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The decennial census collects information on both vacant and occupied housing units and 2020 Census data released this week show a decline in the national vacancy rate. The percent of housing units that were vacant went from 11.4% in 2010 to 9.7% in 2020 but remained slightly higher than it was in 2000 (9.0%). As early as 2016, housing prices were declining in Watertown, New York, which already had over 150 abandoned homes at the time.
The number of vacant homes in Athens, Texas, has been almost continually climbing in recent years, moving from 9.5% in 2014 to 15% in 2019, according to the U.S Census Bureau. Poverty is almost definitely a contributing factor—more than 30% or area residents have incomes under the poverty line, leaving them in a challenging situation to afford available housing. Long a destination for retirees and others seeking cheap housing, much of Arizona is now experiencing rapid population growth and a housing boom. Many of the houses being built, however, are beyond the financial reach of many residents who have always been there—in Yuma, Arizona, and beyond. Although new homes are being built, the price of existing homes in some places is rising so quickly that they’re sitting empty because of a lack of qualified buyers. Indiana, Pennsylvania, is just one metro area in the state that is experiencing a consistent population decline.
South Dakota: Pennington County
If these projections are even remotely close, based on our data, more than 25 million people face losing their homes due to the drop in income and lack of financial support. As Sansivero continues his photographing abandoned houses, he told Insider he plans to focus on kitchens, which are at the heart of so many homes. Bryan Sansivero has spent the last decade photographing America's abandoned homes. Cabell County’s economy has been under pressure from the decline of coal, and the region has been in the grips of the opioid epidemic.
But the economy in northern New York has lagged the rest of the country, and the area has seen an exodus of residents, dampening demand and activity in its housing market. In 2017, Jefferson County suffered the second-most dramatic population decrease of 2.8% in the United States. A whopping 60% of Cape May’s housing is vacant, but nearly all are homes for seasonal or recreational use.
Iowa: Scott County
Everything from abandoned nursing homes to boat graveyards fills Sansivero's collection. While Sansivero's book focuses on homes, he's explored an array of abandoned locations. Often, Sansivero said he'll find a letter or old piece of mail with a name of a former resident and use that information to track down the owner's family to learn more about the house's history.
Flint, along with Detroit, an hour south and facing many of the same struggles, have been trying to tackle the vacant property problems -- empty houses are easy targets for metal thieves and other criminal activity. Thousands of houses are left uninhabitable and can become dangerous neighborhood eyesores. Vacant homes tend to be concentrated in particular areas of cities, Blomquist said, magnifying problems. The company looked at data for about 85 million residential properties in large metropolitan areas and matched it to properties that mail carriers had flagged as vacant. They found that across the U.S., the vacancy rate is decreasing, which poses a challenge in cities where there’s a lot of housing demand. If even just a fraction of these renters or mortgage payers were to see their income drop, we could see the number of homeless people and vacant homes explode across the US.
America's Fastest 19 Shrinking Big Cities
At the end of 2018, Monroe County had more “upside-down” homes—those that are worth less than the mortgage—than almost any other county in the nation. But the county’s population is on the rise again after a significant decline that began with the economic downturn. The site of Crater Lake National Park and several national forests, scenic Klamath County, Ore., is located in south central Oregon just north of California. It suffers from high unemployment, and Klamath County’s real estate market is in dire need of new housing and rentals, local experts say.
A volcanic eruption on May 3, 2018, forced the vacancy of many permanent residents and vacation rentals around Hilo. Department of Housing and Urban Development was created in 2021 to buy back land from homeowners affected by the eruption, allowing them to find new permanent housing, which could improve vacancy rates in the area. The most populous county in Wyoming, Laramie is home to the state’s university. It has seen steady growth in employment rates and its economic strength, although it lacks affordable housing.
Stacker believes in making the world’s data more accessible through storytelling. To that end, most Stacker stories are freely available to republish under a Creative Commons License, and we encourage you to share our stories with your audience. In 2018, an official inventory found 98 properties scattered around Glens Falls, New York—some very nice and in good shape—abandoned or unoccupied. More than half were bank-owned foreclosures or going through the process of bank foreclosure.
To really understand what’s going on with all the vacant homes in the United States, it’s essential to understand why these homes are vacant in the first place. While the Census Bureau breaks it all down into seven different categories, it’s actually possible to combine a few of those categories. The number lags some, but currently, there are about 15 million vacant homes in the United States. That might seem like an abnormally large number, but it’s a number that’s actually been on a steady decline in 2009. Most of the empty homes in Flint are “investment properties,” where owners live elsewhere and aim to rent them out.
Our research showed that between 2010 and 2018, there had been a 13.6% decrease in the number of homeless people in the US. However, in 2020 the economy and people's finances have been rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the last decade, he's captured abandoned churches, nursing homes, hospitals, schools, trailers, and more. The abandoned buildings usually have a sad backstory, according to Sansivero.
Real estate prices in Fort Payne, Alabama, were up more than 30% year over year as of November 2021, just one year after numbers were down 12%. Because of this, the reasons for unoccupied homes have shifted—it’s more likely that new prices have become unaffordable for some residents, pushing them to other towns. Unlike some of the other spots on the list, empty homes are not especially likely to be used recreationally or seasonally.
Sarasota, Florida, is part of one of the fastest-growing regions in the United States, according to U.S News & World Report, with houses and condos popping up across the area to make room for inward migration averaging 14 new residents a day. Over the last decade, the population of Orangeburg, South Carolina, has declined by nearly 9%, according to census data, which is leading to vacant properties. In other regions of South Carolina that are also experiencing issues with unoccupied homes, registries and annual fines for vacant properties have been established to keep track of and curb crime related to this type of property.
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