It's my opinion that housing is so basic a need that no house should be allowed to use for a gambling chip.
The 'housing market' needs to be broken in favor of individual ownership. (For many, speculation has driven ownership out of reach.)
Only individuals may purchase individual homes, and must agree to occupy them as their primary and only residences until they sell and vacate them. (Live-in landlords included, e.g. boarders.)
As part of the deal, they must first find another individual buyer (under the same terms) for their present home.
(Futher stipluations needed, but none that permit violation of the above principle. )
Sure but from my understanding the problem in the US (and most places) isn't that there isn't room. The sum of empty houses/apartments is greater than the amount of homeless. It's more distribution and logistics.
So we drop demand by outlawing many forms of ownership but with lower prices from that drop its reasonable to expect an increase in demand for the most popular places / places with a good salary and strong job market.
This then naturally moves the spot with available homes further from the major areas. People with low/no means are they then expected to move there to not be homeless? Even if there's no career prospects or even jobs?
If we cap relocation how is that handled? Are you not allowed to move into and buy a new home in say San Francisco, LA or NY?
And how much relocation are we mandating for the homeless?
If we remove the free market there is an extreme demand for very thoughtful, planned out rules which need to be airtight because people exploit everything and every loophole will be found.
And if we don't eliminate the free market, just limit who can own, then how do we avoid the aforementioned problems of accelerating urbanization? Such that we don't equalize at the exact same prices just private owned instead of corporate owned.
"needs discussion" because you didn't really think anything through, you just shout slogans on "how it would work" without any bearing on reality or the current housing situation.
I don't think speculation is a big factor, actually. Rentals don't earn money without renters and they don't appreciate nearly fast enough to make up for the lack of income.
In my country at least there's just measurably less houses than there needs to be.