Well without wanting to be taken the wrong way, because I 100 % think we, and every country who can, should be giving people asylum here, I don't know how some of these ideas would actually work.
For example the idea of places like like empty palaces or the second homes of the super rich being used.
To who would these places be sold? Because if they are sold to the government to use as housing for the needy then the money to buy them will need to come from somewhere. Then money to convert them into something that could be used, because you obviously can't just open the doors of a few hundred year old palaces and put families in there, they'd need about gutting and making into apartments. So, even if we had the money to do this, would it not be a more useful idea to spend that money on building up (apartment blocks for hundreds of people to live in built on the sites of buildings standing desolate and creating an eyesore that are in every city in the UK) instead of totally obliterating architecture that has been standing for hundreds of years, and is so important to our heritage?
Then with second homes the problem is where do you put the line on how much money a person can have? Because someone might have two homes because their parents left them a house somewhere, so no it's not good that it's empty when it could house a family, but how do you do this? You can't just say that anyone who owns a home they don't live in it has to give it away for free, and if the government are going to buy it then you have the same problem as above. Then you would have the problem that some people might have 100 million but no second home, but someone might have no money but two homes and be made to sell one for a low price, when people are sitting on money they just haven't used that could be used to help people. But then why should they? Obviously people should want to but you can't actually tell people what to spend their money on that they have earned. Without going into some sort of communist state some people are going to stay super rich and some are going to stay poor.
On top of this you have the problem that working people might find it quite wrong that a family are just "given" a five bedroom house somewhere picturesque, that someone thought was good enough to spend money on a second home, when most working people are finding they cant afford to buy somewhere small for their family. from their wages in cheaper area. So you'd open up to more people exploiting this and trying to get themselves someones old second home, and to bad feeling from people who don't earn so little as to be "given" one, but don't earn enough to buy one.
So if someone who thinks that the forced sale of second homes and the use of anywhere that's empty being converted into homes would work it would be intresting to hear how they would do this. Actually intresting not wanting to cause an argument as obviously something does need to be done, and it does seem wrong places stand empty when people need them, but it just isn't as easy as some seem to think, and when people say this would be a good idea they don't usually explain how they think it would be done.
Before anyone asks, no, I don't have a second home, I am not rich, and wouldn't lose out in any way if this did happen.