I had exactly the same conversation with her in-person once.

There's loud opposition to new housing everywhere, and a common talking points among housing opponents are that there are lots of empty units. I don't have examples of people citing this article because it's new, but anticipate that it will happen, and am pre-emptively saying it will be BS if/when it does.

> more than one in four of D.C.’s roughly 8,000 public housing units that sit vacant, at an average length of about two years

So 2,000 empty units, temporarily.

That's a drop in the bucket compared to demand. We could put tons and tons of resources into getting those 2,000 units filled a few months faster, at great expense, and it would make no discernible difference to the overall issue.

Maybe we should do that. It would help 2,000 people. Fine. But don't pretend like this is an argument against the massive need for more housing units in the region. All of these unfilled units put together add up to like 1% of the need.