• pivot_root@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    hoard (verb.)
    To accumulate money, food, or the like, in a hidden or carefully guarded place for preservation, future use, etc.

    Rental property owners don’t hoard shelter.

    I might be inclined to agree with you if landlords took out the locks and made those empty rental properties into interim homeless shelters, but we both know they would never do it.

    • mke_geek@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Rental properties aren’t hidden. There’s no cloak of invisibility spell surrounding them. So your definition doesn’t apply.

      Rental properties aren’t empty except during renovation or between tenants. So your second assertion also doesn’t apply.

        • mke_geek@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Again, there’s no hoarding.

          The article you linked is misleading. Houses are vacant for various reasons. Some are temporarily vacant:

          • some are undergoing renovations
          • some are between tenants
          • some are for sale

          Some are more permanently vacant because they’re in such a state of disrepair that they can’t be lived in.

          Rental property owners rent out properties, which keeps people housed and off the streets. However there’s been a lack of housing development over the past decade in the United States which leads to a housing shortage.

          • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Some are more permanently vacant because they’re in such a state of disrepair that they can’t be lived in.

            Gee, I wonder who’s responsibility it was to make sure that didn’t happen. ¯\(ツ)

            • mke_geek@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              The homeowners who let their house rot because they couldn’t afford to fix it or they just didn’t care? There’s been so many foreclosures that were blights on the neighborhood until investors bought them, fixed them up, and rented them to families who wanted a nice place to live.