Joe Biden wants more people to start living in empty offices
Joe Biden wants more people to start living in empty offices
www.businessinsider.com
Joe Biden wants more people to start living in empty offices
195 comments
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mixed offices and apartments in the same building sounds good... would cut the commute
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I lived in a building thay was mixed residential/office space in Buenos Aires. It was really good, during the week you saw movement in and out so it felt alive, ar night and weekends was pretty empty and calm, and you could throw parties without bothering the neighbors.
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Just live at work! I can see the LateStageCapitalism posts writing themselves
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I think if companies are interested in cutting commute times, they'd normalize work from home. Doesn't seem to be the case sadly
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I see no way this could go horribly wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town
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Mixed use buildings for actually quite common in much of the world and can work quite well. See what you do though is you put them on the market for anybody to rent, and not force people to live in your company housing.
If you go into any major city you're going to run into mixed use buildings.
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I think that at least one should be saved for just paintball.
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Yes please. Let's give corporations a reason to convert their office buildings into apartments so we can all go back to WFH. Plus, the more housing we have in the city the cheaper it gets.
I'm hopeful that a lot of these will turn into condos so people can get into ownership instead of renting.
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More supply is more supply. It'll probably drive rent down a bit, assuming the plan works. This makes little difference to unemployed homeless people and does nothing to address the fact that many wealthy people see homes as a tool to secure their capital, but it's not nothing. Hopefully it will help some people who are on the brink be a bit more secure in their housing.
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The corporate landlords will just buy them up and let them sit empty the way they have done with at least 4 highrises that I can think of off the top of my head in downtown San Diego. Sure they have rented some of them, but the majority of those buildings sit empty.
No one can afford rent on luxury apartments
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Are they were they are needed? Would we need to move people across the county to fill them? Or are they kept mostly empty as a form of storing wealth?
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Please don't provide this stat without context. It just promotes cynicism and despair. Reality is complex, and our solutions are going to have to be complex.
Many of these vacant homes are nowhere near major homeless populations. But office buildings often are.
https://ggwash.org/view/73234/vacant-houses-wont-solve-our-housing-crisis
Edit: If you prefer videos, here's a good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xZXdXxYBGU
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Greedy real estate hogs and speculators are criminals imo.
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All high rise office buildings should be incentivized to have residential space. Let’s try and fix the housing issues and reduce cars/traffic at the same time.
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The incentive is already there, it's just prohibited because of zoning and building codes many places. All the government has to do to fix this is stop getting in the way.
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I like how this is finally acknowledging WFH as something that is here to stay but I'm not sure I understand the connection with the housing crisis. From the article:
New York's famous Flatiron Building will soon be converted from empty offices into luxury residences
Luxury apartments in premium locations is the first thing I would think of too if I were a developer, but their target buyers don't sound like the sort of people who currently suffer from the housing crisis. But maybe I'm wrong and there will also be developers converting less prestigious office space into affordable housing...
The other thing I don't get is this: I don't know Manhattan but I did work in some (I assume) similar business hubs in the middle of overpriced cities and I wonder: are many people going to want to live in expensive converted office spaces if they don't work near there any longer? I mean if they were given the chance to WFH from anywhere would they still choose Manhattan? Honest question and maybe the answer is yes, because of the restaurants, culture, good schools or whatever... I would personally make different life choices if I could work completely remote, though.
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uxury apartments in premium locations is the first thing I would think of too if I were a developer, but their target buyers don't sound like the sort of people who currently suffer from the housing crisis.
It'll have a domino effect, more apartments in Manhattan means less people in Brooklyn, Queens, etc. meaning prices go down in the latter boroughs. I live in Jersey City across the Hudson from Manhattan and a large part of the residents here are just people who can't afford to live in Manhattan.
are many people going to want to live in expensive converted office spaces if they don't work near there any longer?
Yes, I used to live in a converted office building in Newark NJ (not far from Manhattan) and really loved it. And yes people will always want to live in NYC and especially Manhattan. Many people, myself included simply prefer living in cities. I've also looked for apartments in Manhattan and it's completely different than anywhere else.
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I remember watching the SOHO lofts get built sitting in 78e traffic towards Hoboken every morning.
It seemed to me as if it was an old industrial revolution styled office building or warehouse being converted into apartments.
I hope to see more of that in the future
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Former Commercial Zoning = Inner City
People are going to fight bare knuckle for that kind of residence at a reasonable price. They charge out the wazoo for small apartments in that area.
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They use the flatiron building because it's very famous but essentially a nuisance at this point having been vacant for iirc over a decade because of a lawsuit.
Ed: since 2019 but that's quite awhile for the most famous like 2sq miles in America. (Which is also weird but we'll talk about that another time.)
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Ah thanks for the context, I didn't know! But doesn't my point essentially stills stand?
As more people work from home and more Flatiron-like buildings struggle to find businesses looking for offices, developers might find "ex prestigious office to luxury apartments" a more appealing conversion than "ex Walmart to affordable housing".
Also, my understanding of the housing crisis is that people can't find an affordable place to live close enough to where they work. In my country there are plenty of small towns that used to be very pretty places to live, that have very affordable housing and that are turning into ghost towns because all the jobs are concentrated in a few big cities.
If you take away the offices, less people are going to need to live in New York, San Francisco or London. Plenty of people might still choose to, of course, but there should be less competition to rent the last bed space in a filthy apartment at ludicrous prices. Or to buy a small flat in a converted former office.
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Offices are actually chill if you take out the cubicles and stuff. They are spacious, neutral, and have a bathroom and roof access.
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I worked in a few skyscraper type offices and they are pretty awesome. The view was always crazy and there were always good food options nearby right in the middle of the city. You could make a nice house in there. Just need the bathroom and kitchen to be near the center of the building. You could probably fit 4 nice size units on each floor of my old building. But they would want to make a ton of tiny overpriced ones instead so they will say there isn't enough plumbing lol.
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And I want politicians to start living in trailer parks, projects, and section 8 housing in the parts of town that their policies are destroying.
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And take public transportation!
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At least Biden took the train a lot. When he was a senator most people only knew him as the Amtrak guy.
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Send Biden to Gaza and see how quick he stops sending armaments to Israel.
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There are sometimes some strange issues with office construction.
There might be no plumbing in the locations people will want for toilets and baths and kitchens in the individual suites away from the core of the building. Same goes for retrofitted laundry facilities.
HVAC systems (in the US anyways) are often centrallized and might need a lot of retrofitting to make it work like a condo/apartment.
Kitchen ventilation
Windows might not open, can't get to a fresh air source
Aside from that stuff, the issue of empty office buildings while we are experiencing unsustainable housing markets is begging for a solution to address the demand.
There will probably be a handy sum to be earned for construction companies who get efficient at conversions.
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It's not that there might not be plumbing, it's that there is zero plumbing in most office buildings aside from one clustered section for floor where there's 5 to 10 toilets for each gender.
On top of that, you have completely different mechanical systems. An office building for instance may have one single mechanical system for the entire building, whereas an apartment would need separate mechanical systems for each individual apartment.
Then you have the kitchens, bedrooms and interior partition walls that are vastly different than an office building, plus the requirements for exterior windows which precludes larger office buildings with deeper floor plates from being converted at all without demolishing the interior portion of the building. Curtain wall systems that may or may not be compatible between an office and residential building (non-operating windows)... Not to mention the stair and elevator systems are probably not going to work either.
So in the end you're probably looking at gutting the building down to the structure and removing every piece of the building including the outer envelope, roof, all of the electrical plumbing and mechanical systems... In the end it may or may not be cheaper just to build a new building from the ground up.
Source: am architect. And yes, I have done conversions like this in the past.
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Can you clarify for the laymen in the room what you mean by Mechanical Systems?
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I wonder if it would be possible to require all future construction to be designed in a way that it could easily be switched between commercial/residential. Like each floor of an office building has to have plumbing roughed it to support x number of toilets/showers on each floor, stuff like that.
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Really, really not necessary and really not practical.
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Short answer is nope. Commercial and residential building codes are very different, as are the engineering requirements.
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Also offices don't require that all the rooms have access to natural light the way residential buildings do. That's why office towers can be thicc blocks while apartment buildings often need to be U-shaped.
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it'd be a lot of work resolving all those issues... but definitely doable. just have to find the maniac with money and drive that wants to do that
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Can we finally get mixed zoning??
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Biden wants to give money to wealthy landlords so they can build luxury apartments using our tax dollars, so they can rent them out and increase their wealth.
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anyone interpreting it differently is fooling themselves -
Anyone saying "We need to build more houses" rather than saying "We need to fill the existing houses" has no interest in solving the problem.
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How about instead of giving money to private companies in the hopes that they build housing you give that money to people so they can afford to live in all the housing that already exists.
Why do libs always make this shit more complicated than it needs to be
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Because they don't actually support doing things to help people, they just want to give more money to the rich.
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Because there isn't enough housing that already exists.
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Sure there is. An enormous chunk of housing sits unused and empty because real estate speculators want to rent them out at exorbitant prices rather than use it for it's intended purpose of having a roof over people's heads.
Pass nationwide legislation that restricts owning housing for commercial purposes beyond a certain threshold, and put rent controls in place pegged to 20% of the median income per town/city. You'd eliminate 95% of homelessness before the ink was dry, massively increase homeownership rates, and be the most popular politician of an era.
It's not even an ebil communist plot, and it'd still be more effective than giving even more money to private developers on a pinky promise they'll build something people can afford, just trust them this time.
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According the the last census there are 15.1 million houses and apartments sitting empty in the US, roughly 29 properties for every one unhoused person in America.
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Yes there is. The problem is housing is treated as a commodity instead of a basic human right
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Because both just give money to crappy landlords, but with exta steps. Why not just tax the hell out of anyone who owns a building that's empty for longer than reasonable, maybe with an extension if you can prove you're redeveloping an office into housing.
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Now I don’t know whether to feel owned!
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Getting people to live in offices is good because it brings people back to walkable, urban cores.
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That would be good. Unfortunately this is more about bailing out rentseekers in urban cores, by enabling the building of unaffordable housing
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Watching the Biden admin is wild. At one minute he'll be escalating the wars in the Ukraine and Palestine, but the next he'll be funding the NLRB and addressing the housing crisis in a way that improves walk-ability.
It's like, he has two settings: "actually useful moderate" and "KILLKILLKILLKILL"
Unfortunately, this makes him the best US president since carter
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Show me on the doll where Biden addressed the housing crisis
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Jesus Christ, Hexbear.
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US politicians only disagree (a little bit) on domestic policy, on foreign policy they're all in lock-step. that used to feel like a truism, but it's been proven very true.
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love too fund the NLRB after publicly breaking the power of the rail unions and setting worker power back another decade
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How are downtown luxury apartments solving the housing crisis?
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he’ll be escalating the wars in the Ukraine
Eh????
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This is another proof that office buildings are an anachronism.
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They always were, it's just corporate landlords stood a lot to lose from them losing prominence so kept them artificially in demand. Went so far as to require that corporations have an office even if they don't need one by law.
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Think of the real estate investors! /s
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Oh, I'm sure they'll charge a minimum of $2k/month even for the shittiest of the shithole office apartments. They'll get their money don't worry.
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How about... let those corporations EAT those fucking buildings and let's put that money to use IN THE HANDS OF THE PEOPLE. First time home buyers. Put some federal controls on real estate; mortgage rates; put the skids on the goddam prime rate - there is NO need for that shit... the economy is suffering from PROFITEERING - NOT inflation.
I realize half or more of our elected officials will have to give back bribe money in order to do something for the people that doesn't doubly do something for their wealthy sponsors.
I know, I know... "just get to earth?"
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Wait, so what do we do with the buildings?
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Knock them down. Rezone, build shit that's useful.
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They belong to corporations. The corporations don't get tax breaks if the buildings aren't used - but they still need to be paid for... which is a huge monetary outlay. Honestly, I don't care what happens to them and neither should anyone else. Am I sorry that corporations, the SAME corporations fleecing the planet right now with profiteering, are losing money? Hardly. They made the rules - they bought the politicians to enforce the rules- they made their own mess.
Converting office space to living space strains infrastructure in ways not intended by the original intent of the buildings. They can't put thirty apartments on a single floor of a high rise and have those residents use the same four bathrooms per floor that the offices had. Same with sewage. Same with electrical.
And I reiterate - as soon as the money is distributed to the "developers" - that money - OUR money - is gone... whether it is used for the purpose intended or not.
Keep in mind that trump is a 'developer'. Do you really think if Biden gave trump "three billion dollars" that trump would use it for what it was intended? Or do you think he'd pocket most of it? And he is a typical 'developer' as far as 'honesty' is concerned.
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Nationalize them and let the community vote on the use
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Is that something the government needs to figure out? Seems like something will eventually be done with the buildings once the current owners get tired of losing money.
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A million Grenfell Towers, coming right up
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Shut up
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It all sounds good, but im so jaded now all i can think about is how will the rich find a way to make sure this doesnt lower cost of living for the lower class.
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Easy, developers will only build luxury real estate. It’s what’s been happening in urban centers for a decade or two. Way better margins on luxury real estate.
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If utilized as it should be, this Is a really good idea. It creates desperately needed housing, indirectly supports work from home, rescues downtowns struggling from customer loss, helps prevent default on tons of property loans (and preventing something akin to the 2008 crash).
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Sounds hard.
Instead let's convert them to Airbnb units! 🤮
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Excellent stuff from Dark Brandon. NICE!
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This should also help liven up downtowns that become ghost towns after 5/6pm.
More people living there will support more of the things that keep an area lively.
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yeah not a bad idea
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
(tldr: 2 sentences skipped)
Joe Biden's administration has come up with a plan it thinks can help address the housing crisis: encouraging developers to turn unwanted office buildings into apartments.
Converting offices to residential properties can be challenging due to the expense of refitting, as well as complying with zoning laws and other regulations.
But the White House initiative will make more than $35 billion available from existing federal programs in the form of grants and low-interest loans to encourage developers to convert offices into residential.
(tldr: 2 sentences skipped)
Following the rise of home working when the pandemic struck and the reluctance of many employees to start commuting again five days a week, business districts have been struggling.
(tldr: 2 sentences skipped)
Last December Silverstein Properties, one of America's largest commercial landlords, announced plans to raise more than $1.5 billion to convert unwanted office space into residential housing in markets ranging from New York to San Francisco.
(tldr: 6 sentences skipped)
Conversions are faster than new construction, 20% cheaper, and produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, the White House added.
The original article contains 364 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 51%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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Many ideas here sound like the projects built, starting in the 1930s. They had many failures and a few successes.
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Work from home? No. Home is at work.
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Shut the fuck up, Genocidin' Biden. How about you stop killing kids in the middle east and start taking care of your own citizens for once.
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What the actual fuck are you babbling about? Biden went there to tell israel to not do an invasion.
Take care of his own citizens... isnt that exactly what this article is about? Converting office space to residential space?
Take your pills, grandpa.
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195 comments
The reason for high cost of living in cities was that's where the offices were...
Now we don't need offices. So convert them to apartments to lower housing costs in the short term, and telework means people won't move to cities as much in the long term.
This is actually a good idea...
Developers will do this anyway if the offices are empty, why not use that money for a government program to guarantee down payments of first time home buyers?
The developers are doing fine, it's the average American that's struggling, stop funneling money to the people who already have a shit ton of it, trickle down doesn't fucking work
Agreed. This is a good idea overall, but the implementation smells like a bailout of commercial real estate developers to me.
Ding dong ding!
But also to a point, it will take a significant amount of work to convert office space to residential. Just utilities alone will be an adventure, and you'd better hope the building was set up with decent truck lines down the core of the structure to begin with. It's not like "hey let's throw up some walls, boom, apartments." You need adequate power distribution, and water/sewer connections to each apartment to fulfill each unit having it's own kitchen and bathroom. Commercial spaces are generally build to accommodate different usage.
The Biden administration is doing that also, it just doesn't make as good a headline.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/10/16/white-house-announces-new-actions-on-homeownership/
Always happy to be pleasantly surprised.
Even tho it's half what developers are getting, it's better than nothing.
Refitting office space to make it liveable is actually super expensive. Commercial spaces don't have the electric, plumbing, or insulation typically required or expected by residents. It can be cheaper to gut or even tear down the building in order to add the necessary MEP and framing, which is why you see developers are still building new rather than converting old commercial spaces. The money will encourage redevelopment which is far less wasteful and combats sprawl.
That said, I agree with you that you could make the money available to buyers instead of developers, but developers are the ones
paying the bribesdonating to campaigns.Then those millionaire (from the examples in the link, billionaire) developers can let their building sit empty...
This is America, where a single cancer diagnosis can bankrupt a family for generations. If we were a civilized country, sure, bail everyone out.
But I don't have sympathy for them when normal people are in such a tight spot.
Like if you're a cardiologist and you're helping someone you saw sprain their ankle, you'd be an idiot to keep helping them when there's five people having heart attacks in the same room.
$35B sounds more like it's intended to find a way to make these conversions possible and create a "blueprint" to be used elsewhere.
There are people developing solutions to this one of which is essentially building panels that house all the equipment and hookups and installing them at location. This is the mobile home industry trying to adapt.
Can you back up any of the points you are claiming?
Developers won't do it though. Otherwise, we'd already have this happening. What they do now is call it a loss and get a break on their taxes.
Because that doesn't do anything but provide guaranteed cash to existing property owners at the expense of people trying to stop renting. Until the supply side issue is addressed, homeownership will continue to be out of reach for most. The best case here would be to convert these buildings into condos or whatever the local word for apartments you own instead of rent is, but just rentals us a good second choice.
Developers don't want to touch this. The amount of work it would take to turn an office building into an apartment building is more than you likely realise. Building code for the two are very different so fully gutting the building is first on the list. The amount of plumbing that would have to be added and so on. I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I think it's a great idea, but to get it done you have to make it profitable or the government will have to step up and hire engineers and contractors and operate the building after, which is of course comunism, and so will never happen. Full aside from the political issues, it just makes more sense to knock down the office building and build a whole new one that is actually designed for residential use. Too little too late no matter what happens with the office buildings. It should never have been allowed, from the start, for corporate entities to buy up housing at all. Not apartment buildings, not single family homes. That has to be fixed first.
Dude, yes it's a lot of work to gut it, no it doesn't make more sense to knock it down. You gut it. It's not that hard. You basically have a free shell, foundations and parking and all.
How does one "guarantee" a down payment?
The point of a down payment is if you default (don't pay) your mortgage immediately, the bank keeps it, like they keep everything you pay before you default.
So if the government guarantees it, that means instead of putting (easy numbers) 10k down on a 100k house and having a mortgage for 90k, the government "co signs" and if you default in the first X years, they have to pay the 10k. But since you didn't pay the 10k, your mortgage is still for 100k
When rent is more than a mortgage payment, this allows people to buy a house without spending years saving up a down payment
We have that already.
They are called usda and fha loans
The Mortgage Insurance Premium (FHA) and Annual Guarantee Fee (USDA) make either costly in the long run. You get to skip the down payment, but the added cost of mortgage insurance (irrespective of how it's labeled) hurts lower income borrowers. Both are costly, and neither are necessary. The property is the collateral. The lender loses future revenue and is inconvenienced if the borrower defaults, but they obviously do well enough overall to shoulder that burden.