Letters to the Editor
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Overbuilt Credit
I'm not sure what the number of homeless has anything to do with available home inventory. Were there many fewer homeless at the peak of home occupancy in 2005?
What is the proposal? That people donate their vacant properties? Should they donate the electricity, water and cable too? Where did this obligation come from, and when did I sign up for it? What about those homeless who are also without a car for access to employment? GM has many months of inventory on hand, just like US home sellers.
Perhaps the government (taxpayers) should buy these homes from owners and grant them to homeless to live in? At what price will this be done? How many newly-minted "homeless" will appear to collect their due?
The housing inventory is an outcome of home overbuilding and purchasing that directly resulted from artificially low interest rate policies and available credit put in place by the Federal Reserve. This all serve to bid up the price of housing, making homes much less affordable for everybody. It is now unwinding, and as the price of these homes falls, buyers (who might be renters today) will enter the market.
To allow this problem to solve itself and begin to enable private charities to fund homes for the homeless in need, the government should stop interfering in the markets and allow home prices to fall. This means raising rates, protecting the purchasing power of the US dollar, and putting a stop to the preferential homeowner tax treatment that further contributed to these price escalations.