Pay $1 for the house . . . and how much scrap value for the copper pipe and wiring you can strip out of it and sell to the junkyard? PROFIT!
Yep, because there's an INCREDIBLE sense of ownership attached to something you're essentially given and don't have to work for.
How long would it be before they're screaming that they need government assistance maintaining those free homes?
Goddamn, shades of Zimbabwe.
Step 1. Take all of the white-owned farms and give them to locals as reparations.
Step 2. PROFIT!
Reality -- Few of those "new farmers" had any clue what to do with a farm. They were given very successful farms so they just sat back and waited for the money to roll in. Zimbabwe, which had once been Africa's breadbasket and top food producer, quickly fell from a net food exporter to a net food importer. Worse, Zimbabwe didn't have money to import food because Mugabe's goons had so totally borked the economy that poverty and hunger skyrocketed.
Of course, liberals all over the world applauded these "land repatriation" moves because... evil white colonialism.
I see California moving in much the same direction in my lifetime.
"Our program to repatriate people of color to their ancestral lands will redress hundreds of years of inequity!"
But Governor McCommieface, you're giving most of the land to individuals who have no historical connection to that land.
"OH MY GOD YOU FASCIST TRUMPITE RACIST HATER! ARREST HIM ON THOUGHT CRIMES!"
I, for one, welcome the impending collapse of California's economy. They've toyed with it before in decades past, but this one? If they actually do it?
I don't see it as being recoverable. Ever.