You really like that quote, but this live letter was from LAST OCTOBER. A year ago. More than a month before housing was implemented.

What's wrong with devs changing their minds? Integrity whatever, sometimes a design decision that seems sound early on looks very very naive months later in a different perspective. Clearly, leaving houses empty and unused when there is still some demand is totally healthy for the game.
Anyway, they've got time to implement some sort of auto-demolish. Hopefully they'll find one that doesn't screw solo players who only play one month out of every three, yet still have homes to lose that seem to abound in these kinds of threads.