this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
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I don't think owning a second home per se is wrong or evil. Many people can't afford buying a house due to the upfront costs. But owning a second home and leaving it empty for years? Owning multiple homes to use as Airbnbs in residential areas? I really wish this was regulated. But it will never be because there's big bucks being made there.
I do. There's a full blown climate crisis. How much of an extra footprint is a second home? How much wilderness is destroyed by peoples desire to have a nice view while they sip their coffee? We all need to look inward and ask what we're actually entitled to.
Al Gore said it best; it's an inconvenient truth.
Counterpoint, I don’t mind people owning a second home on the basis of climate change. There are so many other bigger fish to fry in that realm rather than wasting resources limiting a small group of people with the means of affording a second home. I would much rather people with the means of owning a second home having to pledge to improve the carbon footprint of the second home through things like adding solar panels, smart landscaping, etc. That way when the house is eventually let go its more sustainable and environmentally friendly then when it started.
Poverty almost certainly costs more than all this ecologically, socially, and financially. The suffering and stress of the unhoused spills over into the lives of others who interact with or observe them, increasing our collective societal stress levels, increasing hospital visits, pushing people to earlier deaths (especially, of course, among the ultra-poor), and leading to expenses involving their unplanned funerals and messier aftermaths as opposed to cleanly laid-out wills, lost/absent documentation, etc.
Poverty drives people to violence and crime when they feel unheard and ignored. What if that house could help people find some peace in their lives? Instead maybe they become the very ones who rob and wreck it out of desperation. Societies need to help all people to keep the peace.
A lot of these issues can be or begin to be solved by giving them small apartments like in Finland. Homelessness ultimately costs society more than the actual cost to home them, ironically. We'll see, I suppose: https://www.nprillinois.org/illinois/2025-03-19/housing-experts-worry-about-federal-plans-to-cut-homelessness-programs