• technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 month ago

    if homelessness started going down, then we would have 50 empty homes for every homeless person.

    Who cares? Who is upvoting this wacky math?!?

    Imagine there’s one homeless person and 27 empty homes. If we put the homeless person in the home, there are zero homeless people and 26 empty homes. And we would have INFINITE empty houses for each homeless persons. What a tragic situation!

    The point is not to adjust the ratio but to house people when there are 27 houses available for each person. I can’t believe I have to explain this.

    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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      1 month ago

      that there are 27 empty houses for each homeless person

      And my point is that that doesn’t tell you a thing about whether there is or isn’t a problem.

      It happens that, in the US, there is a problem (way too many homeless people and way too many empty houses), but computing the ratio of those two bad things is inherently a pointless activity. That’s my point.

      • Archelon@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        See, I figured the point wasn’t so much computing the ratio, but the simple idea that homeless people and empty homes shouldn’t co-exist.