The difference between the greed of the wealthy and the precariousness of American workers is painfully stark when looking at vacant homes.
2016 figures from ATTOM Data Solutions — which publishes comprehensive housing data — show that wealthy investors are buying up more and more real estate as a moneymaking venture while housing prices and homelessness continue to skyrocket across America.
According to ATTOM, 76 percent of all vacant homes in America are owned by investors — amounting to approximately 1.1 million vacant residential investment properties. Many of these vacant homes are in economically distressed Rust Belt cities with high poverty rates, like Detroit, Michigan, neighboring Flint, and Youngstown, Ohio. The states with the highest investment property vacancy rate also have high poverty rates. Michigan leads the pack with 10.3 percent vacancy, Indiana at 9.8 percent, Alabama at 6.9 percent, and Mississippi at 6.6 percent.
Meanwhile, in December of 2017, the Associated Press reported that homelessness increased in America for the first time since 2010 — the height of the Great Recession. 2017 data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development showed that local counts of homeless Americans reached approximately 554,000 nationwide, which is a 1 percent increase from 2016 (and roughly half of the number of vacant residential investment properties in America today). Approximately one-third of those counted as homeless had no access to nightly shelters and were sleeping on streets, and in vehicles and tents.