from the statistics-mind-how-you-collect-them dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
The recent release of 2021 Census data revealed a shocking "1 million homes were unoccupied."
This statistic sent housing commentators, government agencies and policymakers into a spin. At a time of significant housing shortages, this extra million homes would surely make a big difference. They could provide housing for some homeless, ease the rental affordability crisis, and get first-home owners into their first home.
There has been a great deal of speculation about how this has happened. Has it been caused by overseas millionaires buying up housing and leaving it as an empty investment? Is it Airbnb taking up homes that could be used for families? Or are cashed-up Gen-Xers double-consuming by living in one house while renovating another?
In fact, we've got a pretty good idea of what's going on. First, it's not a new phenomenon. When we compare 2021 with previous censuses, a slightly smaller percentage of our private dwelling stock was classified as unoccupied—just under 10%, compared with nearly 11% at the previous census in 2016.
Since the release of the data, many journalists have pointed to this startling number of empty homes, portraying them as abandoned or left empty. There is almost certainly a much more ordinary and less startling story to tell. [...]
A big part of the story is how the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) determines whether a dwelling is occupied or not. In short, it does its best by using a variety of methods, but, for the majority of dwellings, occupancy "is determined by the returned census form." If a form was not returned, and the ABS had no further information, the dwelling was often deemed to be unoccupied.
[...] For example, 647,000 dwellings were sold in 2021. This means many thousands of dwellings were unoccupied on census night because they were up for sale or awaiting transfer.
The second and perhaps most important contributor to the empty homes story is holiday homes. Estimates vary, but we know 2 million Australians own one or more properties other than their own home. It's estimated up to 346,581 of these properties may be listed on just one rental platform, Airbnb.
It's part of the census design to pick a night of the year when the most Australians are at home. If you think back to Tuesday, August 10 2021, it was a Tuesday night in mid-winter, so many of Australia's holiday homes would have been empty—and counted as unoccupied.
This is probably the same in many other countries. I know that at the time the census was carried out here (March 2022) most of the holiday homes were still shuttered.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 02 2022, @03:00PM (2 children)
It sounds like part measurement error and part classification error.
A more meaningful definition of "available housing" ought to be, "is housing available where it is needed most?" Turkey could house several million people in Cappadocia where there are vast, currently uninhabited cave cities, but that is not where Turks want to or need to live.
(BTW, if you ever want to say 'fuck it' and go live off grid somewhere, Cappadocia is an excellent choice. Many of those cave cities are set up to be self-sufficient and their water, ventilation, and other infrastructure still function.)
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 02 2022, @04:35PM
It's not an error at all, it's a basic feature of capitalism: the pyramid structure. Those at the top of the pyramid can afford multiple homes for themselves, leaving some vacant for a variety of reasons: remodeling, seasonal use, as an entertainment venue, etc. A little further down the pyramid, those extra homes are used for wealth building: fix & flip, short term rentals not currently rented, long term rentals holding out for higher than market value rental contracts, etc. Then you come to what people think of as "normal" homeowners who just have the one house, but statistically, while they may be "typical home owners" they are not "typical owned homes" as those above them on the wealth pyramid certainly average more than two owned homes per home owner.
Then we continue on down through long term renters, transients, homeless, etc. which certainly make up a larger chunk of the population than multiple home owners.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday September 03 2022, @02:49PM
We had the same thing here, news headlines screaming about x bazillion houses standing empty, and it was the same thing you mentioned. There were homes classed as empty because the previous tenants had moved out and the new ones hadn't moved in yet, new builds completed but not signed off yet, sold ones where funds/titles were in the process of being transferred, and about half a dozen other things that all resulted in them being classed as "empty" or "unoccupied" when they either weren't or it was a transient thing. It was a classification/reporting error, not actually huge numbers of houses standing empty.
For that, you have to go to China.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday September 02 2022, @03:13PM (1 child)
There was a similar "shocking" headline along these lines here in CO a while back. But when you actually looked at the numbers the vacancy rate was below what is normally explainable by rental properties being vacant for like a month while people are moving. (aka the home vacancy rate which includes rentals and the rental only vacancy rate were basically the same)
So I take anything presented in NON ratio terms with a grain of salt....
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday September 03 2022, @09:43AM
What is the ratio of salt taken to that left behind?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02 2022, @04:08PM
They might be vacant because they are empty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02 2022, @04:14PM (1 child)
I admit to hating the census. It collects sufficient data points to identity jack me. For what? Data the ATO, local gov and utilites, Medicare etc already have? They want accurate data but put people in a position where they are unlikely to provide it. No one I have spoken to gives their actual salary. The ATO gets PAYG every two weeks. The ABS can go screw. Local councils and utilities have the data to show occupancy, within a degree.
It is time to stop wasting public money on a census that is no longer relevant. The data they have is tainted. They know it. They just won't bugger off and die.
(Score: 4, Funny) by RS3 on Friday September 02 2022, @04:21PM
For USA census every 10 years is in our Constitution. I don't know about other countries.
¿sɹǝuosᴉɹd ǝɥʇ ɟo ʞɔɐɹʇ dǝǝʞ oʇ pǝpǝǝu ʎǝɥʇ ǝqʎɐɯ 'ɐᴉlɐɹʇsn∀ ɥʇᴉM
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday September 02 2022, @05:27PM
Australia did not have a recession since 1991 thanks to commodities exports to China. Ever since than property prices are climbing. They even avoided 2008. So, real estate speculators feel invincible over there.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Friday September 02 2022, @06:56PM (2 children)
There are almost certainly some "homes" that are vacant, because they are unfit to live in. No, that isn't a jab at 'Straya, it's a fact of life. One structure may have been converted into storage, another into a barn, and another into a workshop. I can find any number of homes, complete with mailing addresses and postal boxes, that are unfit to live in, near me.
Just because the census people had a good mailing address for a habitable home 10 years ago, doesn't mean there is still a home there.
Worst case, some of those homes have been destroyed completely, by fire, tornado, flood, or some truck driver fell asleep and drove through the home.
Of course, none of us has any idea whether that accounts for hundreds of homes, or thousands, or possibly 100,000 formerly occupied homes.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02 2022, @07:47PM (1 child)
Not surprising, since it is Arkansas. Even the houses they live in are not fit to live in. Some of them are even double-wide unfit to live in.
What does this have to do with anything?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday September 03 2022, @03:30AM
Notice the department.
We prefer to provide stories to discuss that are STEM related.
Statistics is a field within mathematics. If one collects statistical data incorrectly, any deductions that result from that data will be flawed.
Is that easy enough to understand?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kazzie on Saturday September 03 2022, @09:55AM (1 child)
I completed two censuses in 2021, because I moved house shortly after the census date. On getting the keys to the new property, I filled in the forms retrospectively for an empty house (and ignored the numerous warning/reminder flyers the estate agent had stacked neatly with all the other letters.
Though I have a bit of a privacy bent, I'm quite keen on censuses. Aside from the whole 'population statistics' thing, I've used historical census forms numerous times for research purposes (family history and otherwise). With people questioning the future viability of censuses, the recent turn away from hard-copy records, and glut of digital data (which isn't always archived), sometimes I wonder what the historians of the future will have to go on when they try to work out what we were all up to...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 03 2022, @02:30PM
I wonder what the historians of the future will have to go on when they try to work out what we were all up to
They can just pull back all the data google, aws, et al have on us and they can have a very clear picture of our lives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 03 2022, @12:07PM (3 children)
You also have to realize that in 1995 the population was only about 5.7 billion. But poor, uneducated, people (including my grandparents at the time) kept on irresponsibly having too many children and today it's like 8 billion. Poor uneducated people don't think about the distant future and don't think to ask how it would affect future generations if they have too many children. They only think about the immediate present. Hence we're a lot worse off today.
The solution is education. Educated people tend to have fewer children. We need to figure out how to spread education to poor countries.
It's especially true that countries that also allow their women to be educated tend to have fewer children. They also tend to have more educated children and greater productivity and tend to be much better off.
The Arab world used to be very relatively advanced compared to the rest of the world relative to how they compare to the rest of the world today. It has been argued that Islam (starting about 600 AD) is what ruined that since Islam disfavors educating women. Hence the more egalitarian Christian world eventually pulled ahead.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Saturday September 03 2022, @01:56PM (2 children)
> It has been argued that Islam is what ruined [Arab tech]
Well this would be a challenging argument to justify. Many of the tech advances in the Arab world appeared after the foundation of Islam. Scholarship is one of the key tenets of Islam and Muslim monasteries pushed a whole load of tech, probably more so than Christian monasteries. Random google turns up this sort of thing:
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/muslim-inventions/ [goodnewsnetwork.org]
(Score: 2) by bussdriver on Saturday September 10 2022, @03:13PM (1 child)
During the dark ages both religions went primitive. Christians eventually came out of the dark but Islam did not. Even today they have a sect of fools who want to live in the dark ages; it's larger than the backward Christians who range from living back in the 1700s to being OK on education as long as women are servants (like Amy on the Supreme Court... who likely rules whatever way her husband says.)
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Saturday September 10 2022, @04:17PM
Well I would disagree - when Europe went scientifically into the dark ages I would say the Arab world went rather the opposite way and flourished (the so-called Islamic golden age), but it is true that Islam did not follow the 18th/19th century Western European industrial revolution until late 19th/early 20th century.
Remember that Turkey was the dominant power in Eastern Europe up until ~ 16th century (arguably the whole of Europe, but it didn't have much influence/trade/conflict with Western Europe after the crusades). Still a respectable outfit in 17th century.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Saturday September 03 2022, @01:05PM (1 child)
In a lot of countries as well as globally, the number of vacant homes is substantially higher than the number of homeless people on any given night.
The lack of buildings isn't the problem, the problem is that the price demanded to sleep in those buildings is too high for a significant number of people to pay it, and we use locks and security guards and police to keep out people who can't or don't pay that price. Now, you can make arguments about why that is, but that's the issue.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 03 2022, @03:40PM
> In a lot of countries as well as globally, the number of vacant homes is substantially higher than the number of homeless people on any given night.
It ever occur to anyone... maybe our system isn't working?