![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.dc4reality.org\/updates\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Screen-Shot-2019-12-17-at-6.19.35-AM.png\")
How can there be 30,000 vacant units when we have a housing crisis?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Thirty thousand vacant units counted! This fact destroys any assumption that building more luxury housing will eventually result in lower cost housing units trickling down in what growth supporters call, “Filtering.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The D.C. Chief Financial Officer has a bit more of a conservative number of vacant housing units, 10,000<\/a>. Either way, that’s thousands of vacant units existing pre-Covid that could house our homeless veterans, mothers, families, children, people who are facing homelessness, etc., especially now during the pandemic. See<\/em> Vacant to Virus Reduction site<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Luxury units for investment (lots of it foreign<\/a>) results in developer demand for upzoning to increase buildable density without providing housing to be lived in. What is the good of new housing being kept uninhabited by investors? It stifles free market supply-and-demand and keeps prices of housing high, while allowing bankers and the construction industry to profit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Empty housing units are also tax liabilities that can be written off by mega real estate speculators at the end of the year, equaling a form of income. Thus, the myth of the effect of supply-and-demand on housing is exposed as the tax write-offs for empty units completely nullifies any market corrections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n U.S. real estate remains attractive for illicit money from all over the world. In DC, that foreign money invests into planning officials follies, like the dramatic changes at Union Market in Northeast. #UnionMarketExclusive<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a stable investment that generally maintains or grows in value – and it gives corrupt oligarchs and dictators a potential escape route if they\u2019re ousted from their home countries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But this money drives out honest purchasers and makes cities hotbeds for dirty, unproductive cash. It turns cities and communities into commodities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In one part of New York City, for example, the Census Bureau estimated that 30 percent of apartments are unoccupied most of the year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Whomst really are we subsidizing, constructing, and housing in all these giant luxury boxes? Case in point: #SWWaterfrontExclusive<\/a>Luxury Units Stay Empty Without Any Market Corrections<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Foreign Investment in Luxury Housing Creates Exclusive New Communities in DC With High Vacancies<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Can we shift #36000×2025<\/a> to only #6000×2025<\/a> and fill up all these luxury vacancies?@MayorBowser<\/a> @ChmnMendelson<\/a> @AnitaBondsDC<\/a> @RobertWhite_DC<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/gDamulmBST<\/a><\/p>\u2014 Chris R. Otten (@rotten4eva) February 20, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote>