture used was based on census data that put the number of homeless people on any given night at around 650,000 or so.  Other numbers say there are up to 3,000,000 homeless people if you take into account different periods of time, not just on a single night.  

I also looked up how many empty houses there were.  I got anywhere from 16-18 million houses that are either foreclosed on and owned by the bank or something else, but it does not include vacation homes.  From my little amount of research it seems like it peaked a couple years ago at roughly 18.5 million and then has come down since then.

So, I did some basic math and found out if you took the low end on the empty housing estimates and the high end on the homeless numbers you still come out with 5 houses for every homeless person.  How is that humanly possible?  There are obviously a ton of variables and a plethora of reasons, but I'm more concerned with the implications of this.

I read one article where the author shared one of the reasons for all the extra homes is that a new suburb will crop up, people start buying the houses, and developers keep building to keep up with demand until supply outstrips demand and you end up with empty houses.  Another reason is obviously the foreclosure crisis we just went through.  I haven't researched but I know the number has to have been high for the number of people who lost their homes to a foreclosure.

This seems to me to be a failure on a systemic level.  Every society has dealt with homelessness, even Jesus Christ was homeless for a while on earth if you take one of His sayings literally.  The problem just seems more pronounced in America because of the scale.  We can't just blame the system for failing though, the blame lies with each of us.  Allow me to illustrate my point in part 2...