With foreclosure rates increasing on a daily basis, the subprime mortgage crunch has forced thousands of families from their homes, effectively converting these houses from shelters for societal contributors to fertile territory for squatters and drug dealers.  The easiest way to deal with this problem would have been to prevent it from happening in the first place, but now that the damage has been done, we are left to less savory but nonetheless effective solutions.

One possible solution could be to legislate a massive buy up of these foreclosed homes at reduced rates.  These homes could then be distributed among the existing homeless of this country with the idea being that, in an ideal situation, we would be left with zero empty homes and zero homeless people.  It would be a perfectly efficient scenario, but there are several glaring problems with it. 

For one, it is unacceptable that the cost of this plan would be deferred to the taxpaying public.  While the long term benefits of such a plan would be immeasurable, the short term benefits would be unmeasurable, because there would be none.  If such a plan somehow resulted in the spontaneous generation of plasma TVs in the living room of every citizen, I would be all for it, because my living room does not yet have a plasma TV.  But since it does not, and only augments the growth of some sort of future utopia that I may or may not live to see -- and which, if I do see it, I will be watching it woefully in standard definition -- I can not support it.

Additionally, this plan essentially rewards the homeless for their laziness.  If the homeless want a home, they should purchase one.  The homeless are a cagey bunch, and have probably been waiting for such a foreclosure crisis for many years, sleeping in cardboard boxes, wearing aluminum foil on their heads (I call them "Scheme Helmets") and plotting the day that they would be given a free house and possibly a cup of coffee.  Now that such a day has come, are we meant to simply bend to their whims?  Are we to cave to their beggary and give in to their insidious plans to be warm in the wintertime?  Tommyrot!  They should be punished for their secrets, not rewarded. 

If anything, we should put "Homeless Welcome!" signs up in the windows of these empty homes and, when the homeless enter, we should snare them in our nets and deposit them in the cold ocean between the Alaskan island of Gravina and the town of Ketchikan, where the unfairly-named "Bridge to Nowhere" was to have been built before selfish lawmakers nixed its plans.  Why should 9,000 Alaskans have to take a ferry ride to their airport when they can drive in style over the corpses of the conniving homeless?

Another solution is as simple as can be:  we can simply detonate the homes.  However, while it would make for titillating viewing in neighborhoods across the country -- we could even do it on the Fourth of July, and celebrate our independence from the burden of so many empty houses -- and while we could still drown and freeze the homeless in the arctic waters off the coast of Alaska, there are some drawbacks to this plan.

One is the raw monetary cost.  The demolition of so many homes would require explosives, and explosives are not cheap and, for the same price, would be put to better use in any of our nation's beautiful gravel quarries.  One might assume that some of this cost could be offset by charging admission to the demolitions, but there is a lower limit to what people will pay to see, and an exploding house is, sadly, below this threshold.  Perhaps a compilation video of many exploding houses could be marketed as "The World's Most Explosive Houses," but I've crunched the numbers and profit seems unlikely. 

Additionally, you must factor in the fact that these houses are in the middle of neighborhoods where, ostensibly, you and I might live, and thus our houses could be singed by the splash damage resultant from so many glorious explosions.  In summation, though simply blowing the houses into oblivion seems like a fun and festive way to end the problem of their existence, it would cost too much money.  Surely, there is a possible plan that would actually make money to such an extent that I'll get a plasma TV out of it.

Thanks to the think-tank that is my mind, there is such a plan.

Even as we speak, conflict rages in the are known either as Israel or Palestine, depending on which side of the conflict you rage.  Both lay claim to the same territory.  While their wills are incredibly strong, and the blood-feud they're embroiled in seems to be impossible to disentangle, I propose that, with the proper incentives, it will be possible to lure these people out of their trenches and into a brand new (to them) home.  It is a startlingly simple solution, and one which I'm sure you will find quite elegant.

Each family with a disputed claim to a piece of land in Israel and Palestine will be given the option to purchase a home and the lot it stands on for a price at one-quarter the already low-and-tumbling-lower market value.  Since it is such a famously good deal, families will swarm to our vacant houses in droves.  Now for the twist!  Each home will be sold twice:  once each to an Israeli family and to a Palestinian family.  The gathered funds will go toward offsetting the cost of purchasing the homes from the banks that foreclosed upon their previous owners, and toward outfitting each of the homes with a series of hidden video cameras that will tape every dramatic moment of the contrived feud.  This is a hit reality show in the making that could run for hundreds -- if not thousands -- of seasons, and which we will all be able to watch in high-definition due to the incredible ad revenues it's sure to generate.  Will they work it out?  Or will they murder each other for thousands upon thousands of years?  I don't know; I'll be tuning in to find out with the rest of you!

Rather than fighting each other in varyingly organized forces in a centralized location, and in so doing destabilizing the entire region with violence, they will be fighting each other one manageable family at a time, and they will be doing it for our entertainment -- and profit!  The Middle East, stripped of its major source of conflict, will flow with delicious oil and, if my calculations and the calculations of my team of scientists and economists are correct, they will give it to us for free for helping them out of their current jam.  No more empty homes, a colossal melioration of Middle East conflict, free oil and plasma TVs for all -- it's more than fair to say that this problem is SOLVED!