A Decent Proposal ...

We have an estimated 400,000 new homes in builder's inventories that need to be absorbed into the housing market.
[ 2006 National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) 2006 Fall Construction Forecast Conference held Oct. 25 in Washington, D.C. ]

In early 2007, the National Alliance to End Homelessness reported a point-in-time estimate of 744,313 people experiencing homelessness in January 2005.
[ National Coalition for the Homeless ]

This got me thinking. We don't really have a “housing surplus”, we have a “market surplus”. America, as a nation needs the housing. 744,000 people homeless at any given time! Probably half a million houses now that those that were in the pipeline in late 2006 have been completed.

Assuming most of the housing “overhang” is in 3 and 4 bedroom homes (i.e. McMansions), each of them can accommodate three or four people. So, with about 250,000 of these McMansions dedicated to housing the homeless, we're all set. Access to these units would only be as a last resort, of course. Candidates would prove that they own nothing besides the clothes on their backs, and have repeatedly failed to find employment.

Just the bureaucratic nightmare of administering such a program would put legions of administrators back to work, filing, making appointments, verifying abject poverty, coordinating vacancies among the Public McMansions. Of course, some kind of transportation will be needed to move folks that ain't got nothin to their McMansion housing. Defunct limousine services can be aquired by the Dept of McMansion Housing to move the people to their rooms.

We need a name for this economic program. Any ideas should be sent to Dept. of the Treasury, Attn: T Geitner.