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MONEY LAUNDERING CAUSING EMPTY VACANT HOMES CRISIS IN ENGLISH SPEAKING COUNTRIES!

908 views · Published 10 March 2017 · 22:26 · Indexed 12 November 2026

Channel: Mike Martins · 2017 · News & Politics

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“I just see people leaving… I think people are just going to get fed up.” — Mike Martins

In this special Housing Crisis edition, I’m looking beyond Vancouver and asking a much bigger question: how many homes are sitting empty across the English-speaking world while ordinary people are struggling to find somewhere affordable to live?

This isn't just one city. In this video I go through reports and figures from Melbourne, Auckland, Vancouver, London, Toronto, the United States, Ireland and Sydney. The numbers being reported at the time were staggering, although the reports use different definitions and methodologies for terms such as “vacant,” “unoccupied,” and “not regularly occupied,” so they shouldn't all be treated as directly comparable.

I look at Melbourne reports using water consumption to estimate potentially vacant properties, Auckland's reported tens of thousands of empty dwellings, Vancouver's growing number of unoccupied units, reports of approximately 57,000 empty homes in London, and reports describing tens of thousands of homes in the Toronto area as not regularly occupied.

Then we move into the United States, Ireland and Sydney, where the same basic question keeps coming up: how can housing become increasingly unaffordable while substantial numbers of properties remain unused?

I also discuss speculation, investment properties, foreign capital, tax incentives and the transformation of housing from somewhere people live into an increasingly important financial asset.

And this connects directly to why I left Vancouver.

Instead of trying to buy an enormously expensive property in the city, I moved to Merritt and bought a large house on nearly an acre for $260,000. Now I have room for my family, my garden, my home gym and the projects I always wanted to do.

The question I'm asking in 2017 is simple:

At what point does the number of empty homes combined with unaffordable housing become a national emergency?

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