Not sure how it’s dystopic to convert unused office space into housing. Sounds useful to me.
I’ve read that it’s difficult to do though because the buildings usually don’t have the right plumbing for it. I do wonder if they could replumb using raised flooring.
I’d also like to see some of this wasted office space converted into indoor farming.
There are wide swaths of dt Manhattan that are completely empty rn. Floors and floors of high rises. A lot of them are on 10 year leases so they’re just being paid still while no one uses them but when they all go up it’s gonna be interesting.
The current corrupt mayor refused to rezone them for residential and did a big RTO campaign that fell flat. They’ll keep them empty even after rents end or try to figure out ways to rent whole floors to the mega rich. They’ll never convert them to normal housing as it will lower the value of their skyscrapers. Instead they’ll continue to lobby for RTO politicians to ensure businesses force back people to work in them.
I mean yeah, if people want to live in that condition to be in cities and save money, it’s fine. But not at $850/mo. That’s insane to expect that much to live in a closet with no personal bathroom. For $200-300 a month, maybe.
The solution is to end corporate ownership of single family homes and flood the market with the vacant homes they’re sitting on. Which will drive down home values, which will drive down rent values.
This “solution” is just trying to get the working class to be happy peasants because “hey, at least you have a room to yourself”. Get the fuck out of here with that.
I agree completely with your comment. Including the rage at the end lol
Exactly. Are they the solution? Yeah but not at 1k + Utilities and BJ a month.
once again, trying to shift the onus for a solution away from the 1% who caused and perpetuate the problem
Exactly. Not sure how slum lord flats are the solution here, when investment firms are sitting on millions of empty homes.
how slum lord flats are the solution here
they’re a solution for building owners who can’t find tenants to lease their office space to. they don’t actually care about the peasants who can’t find affordable homes
That’s kind of the definition of a slum lord, though, isn’t it?
instead of “tenants” i should have said “badly run businesses that nevertheless have tons of capital to blow on office space”
Ah. Sorry. I misunderstood ‘tenants’ in terms of the civiz who would rent the tiny flat, and not as the businesses who would rent the entire floor.
Who do you think owns those fucking buildings with office space?
The same investment firms. That’s my point. They own too much, and need regulation.
yup. they are the one who profit from the housing crisis worldwide.
we would have to go through them to solve it anyway. might as well take out the guilliotines.
Without regulation, it’ll make it worse. (31 minute YouTube video by Evan Edinger)
Due to the way office buildings are configured, they’d need to be converted to some sort of communal living (think college dorms). It seems feasible in theory, but it would have a very limited audience and would be a difficult living situation for most people.
Converting to individual units would require extensive retrofits and renovations.
There are enough houses.
There are too many landlords.
For every rental, there is at least one landlord. In and of itself, this isn’t a bad thing. Some people don’t want to own homes, and would rather rent. There should be that option. Option. Not the only possibility. There are not enough ownable homes, because too many are owned by investment firms that keep them deliberately empty to drive up prices. Real estate investing should be heavily regulated, and, yes, this includes over landlords.
Why do they have to be micro though?
To fit more units, and make more money.
So they can make as much money as possible
No: converting commercial space to residential is more expensive than building new residential
Not to mention the like 12 empty houses per homeless person.
This bullshit is just some vulture capitalist’s foolproof scam to make a quick buck in a floundering corporate real estate market.
No: converting commercial space to residential is more expensive than building new residential
Everything I’m seeing says the answer just isn’t as simple as you’re stating here in your post.
- Are ALL office buildings good conversion candidates for residential? No.
- Are ALL office buildings bad conversion candidates for residential? Also, no.
- Are there a measurably high enough number of office buildings that are good candidates for conversion for residential? Yes!
The more accurate answer is in the middle. Not all office buildings are created equal, and not all cities have excess land meaning there higher conversion costs are still worth it over building new residential. According to one study of 1000 office buildings evaluated in cities across the USA and Canada, 25% were good candidates for cost effective conversion to residential. Keep in mind this can include both small office buildings as large ones. source
"Now, developers in the city have five office conversion projects underway and 10 more in development, Paynter noted in his blog. He said he expects these initiatives to increase the number of residential units there by 24%. "
“The success in Calgary has prompted over a dozen cities and more than 100 building owners across North America to seek similar solutions for their struggling Class C and B buildings, Paynter said in the blog post. Projects including Franklin Tower in Philadelphia; 1 St. Clair West in Toronto, Ontario; and The Residences at Rivermark Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, show how outdated office buildings can be reconfigured into amenity-rich residential communities, adding value to the cityscape, Paynter wrote.”
In some cities even if the cost of conversion may be higher than building new residential, it may still be worth it to do conversion instead of new build simply because there isn’t land free in the right places. source I postulate in these cases, building new residential would also have to include the cost of demolishing the existing office building to reclaim the land which suddenly would make conversion cheaper again.
“Manhattan not only sees the most conversions at present, but it also has the most office space meeting our criteria for future conversion potential, and so we expect it to remain the leading market for OTM conversions.”
From all sources I found the best office buildings to convert are actually older and smaller ones that are decades old, not new ones. Not only are the older office buildings easier/cheaper to convert these are also less attractive to businesses which prefer newer building designs and flexibility. This is one of those narrow cases where its beneficial to both groups. There are no losers in these specific cases.
Like may things in life, there isn’t one simple answer, and that appears to be the case here.
Which is why developers do it. To lose money.
Lots of housing is the solution to the housing crisis.
Outlaw AirBnB and corporate ownership of residences or the amount of housing will literally never matter.
Also ban housing as an investment vehicle.
Just ban housing 🙂
Pull a japan and make wooden houses have a lifespan so I’m not paying top dollar for house that wasn’t renovated since 1935.
Most houses in my area are wooden and at least 60 years old. And there are plenty of 100+ and 200+ wooden homes too.
I thought the reason Japan has so many younger homes was all the carpet bombing in WW2. Same with German housing stock.
Not quite. From what I’ve been able to gather, housing in the postwar era was made fast and cheap to ensure everyone could have a place in the immediate aftermath of the devastation. Then, in the sixties, they came up with better building standards, more regulations, and evaluated the lifespan of typical housing. I don’t remember the exact number, but they determined a conservative lifespan to be like 20-30 years. With this in mind, they started to constantly update building codes to make new construction safer and more resilient to natural disasters. So, what would end up happening is old homes stay cheap because not many people want to buy at the end of its life, and it’s less expensive to build new to modern standards than rehabbing an old home. Side note: recently the old estimated lifespan was re-evaluated and they determined that housing lasts, again I don’t remember the exact number, closer to 50 years.
Now, while all this is happening they have a different relationship to zoning than, say, America. What’s in America? It’s mostly single use zoning. They have a lot more mixed use zoning that allows for building housing where it would be illegal in America like commercial zones or light industrial zones. Side note: America used to build like that too until suburbs were invented and pushed as THE solution to housing people in our postwar era. Think of the older parts of towns with stores on the ground level and housing being 1-4 floors above them. With this freedom to build, they have built way more housing than is actually needed and in places people want to live.
The last point, which was already mentioned above, is that they don’t view housing as an investment. It’s a place where you raise your family, you store your belongings, and sleep. You don’t buy a home with the idea of selling it to make a ton of money in a few years or even decades. With that, there’s no incentive to buy up housing and leave it sitting empty for the right time to maximize the investment. It’s sort of like we view cars. Cars don’t typically increase in value, and the ones that do it’s because they’re rare, beautiful, or historic. MFers are out here trying to sell the housing equivalent of an '80s Ford Fiesta at 2024 fully loaded Toyota Camry or even Mercedes S Class prices.
Summary: Housing has a shorter lifespan, can be built almost anywhere through more mixed zoning, and it isn’t an investment, it’s just a place to live.
AirBNB/short term rental is likely already illegal in most cities. But no one wants to take it on (can’t piss off the lobbyists I suppose). If you’re renting out a property for a few days or a couple of weeks and you don’t live on site, that’s a hotel, not a BNB. And hotels are already zoned and taxed and regulated — they can’t be in a residential neighborhood for example. You’d think hotel chains wouldn’t want this illegal competition and would sue.
Almost there… It’s really about ending capitalism.
While true, in the USA, there are millions of “investment homes” owned by investment firms, all sitting empty, driving down supply and driving up costs. The solution to the housing market in this instance isn’t to increase the availability of 150sqft slum lord flats, but instead to significantly decrease the number of “investment homes” an entity is allowed to own [and to restrict its use (for example, it must not sit empty for more than 6 months)].
Edit in []
I’d love to see an “empty property” tax. It would drive down the number of empty offices and homes, generate revenue, and drive down realty prices and rents.
And this tax needs to increase 25% every 6 months until it’s no longer empty.
A: no.
$850 a month for 150 square feet??? Utter insanity aside, how is that even remotely considered ‘deeply affordable’
Because these idiots are comparing it to the normal sized flats, that are more expensive due to the deficit they created.
Fuck man, even the tiniest possible cruise cabins still have room for a stand up shower, toilet, and sink. And they fit a queen sized bed.
Knock down a wall or two and don’t make people share a communal bathroom like they’re recruits in basic training.
The fact that they’re micro apartments is telling.
I think this deserves a closer look. This isn’t just affordable housing, but affordable housing in the middle of Downtown areas loaded with walking distance services, jobs, and public transportation. Moving working class people into urban areas is a good thing that can have a reverse-gentrification knock-on effect as the extra housing inventory pressures landlords to cut rents.
It’s student accomodation - short term , probably ok for youths for whom sharing with strangers as part of the “experience”.
That’s no place for putting down roots, or for a full time worker. It’s not a bad idea in principle - i agree. But each unit should be 2-3 times the size and include a private shower room, toilet. and at least a small kitchenette. And the conversion should be nominally permanent - i.e. require a plaanning application to reverse.
That plan doesnt even have a washbasin/water supply. My guess is they want to cheap out on plumbing - hence the communal bathroom and kitchen. So that it is reversible back to office space - they’re not building a home if they want it reversible - it’s temporary “accomodation”. No good for a lasting comunity. I’d want this type of accomodation to be no more than a few percent of the homes in an area.
To me the fact they scaled down the plan of the “traditional studio” to make their plan look bigger betrays the fact that these are disingenuous salespeople not actually interested in making viable homes for people.
edit: It’s also fine for housing the homeless - no argument there, but I’d hope for them a pathway to adequate long term accomodation.
This idea in particular seems inconvenient to me, but there may be people who would prefer something like this.
I had a very small apartment when I lived in Japan, and honestly, I really liked it for the most part. It was a bit bigger than what I think they’re saying in this article, though.
While I’m not fully on board with this idea, I do think it could help some people out. When I got my first job out of college, I definitely couldn’t afford to live anywhere aside from my parents house. All my friends were in the same boat and even with our meager salaries together, we could not afford to get an apparent together. It took us 3-4 years out of college to have the salary to be able to come together and get an apartment. But what if you moved to a new place and don’t have friends to share with? What if you just… Don’t have friends or have some reason you can’t live with others? This is a great solution for that. My brother was in a situation recently where he felt stuck in a relationship with his batshit crazy girlfriend because he couldn’t afford to be on his own and would have to move in with our parents if they broke up. It eventually worked out and he has an apartment all his own, but I feel he could have removed himself from that relationship sooner if there was a cheap option like this for him to use temporarily.
A lot of American municipalities have banned a lot of the cheap and small apartments that could house working people. Offer it as an option; it seems better than sleeping on the streets.
