Denver’s homeless population hit an all-time high in 2024. Still, according to a new report, there is no shortage of available housing units.

Omar Ocampo, a researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies and the report’s co-author, said much of the housing built over the past two decades is not homes for people. Those units, many of which remain vacant, are being used by hedge funds and the wealthy as safe and profitable places to park large sums of untaxed wealth.

“We have seen, over the past decade or so, a boom in luxury real estate,” Ocampo observed. “Basically, the only people who can afford it are people who are ultrahigh net worth, or at the top of the income distribution.”

The report showed how corporations and wealthy investors worldwide have amassed large tracts of single—and multifamily residential units since the housing market crash in 2008. The scale of the purchases has put upward pressure on prices, causing rents to skyrocket and making homeownership out of reach for millions.

There are 16 million vacant homes across the U.S., which means there are 28 homes for every American experiencing homelessness.

Developers can apply for tax incentives to build affordable housing, but the profit margins for luxury units are simply too large for all but nonprofit builders to resist. Ocampo pointed to the Homes Act, recently introduced in the U.S. House, as one way to improve the situation for the vast majority of Americans who cannot afford what the marketplace is building.

“We need public investment and to establish a housing development authority, which authorizes hundreds of billions of dollars to develop permanently affordable housing,” Ocampo contended

Corporations have also increased their earnings by converting rental stock into short-term vacation homes. Ocampo noted a shareholder report by executives at Blackstone, which now owns more than 300,000 residential units across the U.S., promising profits as the rental stock went down.

“Chronic housing shortages meant their ability to raise prices and be able to extract more wealth from vulnerable working-class tenants,” Ocampo added.

By Eric Galatas

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