There are Enough Empty Houses in the U.S. to House at Least All the Homeless

In "USA Today", there was an article depicting the severity of the recession in the United States economy. In this article it was announced that over 18 million houses are bank owned and 9.4 million are still trying to be sold. That is over 27 million homes that remain empty throughout the Unites States.
Another problem the United States currently houses is the number of homeless people; many have been cast out buried in debts, others have not been able to make the payments they previously could before. In all of this destruction, the economy has not only taken jobs, its also consequently taken homes. Just one year ago, right in the middle of the recession there was an average of 672,000 people homeless every night. That is 22 in every 10,000. It may not seem like an extravagant number, but in this last year times have worsened and more people have been forced out of their homes.
Since more people are losing their homes than there are buying homes, it would be the country's duty to act, to if not fix, at least alleviate the problem. One way I see fit to handle this issue is to use some of these bank-owned homes to house the homeless people. We have more than one house for every homeless person so why not put these people in homes?
America needs to solve the problems of the economy, homelessness, food shortages and more; but America should tackle one problem at a time so as not to divert our energy. If we could just make a way in order to get people off the streets and into houses, we could potentially move on to the many other problems.