4 ms·
It may seem counterintuitive at first but renovating old buildings - especially non residential ones - for occupancy is often more expensive than building new.
by danans 4y ago
It may seem counterintuitive at first but renovating old buildings - especially non residential ones - for occupancy is often more expensive than building new.
There are many reasons; new stuff is usually built on cheaper land, old buildings have lots of issues that make updating them very labor intensive.
It's why most malls can't be easily converted into housing, and usually need to just be torn down completely, often just reusing foundations.
- majormajor 4y agoMalls, office buildings are less realistic, sure. Prefering million-dollar-per-unit-construction to existing motels and apartments or condo buildings, on the other hand, appears to be perfect being the enemy of the good. It's easy for committees of people who largely don't need affordable or last-resort housing to make it practically impossible to create it.
- bobthepanda 4y agoI don’t think there are that many disused hotels or condos just lying around. Hotels are tricky. There’s rarely even a single kitchen available per floor, let alone per unit, and I would imagine a kitchen is required in the building codes. Ultimately, conversions have to be brought up to the same building codes as new construction, so you don’t actually get rid of the problem (codes making any construction hard to do.)
- majormajor 4y agoIt's not that hard to find boarded up apartment buildings in LA, at least. Motels were used for homeless housing during Covid, seemed like a good start. They're already housing-of-last resort options for people, and they're already constructed. Don't hold affordable housing to higher standards than low-end-of-the-market homes or apartments, or you're just going to leave the bottom of the market with even fewer options. Let market rate construction be the new construction - which has less red tape around qualifying for incentives and government funding, etc - and shore up the quality and quantity of the bottom end with government action. You'll be adding more units than you are today, which is the most important thing here.
- bobthepanda 4y agoMotels were used as homeless shelters in the context of an extraordinary event that decimated travel demand. At least in the area I’m familiar with (NYC) a lot of them have swung back to being profitable hotels now that people are traveling again.
- mjmahone17 4y agoTo be fair part of the cost of housing is that Single Residence Occupancy is pretty much illegal to build anywhere, except as hotels. We could reasonably allow hotels to be converted into SROs with communal kitchens (or room + board with staffed cafeteria style kitchens), but as you said that goes against zoning code.