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What Should Happen to Empty Downtown Office Spaces? (theguardian.com) 358

"A significant swath of our downtown office space is sitting empty," writes a columnist for the Guardian. "New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Denver, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas and other big cities are experiencing record-high office vacancies as workers keep working from home and companies keep letting them..." Some face-time is necessary but we're never going to go back to a 100% in-the-office policy, and companies that attempt this will lose talent to those that adapt to the shift. All this means that a substantial amount of square feet in all those tall office buildings in our major metropolitan areas are going to remain empty. The owners of these properties are already feeling the pressure of meeting higher debt maintenance with lower lease revenue, with many facing default. Countless small businesses in downtown areas facing significantly less traffic are closing their doors. And unless something is done, those empty buildings — after the banks have repossessed them from bankrupt borrowers — will become derelict, inviting even more crime and homelessness. It's already happening.

So what to do? The good news is that there are many opportunities for the entrepreneurial.

For example, existing office floors can be turned into less expensive single units for startups and incubators who want to boast a downtown address. Some buildings in cities with a vibrant and residential downtown — like Philadelphia — could be turned into residences. Others that are burdened with older, unsafe, non-air-conditioned school structures could convert this space into classrooms for students. Or perhaps all the homeless people sleeping on the streets outside of these empty structures could be given a warm place to stay with medical and counselling support?

With the continuing boom in e-commerce, warehouse space remains costly but could become more affordable — and logistically accessible — in a downtown structure. Manufacturing space could be more accommodating, with a better location making it easier to procure workers. Other alternatives for these buildings already being considered include vertical farming, storage facilities, gyms and movie sets. Or what about taking the red pill and merely knocking these buildings down and creating open spaces, parks, museums or structures that are more amenable to this new era of downtown life?

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What Should Happen to Empty Downtown Office Spaces?

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  • Demolition (Score:5, Funny)

    by TwistedGreen ( 80055 ) on Sunday July 30, 2023 @11:24PM (#63726848)

    See Fight Club

    Imagine stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center...

    • Isn't that 12 Monkeys

    • Re:Demolition (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Monday July 31, 2023 @09:11AM (#63728026) Journal

      See Fight Club

      Imagine stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center...

      Since the 1950's, most large-scale architecture has been soul-sucking ugly enough for this to be my preferred option. See Tom Wolfe's From Bauhaus to Our House [wikipedia.org] for all the reasons why.

      Just be sure and add Frank Gehry's drug-induced designs when we're setting the charges.

  • Housing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Sunday July 30, 2023 @11:28PM (#63726862)

    Duh. And, btw, why don't we build housing such that there's zero involuntary homeless? I've seen vast amounts of housing for refugees using those UN cabins. Why can't we have designated parks away from the city to house anyone that is homeless? Those UN cabins are much sturdier than tents and only cost $1000 (reference: https://www.dw.com/en/un-test-... [dw.com] ). San Francisco already spends like $100,000 per homeless person. For that amount we could install 500 cabins (assume $1000 for the cabin and $200 labor cost of installation and $800 miscellaneous shit like site prep.) Food can be covered with welfare which is $200 a month. They could be situated an hour away from the city center with daily bus transportation to and from the city. It's stupid that the USA still has homeless people. Japan has hardly any involuntary homeless and they have a smaller GDP per person.

    If you don't like the cabin idea how about 100 square foot homes in those vacant buildings? https://theworld.org/stories/2... [theworld.org]

    If you think these homes suck, they are far better than living on the street homeless and provide a base from which to get a job and life back on track.

    • *50 cabins.

      • Those UN cabins are much sturdier than tents and only cost $1000 (reference: https://www.dw.com/en/un-test-... [dw.com]

        Yeah, not the best reference or article. First, the cost of the cabin is listed as $1300 each (1000 Euros) which it asserts that is cheaper than the current UN tents. I can't imagine a tent that would cost more than this pre-fab plastic cabin. The UN tents are just support poles and canvas. Second, the article says the tents only last 6 months, but the Australian link says the tents are design

        • Re:Housing (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Monday July 31, 2023 @04:25AM (#63727314) Homepage Journal

          That's an interesting idea. Okay, I'm military, so I've spent a couple years living in tents during deployments.
          Still, some thioughts:

          Designed to last a year, but only lasting 6 months, makes perfect sense if the environment/users are harsher on the tents than the designed environment. Or the tents weren't designed properly, such that they wear faster. Etc...

          As for costs, consider life cycle. One of the complaints about the tends is that they're uninsulated. Even the military tends that I used that cost thousands of dollars are minimally insulated, consisting of an outer shell with inner lining. The two layers provide some insulation. Not to mention things like blocking outlines.

          So if you figure in something like the difference in heating bills, and that one plastic shelter will outlast 6 tents, and it starts making more sense.

          This link shows the one model of the current tents is more like $500,

          Yes, but if you need 6 of them to match the one structure over it's life, that's $3k vs $1k (est).

        • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
          You can get some really nice and expensive 'tents' that are almost like cabins if you look around.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Construction companies have paid their politicians, and so what they want goes. And what they want is for it to be illegal to provide "substandard housing". A homeless person who would be delighted with a 100 square foot space to call his own with a locking door and shared bathroom can't have it. He'll have to live in a tent.
      • Re:Housing (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MeNeXT ( 200840 ) on Monday July 31, 2023 @08:29AM (#63727844)

        The electorate keeps demanding new standards. Just look at the electrical in a home. 50 years ago most plugs were not even grounded. Today all plugs in new developments are grounded, Circuit breakers instead of fuses. Color coded wiring. Most of these measures saves lives and are due to human injury or death events.

        Building codes on insulation save homeowners money. My current home uses half the energy than my older home even though it's twice the size.

        NIMBY is a major problem. New development is stalled often due to public consultation with the major complaint being "we don't want it in our neighbourhood".

        Today everything is regulated. Our free society in many communities dictates what type of housing can be built, how many trees need to be planted, what material is used, etc... to infinty. This regulation costs money increasing the cost of housing.

        I strongly believe this issue that we are experiencing today is due to our desires. Cities are built to generate profit for a few and not generate wealth for the society as a whole. This shift was going to happen no matter what. Workers could not afford the prices demanded by greed. Cities saw $$$ in the taxes they could impose. Now they have to lie in the bed they created for themselves. Unfortunately this will not happen because the discussion is not about stability but about saving the profit of the greedy. Most North American cities are not designed to be lived in. They are designed to generate profits.

         

    • Re:Housing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday July 31, 2023 @12:57AM (#63727002) Journal
      I think most homeless people will say the tents they currently live in are better than living in a shack away from everything.

      SF is working on housing the homeless, but it's hard:
      https://www.sfchronicle.com/op... [sfchronicle.com]

      You may also be happy to see they have a cabin program:
      https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf... [sfchronicle.com]
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 )

        I think most homeless people will say the tents they currently live in are better than living in a shack away from everything.

        So, why are we giving them a "choice"?

        I'm pretty sure that we still have vagrancy laws still on the books, and not currently enforced.

        Start enforcing them again and quit letting people pile up and sleep and defecate and do drugs in the streets of our cities, and give them a choice...hit the road, or we give you a place to live outside of town.

      • "SF is working on housing the homeless, but it's hard"

        They should work hard then. Instead of spending $60k per TENT they should build container homes. They could look at Betty Chen's village in Eureka for hints.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Office to housing conversion will never happen, because it would result in truly affordable housing.

      We briefly flirted with affordable housing in 2008, and the minute it happened everybody screamed bloody murder, including the left who were out there literally screaming STOP FORECLOSURES, and I even tried to tell them they were wrong:

      Look, I get you don't want granny to lose the house; but this is the wrong approach. Let them foreclose on all the grannies, and they can move to apartments for a while and sto

    • Re: Housing (Score:5, Interesting)

      by BetterSense ( 1398915 ) on Monday July 31, 2023 @02:40AM (#63727126)
      The problem with most of these good ideas is they are illegal, or if not outright illegal impossible because they can never be profitable.

      Zoning laws probably zone the whole building as an office building for starters. Overcome that hurdle, and get it rezoned, and you will find out you need mandatory parking for all your tenants... even if they don't have cars. Oh, and the micro apartments you were going to build won't pass the building code...has to have rooms at least 8 feet on the smallest dimension, every bedroom has to have a closet, 36-inch hallways , ADA requirements for the bathroom, on and on...

      My uncle used to build affordable micro apartments in Seattle. Every one of them was filled instantly, usually by college kids who were thrilled to live in the city for $450/mo and didn't need a car or lots of living space. Gradually the city closed his loopholes until the apartments were just normal apartments renting for $1200+ and then they stopped building them. I seem to remember that parking requirements were the worst, because one parking space is practically the size of one of the micro apartments, and you can't stack parking spaces up...nevermind it's right next to a transit stop, you have to have x space per bedroom even if only one person lived in a multi bedroom unit. We mandate places for cars to live and ban places for people to live. That's what you get in America for building what people want.

      We have made affordable housing illegal, and practically every loophole you could think of to make it cheaper has already been closed. The tent cities are the only affordable housing, because they ignore the law...you couldn't even build a tent city!
      • Re: Housing (Score:4, Insightful)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Monday July 31, 2023 @04:00AM (#63727264) Homepage Journal

        Micro apartments are a bad idea. We should be trying to build bigger apartments with more space, not less.

        The goal should not be providing everyone with a shoe box to live in, it should be to provide high quality housing at an affordable price.

        As for the homeless issue, it's political. If it looks like people are getting something for nothing, voters will object. "If they get a $1000 box to live in for free, why don't I?"

        • Re: Housing (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Monday July 31, 2023 @04:31AM (#63727322) Homepage Journal

          The goal should not be providing everyone with a shoe box to live in, it should be to provide high quality housing at an affordable price.

          Remember Fast, Cheap, and Good, pick two?

          You're trying for all three here, I think. Large, affordable, and high quality.

          I'd argue that we shouldn't be worrying about size, the shoe box actually suits some people during some life periods(I know, I've lived in a few), and it'd help get everybody housed.

          Once everybody is housed in affordable structures, THEN we can start worrying about size and amenities beyond basic shelter.

          For the "something for nothing" crowd, I'd point out that they're getting something as well: The ability to walk down the street without dodging homeless people. It's cheaper to get them into housing in various ways as well.

          Well, maybe excepting SF, but they've really screwed everything up, to the point that regulatory expenses are most of the expense.

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Making a dwelling larger doesn't add much to the construction cost. Most of the cost is not materials, and especially with factory fabrication the increased size doesn't add much to construction time either.

            Those homes can be good because we have spent centuries refining the process, and factory production really helps.

            The main reason why homes are small and expensive is because the developers can get away with that. Why would they build larger when they can fit more apartments into the same space, and they

            • Re: Housing (Score:5, Insightful)

              by mobby_6kl ( 668092 ) on Monday July 31, 2023 @05:42AM (#63727428)

              Making a dwelling larger doesn't add much to the construction cost. Most of the cost is not materials, and especially with factory fabrication the increased size doesn't add much to construction time either.

              Making a dweller larger means you can build fewer dwellings on the same amount of floor space.

              So if you're an NGO/government, you can house fewer homeless people, or put fewer apartment on the market, at a higher price, while housing fewer people.

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                Making a dwelling larger doesn't add much to the construction cost. Most of the cost is not materials, and especially with factory fabrication the increased size doesn't add much to construction time either.

                Making a dweller larger means you can build fewer dwellings on the same amount of floor space.

                So if you're an NGO/government, you can house fewer homeless people, or put fewer apartment on the market, at a higher price, while housing fewer people.

                But ... but ... math upsets me, and doesn't agree with my politics!

            • Making a dwelling larger definitely makes it cheaper per square foot, but it's still more expensive, on average. Obviously, if you go too micro you end up having to do things like use non-standard appliances that are drastically more expensive, so if you're trying to make an entire "apartment" that can fit into the back of a pickup, things can get more expensive as you shrink down.

              But if your goal is to house everybody affordably, size is one of the first things you can shrink down. In addition, as other

              • This is exactly why townhomes have existed in more or less their present form for hundreds of years. At 12 to 24 feet wide, you can pack a HUGE number of relatively large single family homes into a relatively small area. Meanwhile, you get most of the advantage of fee-simple single family homes.

                The roof is yours. The basement is yours. The back yard is yours. If there's an alley, you can have a garage with front and rear doors, so you can drive through it and park even more cars in the back yard. Your neigh

        • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
          In theory, micro apartments are better than the street but past attempts to cram lots of people in poverty into a small space haven't gone well. Mixed development is a better option to create livable spaces that don't result in more problems, but doing that with an office block is difficult. You are probably be better off turning an office block into something more upmarket and then (on the assumption a housing association picks one up at a discount) using the profit to build a mixed develop elsewhere. The
          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            One reason prices rise so much is because the baseline falls. Building ever smaller apartments just pushes up the price of the larger ones.

        • by mysidia ( 191772 )

          "If they get a $1000 box to live in for free, why don't I?"

          I would say Offer the box to everyone. That will solve the problem.. the answer to the question "why don't I'; Is: Because you don't want to, but they have got no other choice.

          Make it a condition required to take the box that you have to give up any other residence (Transfer it to someone else or sell it), however other than that it will be 100% free. The answer will then be it's fair, because you ARE then offered that option.

      • Re: Housing (Score:4, Informative)

        by jonbryce ( 703250 ) on Monday July 31, 2023 @05:53AM (#63727444) Homepage

        In other parts of the world, it is quite normal for different floors of a building to be zoned for different uses.
        For example the ground floor is often zoned for retail, then the upper floors can be zoned for office (in city centres), or residential, or sometimes a mixture of both.

        To convert from office to residential, you would need to basically strip it back to the floorplate and rebuild the entire internal fittings, but it is doable.

        • Re: Housing (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Monday July 31, 2023 @10:15AM (#63728308)

          I have seen this type of usage in Tokyo, which has no zoning laws at all. Every large office building has a mall of small shops in the basement - not American-style chain stores, but the neighborhood shops that carry what people actually need. The building basements are connected to each other under the streets over large areas, and feed directly into the subway system. New York could be redesigned this way, if we had the will, and if we could find a way of introducing Japanese-style safety.

      • Meh. I've seen the tide turn the other way in American cities- ie. ditching minimum parking requirements, rezoning for mixed use, etc. etc. The one salient point is that retrofitting these is seriously expensive and will represent the biggest hurdle. But to the end state governments need to start giving grants or seriously low interest rate loans as otherwise valuable tracts of land won't be producing any real tax dollars for a long, long time.
      • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
        Yes, zoning is an issue, because zoning is immutable and can never be changed.
        • by guruevi ( 827432 )

          There is a reason zoning exists, it makes it easier to know what you can use the buildings for and to what standards infrastructure should be built. To convert an office building with generally a single sewage and water stack to apartments, there is a LOT of plumbing that needs to be done which then needs to be connected and supplied.

          Offices are built with 1 toilet per 1000-2000 sq ft, homes are at least 5 times denser, so too are the sewage lines under those buildings calculated for eg. 100 4" connections

      • Re: Housing (Score:4, Insightful)

        by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Monday July 31, 2023 @08:35AM (#63727866)

        The problem with most of these good ideas is they are illegal, or if not outright illegal impossible because they can never be profitable.

        Someone else commented that San Francisco spends upwards of $100,000 per homeless person. If that's even remotely true, then someone IS currently profiting, and it sure as hell isn't the homeless. The "problem" would then be the "wrong" people making all the profit.

        If ideas are actually illegal, the law is more likely due to corruption than common sense. Someone lobbied to make competition illegal long ago, and for very profitable reasons.

        It's corruptly ironic that we demand profit from programs that shouldn't require any (like dealing with the homeless), while capitalist tech companies somehow "valued" in the billions file IPOs for profit-less operations. We should stop wondering why that "market" IS going to crash again.

        • I can't speak for other cities but in SF, there's a "homeless industry". A fuck ton of politically connected people whose job/career is "serving" the homeless. If they actually reduced homelessness they would risk their own jobs. The more homeless there are and the more fucked up on drugs and with mental issues, the more power and money those people have.

          We've talked about this for many years in SF but they just keep getting more powerful politically.

        • You are not wrong, the system is definitely rigged over decades as you say. But it's not simple corruption or a case of somebody paying off somebody for a specific rule. We are talking about decades, nay centuries of shaping the housing market. Both the built infrastructure and the legal frameworks are rigged and fixing either one would be a generational effort. The problem is not, as people tend to think, with real estate developers. It's more like a collusion between homeowners and the government. The fed
      • build walkable cities. Arizona's got a concept community with zero cars. If you still desperately need cars we can build car storage outside where people live/work and you can take a trolly to it.

        The main thing stopping this is a) commercial real estate is worth more and cities aren't built for people they're built for what George Carlin called the "owners" and b) car companies will fight tooth and nail (there's Carlin's owners again).

        "Laws" are not the problem. Laws are made by people. Stop blaming
    • The truth is there are very few "involuntary homeless." Homeless shelters exists, but they don't allow drug users. So of course drug users won't use them because they prefer to be homeless high. They are voluntary homeless.

      And before some imbecile says "oh, then we should allow drug users," that would mean the real involuntary homeless would be on the streets, and it would remove all incentive these people have to get off drugs.

      • Re:Housing (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Monday July 31, 2023 @04:41AM (#63727338) Homepage Journal

        I'd argue that your definition of "involuntary homeless" is pretty much useless, for example, and doesn't acknowledge the realities of drug addiction.

        I'll try to make it simple:
        1. Being homeless sucks. Majorly.
        2. Many homeless will take drugs to try to cover how much it sucks. They may already be addicted and all that.
        3. Addiction shoves itself into Maslow's hierarchy of needs at the bottom. Yes, it trumps shelter, food, and all that. This is best treated as a medical problem.
        4. Undergoing withdrawal sucks hard. It's something that most addicts try to avoid. It's why my grandmother kept smoking until the lung cancer metastasized to her brain and killed her.
        5. It should be obvious that undergoing withdrawal while homeless basically squares how shitty it is.
        6. Ergo, being homeless is actually an incentive to stay on the drugs and out of shelters.
        7. Providing shelter that allows drug use can get a person into a less shitty situation, where, after a period of recovery, NOW you can see about getting them clean, with proper medical assistance and such. Note: For some people, just warehousing them off the streets in cheap facilities is a better/cheaper solution than trying to get them clean. Just keeping them out of trouble is about the best we can do. If they can't handle that, THEN consider jail/prison.

        Incentives to get off drugs: Once their life doesn't suck as badly, then the 'need' to take drugs can be reduced. Matter of fact, we got a lot of heroin addicted soldiers in Korea/Vietnam back in the day, and we had a relatively high success rate of getting them off those drugs when we brought them back, partially by using the drastic environment change from deployed there in a warzone to being back in the USA. Without the environment present in the deployed locations, they didn't feel the need to take the drugs(they dried them out so no physical withdrawal remaining before being released in the USA).

        In a lot of cases, that's why I believe that a lot of drug treatment programs fail - the person does great in the program, because of the different environment. But after that, they go back home, right into the environment that drove them to use drugs in the first place.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by christoban ( 3028573 )

          I'd argue that your definition of "involuntary homeless" is pretty much useless, for example, and doesn't acknowledge the realities of drug addiction.

          I'll try to make it simple:
          1. Being homeless sucks. Majorly.

          Sure, so people would want to make it suck less by getting into a shelter. That requires NOT BEING ON DRUGS.

          2. Many homeless will take drugs to try to cover how much it sucks. They may already be addicted and all that.

          It would also suck much less if you're in a shelter, which requires you to not do drugs. Giving them free housing where they can go do drugs in private and away from prying eyes is madness.

          3. Addiction shoves itself into Maslow's hierarchy of needs at the bottom. Yes, it trumps shelter, food, and all that. This is best treated as a medical problem.

          Of course, treat it medically, but also provide incentives that increase your likelihood to abstain from drug use, NOT make it an easier and more attractive an option.

          4. Undergoing withdrawal sucks hard. It's something that most addicts try to avoid. It's why my grandmother kept smoking until the lung cancer metastasized to her brain and killed her.

          Yeah, smoking is insanely hard to quit, and th

    • Why can't we have designated parks away from the city to house anyone that is homeless?

      This approach has been tried before.

      Housing the homeless in desolate industrial areas where no resident will complain.

      But it turns out the homeless don't actually want to live there. Would you?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 )

        But it turns out the homeless don't actually want to live there. Would you?

        Simple...stop giving them a choice.

        Start enforcing vagrancy laws again....and then the choice is...jail/prison....or the homeless camp away from normal citizens.

    • by mjwx ( 966435 )
      In the UK a lot of town centres are already turning their commercial spaces into high priced apartments. Which they then have trouble selling at such high prices because it's no longer close to their job (or people don't need to be so close to their office any more). This was a trend long before COVID started emptying out even more offices.

      Then again, zoning in the UK isn't anywhere near as difficult or draconian as it is in the US (Usually a LGA will change it's mind when they see the £'s promised
    • > Duh. And, btw, why don't we build housing such that there's zero involuntary homeless? I've seen vast amounts of housing for refugees using those UN cabins. Why can't we have designated parks away from the city to house anyone that is homeless?

      Yeah, why not build some kind of camp where all these people can be concentrated?

      There's a lot of problems with this idea in the form you're proposing, first and foremost being that by locating them "away from the city" you are functionally denying them the only

      • The Japanese plan is far better than the American plan. Like hands-down night-and-day better.

    • San Francisco already spends like $100,000 per homeless person. For that amount we could...

      ...hire or elect less corrupt city leaders...unless you assume $100K is somehow actually spent on each homeless person and not on a dozen homeless program "administrators" working for the city.

      I mean seriously, how the hell do you really think this "works", especially in California...

    • They could be situated an hour away from the city center with daily bus transportation to and from the city.

      How about just "from the city center"....?

      We really don't want them coming back.

    • I can just imagine what kind of shangri-la a cabin-park on the edge of town will become in a few years. These places need.services too, policing, healthcare etc. Once you roll that all in then upgrading the accommodation seems like a drop in the bucket. I think people only suggest tiny homes and cabins so that the authorities aren't seem to be "giving too much away"

      What percentage of the homeless population do you think is involuntary, I put it to you that there a a significant portion that like the 'freedo

  • Fill em up. Only let them out at Night.

  • Grow weed.

  • "inviting even more crime and homelessness" Like someone is thinking: 'I have a home, job etc. Ohh, empty buildings! Let's go homeless and do crime!' We should not think how to make those invisible, but how to solve the actual reasons for why someone goes homeless. And if some business is going bust, well who cares, it's just business. Some will adapt, some not. Collective efficacy is going up. There is no net gain if someone is driving someplace twice a day.
    • I think it's more that point that businesses that are physically located in a given jurisdiction both pay taxes directly and indirectly generate additional business (purchases at restaurants, etc.) that also pay taxes.

      You replace those with nothing, then you end up with Detroit, where there's (still) too much infrastructure without any tax base to support it.

      And then yes, people will show up the night before Halloween and set buildings on fire. (Devil's Night): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      Examples of

  • by laughingskeptic ( 1004414 ) on Monday July 31, 2023 @12:20AM (#63726932)
    Banks packaged these loans as Mortgage Backed Securities and sold them to our 401K mutual funds. These securities are in the same boat as the home-loan MBSes of the previous wall street debacle. This is a big part of the problem because they make money selling these securities rather than directly on the loans and so are not inclined to scrutinize the valuations, rent roles and the risks as well as they should. Now after passing the risk on to others they can foreclose on a building and whatever they sell it for is a plus to them. In some cases they have just left the management company in place and simply collect the remaining rents. They don't care that the building is over half empty, they are getting free money.
  • Seriously, who gives a shit what you, or the government think should be done with those buildings. You, nor the government owns them. Unless the government is going to pay for them, it is up to the owner to determine how to manage their assets.

    • the government can "make" people do what they want if they apply the right pressure

      this is particularly useful on businesses whose primary motivation is profit

      so, yes the government can make the owners do what they want -- provided the right, and enough, incentive is given

    • by spth ( 5126797 )

      What the government thinks, matters.

      The buildings might be privately owned, but an empty building doesn't generate income. Regulation and zoning is what prevents the owners from converting them to a different use.

      The government doesn't have to pay to get the owners to do something with these buildings. It just needs to lifts the bans the government imposed.

      • ...but an empty building doesn't generate income.

        It depends on the business occupying the building. For a lot of businesses, an empty building saves a ton of money in overhead costs that no longer need to be paid (once the building is sold/otherwise disposed). That money can then be used to fund stuff that matters. The more expensive the building, the more savings by not having it, the more money for growth and profits. Hell, they might even consider paying their employees more. Small businesses will also have a better chance at attracting talent.

    • True. However... the government can ease regulatory hurdles so that the private sector feels incentivised to do something.

      I have an anecdote that may be relevant. Oxford Street in London used to be *the* shopping destination in the country. In recent years, a lot of the big franchise brands have closed down or moved entirely online (or just ditched their "flagship stores"). They've been replaced with "pop up shops" that pay minimal rent for a few months and sell cheap crap, "American candy stores" (which ar

    • The government permits them (or not) and taxes them (or not) and it is absolutely within their purview to tax empty units. This is the easiest solution.

  • We should probably kit them out with solar, wind, and energy storage....... but we all know they will end up as advertising.
  • If people who own these buildings want people to rent from them, try competing on price. That's how markets are supposed to work. Marketing is NOT a form of competition, it's a form of collusion.

    Markets without competition are just pyramid schemes and this article reads like a time share brochure. This line actually seems like it might have been lifted from marketing materials.

    "For example, existing office floors can be turned into less expensive single units for startups and incubators who want to boast
  • Buildings cannot necessarily be swapped from one use to another. Converting office space to residential is not a simple or cost free thing.
    • First, the utilities would be tough - particularly sewer and water. Sewer is probably the hardest since the system would need to support a much larger volume than was ever anticipated - but I suppose it depends on the bathroom habits of your average office worker compared to that of a person in their home. Water may not be too much more difficult since most offices have drop ceilings to run plumbing, assuming the existing water lines can supply the needed volume and if you expect kitchens and bathrooms in e

    • False. The relationship isn't two way, but converting commercial office space to residential is one of the most trivial conversions you can make. Commercial spaces are by design built to be flexible with easy access to services and ample room to run services in many flexible ways.

      The reverse isn't true. Converting a designed-as residential building to an office space is a monumental feat, but converting the other way is actually easier than simply renovating an existing old residential flat.

      Incidentally thi

      • Sounds plausible. However, it is NOT cost free. Maybe I should clarify what I am talking about. What I think other people are talking about. Taking big high-rise commercial office spaces and converting it to residential. A lot of re-partitioning and plumbing and so-on. I am not saying it is impossible or anything. Just that there is some barrier there so that owners will have to put money in to get it done. It may be peanuts compared to what they are used to spending anyway. I don't know. Got to be better t
        • Has anybody suggested that it'd be cost free?

          That said, what I understand the major problems to this are:
          1. Commercial space is a lot more valuable than residential. If they convert to housing, they're accepting a more or less permanent reduction in rental amounts for the building. After spending money converting it to housing.
          2. They're convinced that recovery is right around the corner.
          3. Permitting, as others have mentioned, zoning may need to be adjusted, they'll have the city demanding a percentag

  • Building owners are going to drag their feet like crazy over conversions to housing (they are ok with it but only going to want luxury stuff and going to want large compensations for converting because it's so 'difficult', otherwise they don't want it). They don't want to rent out larger scale at lower rates (at least nominally), because that reduces book value against their loans. The only thing that will work to get owners in action is to force them: use it or lose it

    Those spaces will be filled by them be

  • Spirit Halloween stores
  • At least for SF!

  • "incubators who want to boast a downtown address."

    We call them idiots who should have used their money wisely instead of bragging rights.

    • by spth ( 5126797 )
      Depends. An office in a place well-connected to public transport might be worth the extra cost, as it is more attractive to employees.
  • Tear them down, and build single family homes.

    (ducks)

  • NYC is running low on spaces for the disenfranchised. If you happen to be one of the decision makers, please factor this in -- it is in unfortunate situation that is not of their own making

  • by skinfaxi ( 212627 ) on Monday July 31, 2023 @07:37AM (#63727658) Journal

    Indoor vertical farming, using natural light from windows as much as possible to reduce electricity use & filtered rainwater to reduce water use.

    Solar panels and films on the outside to power the inside.

    Bodegas, apartments and jobs for workers, caretakers, people in need of low-cost housing.

  • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday July 31, 2023 @08:37AM (#63727876) Homepage Journal

    Empty unit tax. Tax it so hard that it's more cost effective to sell it to someone who can fill it than to keep it empty. Seize it if they don't pay. Use the taxes to turn the seized properties into low income housing.

  • The question that should be asked is why downtown offices are empty in the first place. Of course, that would mean admitting that government is the problem.
    It got too expensive to work there and these places aren't nice to work in. Thinking that turning them into low-rent housing will solve anything is a fools errand. Housing projects were always a disaster is lead to them being demolished by the dozen. There's lots of high-speed footage of this. Thinking that this time will be different because "the r

  • by Vandil X ( 636030 ) on Monday July 31, 2023 @08:49AM (#63727918)
    The whole downtown office building (and related nearby cafes for lunch/drinks) was proven by the pandemic to be unsustainable and unnecessary fluff. A byproduct of needing a "factory" for Information Age jobs, because all the past Ages needed a building to house the machines.

    I say convert the vacant offices into more living and retail spaces. Maybe make them into high-end condos for CEOs and lawyers to feel like gods in a glass building.

Heard that the next Space Shuttle is supposed to carry several Guernsey cows? It's gonna be the herd shot 'round the world.

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