12 ms·

Give the corresponding housing crisis in the Bay Area, one wonders if the solution is to "simply" start converting office space to living space until the corres

by bragr 4y ago

Give the corresponding housing crisis in the Bay Area, one wonders if the solution is to "simply" start converting office space to living space until the corresponding demand for office space recovers from a combination of increased demand and decreased supply. Now I'm sure there are all kinds of challenges to doing that, engineering, zoning, other practicalities, but it seems overall reasonable to me, though perhaps someone with a better understanding of the situation might enlighten me.

downrightmike 4y ago
The only way SF will be fixed is if there is massive earthquake to take care of all the nimby concerns. Can't be concerned and stop construction if you don't have a back yard anymore.
- orangepurple 4y ago
  Blockbusting is a "thing" as well
- coding123 4y ago
  People in SF have backyards? I can see NIMBY as a concern in the rest of the bay area, but SF, it's already stacked housing.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    Nope. On an area-weighted basis most of SF is wasted on detached single-family homes. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7470676,-122.4914956,314m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7470676,-122.4914956,314m/da...
    - FartyMcFarter 4y ago
      Why "wasted" ? Does everyone need to live with the least amount of space possible?
      - jeffbee 4y ago
        There is a large difference between a preference and a mandate. The city of San Francisco requires this development pattern. It is not known whether the owners prefer it or not. The existence of pre-down-zoning apartment buildings in this area of town suggests that the preference is not universal.
        lokar 4y ago
        The majority of voters and neighborhood groups strongly prefer the current policy. Prevent new housing and complain about prices is the dominant position. And elected officials comply. Democracy is functioning.
      - lokar 4y ago
        They don't. But if you want only detached single family homes you don't get to complain about prices.
        echelon 4y ago
        Those with the homes are not the ones complaining.
        lokar 4y ago
        But they are! It's truly bizarre. Somehow the accepted narrative is that prices are high because greedy developers focus only on luxury condos. I often see new buildings criticized because they will raise the average rent in the area. And people accept that argument. Think about that for a moment.
        zdragnar 4y ago
        It is what happened in several neighborhoods that I used to live in or work near. New construction was expensive, so they geared the apartments towards the upper end of the market. Rents at existing places didn't go down; if anything, it gave them an incentive to go up since they wouldn't be the most expensive place anymore if they did. Loans and what not put a price floor on the rents of new units; given how hard it is to evict bad tenants (especially with the current backlog), and how hard it is to bring prices back up in rent controlled cities, they're just as well off leaving units empty at full price as they are renting below cost just to stop the bleed.
    - jdkee 4y ago
      Americans overwhelmingly prefer single-family detached homes when given other options. How is choosing a higher-quality of life option “wasted”?
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > Americans overwhelmingly prefer single-family detached homes when given other options. How is choosing a higher-quality of life option “wasted”? It's not. But it's wasteful in an urban core, where that lack of density forgoes real economic opportunity. It also creates an easily-identified cause for the lack of housing supply.
        pessimizer 4y ago
        > that lack of density forgoes real economic opportunity. Which is why SF is so poor and underdeveloped. > It also creates an easily-identified cause for the lack of housing supply. An easily identified excuse. Now do suburban Tennessee.
        smcl 4y ago
        > Which is why SF is so poor and underdeveloped. No, it's one reason why some US cities are becoming increasingly unlivable for anyone outside the upper-middle class - those who sell your groceries, make your lunch or deliver your packages (to name only a handful of occupations). > An easily identified excuse. Now do suburban Tennessee. Is suburban Tennessee an urban core?
      - smcl 4y ago
        I think if people were given the choice - particularly somewhere like San Francisco - they'd would much prefer to live in an apartment they could reasonably afford vs a detached home they could only afford if they travelled back in time 30+ years.
        pessimizer 4y ago
        They're given the choice, which is overwhelmingly taken by 99.9% of the people in the world, of not living in SF.
  - thatfrenchguy 4y ago
    Yeah most historic apartment buildings in SF actually have a rear yard.
- treeman79 4y ago
  Not again… last time was such a mess.
  - downrightmike 4y ago
    Might get a few covers of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoC_Kvel_vQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoC_Kvel_vQ
ptmcc 4y ago
Most offices have physical layouts that make conversion to residential difficult to impossible. Big things like lots of interior square footage without windows and plumbing only to a few central locations. And while some or even most of this is fixable, major renovations are a ton of cost and effort to convert them to something that will still be expensive and weird, if even possible to meet the legal requirements of residential space. https://sfstandard.com/housing-development/turning-downtown-offices-into-housing-isnt-the-solution-you-think-it-is/ https://sfstandard.com/housing-development/turning-downtown-...
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Maybe SF should relax the legal requirements of residential space, then? If they choose not to build sufficient housing... they can at least choose to use what they have. A windowless room with a community bathroom doesn't sound appealing, but at a certain price point it's better than nothing.
  - s0rce 4y ago
    As long as its safe to occupy for permanent living it should get permitted, not sure how its much different than a hostel/rooming house-like arrangement. You don't need a kitchen and bathroom in your unit to live.
    - notch656a 4y ago
      Safety will always be a top argument to constrain and block off new housing. Look at current building codes. Sure all those things make us safer -- if you ignore the homeless left on the streets and the people who no longer have money left over for good food, education, and healthcare after paying the high price it costs to build an up-to-code house in America. You can restrict housing practically as tight as you want by raising permitting requirements, safety assessments, and safety factors and other safety features until it's practically impossible for anyone but the rich to build. There are people out there that would be safer in a run-down tinder-box shack than an up to code and zoned house. Not because the house is safer, but because it allows them to have an affordable roof over their head and round out their finances for other things that bring them wellbeing. Building and zoning codes fail to account for this.
hollywood_court 4y ago
Those commercial spaces make it incredibly easy to build them however you like. The access to plumbing and electrical would make it simple to convert them into small dwellings.
- yodon 4y ago
  Modern office buildings only have plumbing available in the center of the building. The flooring is designed to function as a highly efficient membrane. If you start punching holes in the flooring to place plumbing and toilets away from the central core you weaken the floor membrane to the point where it loses the required structural integrity. If you try to build raised flooring to provide space for the plumbing the cost of the raised flooring becomes prohibitive. For most large modern office buildings it is cheaper to take them down and build new than to try to retrofit them for residential use.
  - hn_version_0023 4y ago
    Every place I've ever lived had plumbing in the walls. Now, it also had it in the floors, so your point is well taken. But I seriously doubt that a central plumbing stack is a serious holdup on plumbing out an entire floor. Then again, I don't have any real experience, so I'm very much being optimistic here without actual hands-on knowledge. I could be very wrong, and would love to hear why!
    - tcmart14 4y ago
      So, this is me reaching back aways in memory. Walls with plumbing through them are held to different standards to other walls. Walls with plumbing use 2 by 6s. Builders and architects try to optimize by making as few walls as possible walls with plumbing because they are more expensive. Your regular walls use 2 by 4s. So yes, some walls have plumbing running through them, but not all. Any architect and contractor will try to optimize cost by having as few walls as possible with plumbing. Which is why in some apartments, neighboring bathrooms in units will be close or share some wall space.
121789 4y ago
From my understanding, it’s just like a legacy code base. It is just easier/cheaper to start from scratch than converting the entire thing a piece at a time.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  Cost isn't the only thing. Tearing down and rebuilding is probably much slower than conversion.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  That's mainly how renovations go. Just easier to have the demo team demo and then have the trades come in and do their thing. Working around existing infrastructure and integrating with it is unpredictable and messy. Not to mention, once you touch something you have to bring it up to code so best to leave it alone or replace it entirely. I did a renovation once where the idea was to preserve a few of the old wood windows that would be lost due to the nature of the renovation. The original idea was to reuse them and move them into the new renovated space and install them. Turned out it was going to cost more to carefully remove them, fit them, etc than just buying the highest end Marvin windows. So new windows were purchased and the old ones are used for parts now.
lizknope 4y ago
It seems like a logical thing to do. A few articles on why it is difficult. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/real-estate/why-empty-offices-aren-t-being-turned-housing-despite-lengthy-n1274810 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/real-estate/why-empty-offic... https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/07/28/should-dcs-empty-office-buildings-get-turned-into-apartments/ https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/07/28/should-dcs-empty-of...
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > why it is difficult The argument in the Washingtonian hints at a policy solution. It cites a "lack windows on at least two sides" with cavernous floors making "direct natural light" rare. The "complexity of adding hundreds of bathrooms and kitchens (not to mention the accompanying venting and plumbing)" is real. "Turning rooftops into amenity spaces" is not. So yes, these aren't going to become luxury apartments. Will they have less direct sunlight and no rooftop garden? Yes. Are those remotely necessary? Of course not. Fewer windows doesn't mean no windows; this isn't a safety issue. We will probably need code amendments. But that would require political will to legalize affordable housing.
guywithahat 4y ago
The underlying issue is government preventing development of both houses and office space. If you were to build more housing in any capacity that would risk lowering housing values and people (including politicians) would lose tens or even hundreds of millions in assets. This would be incredibly unpopular and won't happen anytime soon
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  > The underlying issue is government preventing development of both houses and office space. We live in a democracy. The underlying problem of government is voters. Most home owners (especially in The Bay) refuse to allow anyone to build anything because they see that as a threat to their home value.
  - tcmart14 4y ago
    This guy gets it. It is NIMBYism at work. Whether it is keeping those ugly affordable apartments out of my neighborhood or wanting the housing supply restricted so I can keep my home value at peak value.
    - woah 4y ago
      Building with no affordable units in it? Beyond the pale, the evil developers hate poor people and the units will all be bought be foreign billionaires who won't live there. Building with x% percentage affordable units in it? Not enough affordable units and the units are not affordable enough. This will not offset the gentrification caused by the market rate units. Building with high percentage of deeply affordable units in it? You can't just solve societal problems by throwing housing at it. The residents who will live in these deeply affordable units need social services to get their lives back on track. Building with 100% deeply affordable units with on site social services? You can't put a homeless shelter in our neighborhood! The honest working class residents of this neighborhood have suffered enough from gentrification without having the homeless problem dumped on them too!
  - ErikVandeWater 4y ago
paxys 4y ago
Sure the Bay Area housing crisis can be pretty easily solved if you throw zoning laws out of the window. Don't need to convert office space for that.
evr1isnxprt 4y ago
But doing reasonable things without deference to “how things have always worked in our society” is unconscionable. Think of the loss of figurative identity a minority of landlords might incur!
niffydroid 4y ago
Where I live in the UK, they've converted multiple office blocks to student accommodation. They are also tearing down block of flats due to other structure issues. Generally it's easier to build housing on green field rather than brown sites due to contamination etc. Once you convert the office to housing, when you need office space you'll have to build it somewhere
cjrp 4y ago
They started promoting this in the UK in ~2013 when the planning laws were relaxed[0]. The early conversions were pretty poor I think; badly-sized and without enough natural light. [0] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/planning-measures-will-make-best-use-of-underused-buildings-for-providing-new-homes https://www.gov.uk/government/news/planning-measures-will-ma...
chrisseaton 4y ago
They’re doing this in the UK, and there’s something seriously dystopian about the space it ends up creating somehow. I’m sure it’s better than nothing, but it’s not ideal.
asveikau 4y ago
During the summer I heard a KQED segment of some prominent examples of this from SF and why it's very expensive to do, rare to be able to pull off. Maybe it was this one: https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101889483/what-would-it-take-to-revive-san-franciscos-deserted-downtown https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101889483/what-would-it-take-... Just to pick one example out of a hat, the discussion of elevators was one that made an impression on me. They said the allocation of elevators for residential vs office space is very different, and in some SF examples they had to put in entirely new elevators and staircases. Seems there's lots of these things you wouldn't think about unless you're in that industry...
innagadadavida 4y ago
Agree, but will never ever happen thanks to commercial RE mafia errrr lobby... Most of the commercial RE is vacant but still somehow get tax breaks and they also keep the rents very inflated. I don't buy this argument of "this is not fit to be a home" - neither are the streets, parks and sidewalks. The commercial RE mafia err the lobby is very powerful and they will protect their interests no matter what. These spaces are already up to code for fire and habitability. They have bathrooms. All you need to do is put more bathrooms and have small 10x10 rooms like they have in Japan with a bed, coat hanger, table and chair. This is just temporary to house the homeless and get them off the streets. Give preference to folks that have a job. To make is sweeter for the owners, the city can keep the tax breaks that they already get for keeping the place vacant and get rid of all other tax breaks given to the commercial RE folks.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > I don't buy this argument of "this is not fit to be a home" - neither are the streets, parks and sidewalks. Are you proposing that the city rent out licenses to live in the streets, parks and sidewalks, or are you just pooh-poohing the entire idea of housing standards? How do you feel about food standards?
  - innagadadavida 4y ago
    I’m proposing new standards to house the homeless who sleep on the streets. Specifically if a building is empty and already fit for humans to occupy, it should be ok to put some beds there and allow people to be moved from the streets. This post is not about food.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
foobiekr 4y ago
The real solution to the housing crisis in the bay area is to shift the center of jobs to the south - san jose. There is more land there, the city is willing to build highrises, and so on. The "crisis" is because people went from a focus on the already-crowded peninsula to the ultra-limited-space SF.
coryfklein 4y ago
What kind of imaginary universe would allow for converting downtown SF office space into residential, but not let you simply build new houses? Both are impossible for the same reason, doing just about anything in SF is impossible.

by bragr 4y ago

downrightmike 4y ago

The only way SF will be fixed is if there is massive earthquake to take care of all the nimby concerns. Can't be concerned and stop construction if you don't have a back yard anymore.

orangepurple 4y ago
Blockbusting is a "thing" as well
coding123 4y ago
People in SF have backyards? I can see NIMBY as a concern in the rest of the bay area, but SF, it's already stacked housing.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Nope. On an area-weighted basis most of SF is wasted on detached single-family homes. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7470676,-122.4914956,314m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7470676,-122.4914956,314m/da...
  - FartyMcFarter 4y ago
    Why "wasted" ? Does everyone need to live with the least amount of space possible?
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      There is a large difference between a preference and a mandate. The city of San Francisco requires this development pattern. It is not known whether the owners prefer it or not. The existence of pre-down-zoning apartment buildings in this area of town suggests that the preference is not universal.
      - lokar 4y ago
        The majority of voters and neighborhood groups strongly prefer the current policy. Prevent new housing and complain about prices is the dominant position. And elected officials comply. Democracy is functioning.
    - lokar 4y ago
      They don't. But if you want only detached single family homes you don't get to complain about prices.
      - echelon 4y ago
        Those with the homes are not the ones complaining.
        lokar 4y ago
        But they are! It's truly bizarre. Somehow the accepted narrative is that prices are high because greedy developers focus only on luxury condos. I often see new buildings criticized because they will raise the average rent in the area. And people accept that argument. Think about that for a moment.
        zdragnar 4y ago
        It is what happened in several neighborhoods that I used to live in or work near. New construction was expensive, so they geared the apartments towards the upper end of the market. Rents at existing places didn't go down; if anything, it gave them an incentive to go up since they wouldn't be the most expensive place anymore if they did. Loans and what not put a price floor on the rents of new units; given how hard it is to evict bad tenants (especially with the current backlog), and how hard it is to bring prices back up in rent controlled cities, they're just as well off leaving units empty at full price as they are renting below cost just to stop the bleed.
  - jdkee 4y ago
    Americans overwhelmingly prefer single-family detached homes when given other options. How is choosing a higher-quality of life option “wasted”?
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > Americans overwhelmingly prefer single-family detached homes when given other options. How is choosing a higher-quality of life option “wasted”? It's not. But it's wasteful in an urban core, where that lack of density forgoes real economic opportunity. It also creates an easily-identified cause for the lack of housing supply.
      - pessimizer 4y ago
        > that lack of density forgoes real economic opportunity. Which is why SF is so poor and underdeveloped. > It also creates an easily-identified cause for the lack of housing supply. An easily identified excuse. Now do suburban Tennessee.
        smcl 4y ago
        > Which is why SF is so poor and underdeveloped. No, it's one reason why some US cities are becoming increasingly unlivable for anyone outside the upper-middle class - those who sell your groceries, make your lunch or deliver your packages (to name only a handful of occupations). > An easily identified excuse. Now do suburban Tennessee. Is suburban Tennessee an urban core?
    - smcl 4y ago
      I think if people were given the choice - particularly somewhere like San Francisco - they'd would much prefer to live in an apartment they could reasonably afford vs a detached home they could only afford if they travelled back in time 30+ years.
      - pessimizer 4y ago
        They're given the choice, which is overwhelmingly taken by 99.9% of the people in the world, of not living in SF.
- thatfrenchguy 4y ago
  Yeah most historic apartment buildings in SF actually have a rear yard.
treeman79 4y ago
Not again… last time was such a mess.
- downrightmike 4y ago
  Might get a few covers of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoC_Kvel_vQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoC_Kvel_vQ

ptmcc 4y ago

Most offices have physical layouts that make conversion to residential difficult to impossible. Big things like lots of interior square footage without windows and plumbing only to a few central locations. And while some or even most of this is fixable, major renovations are a ton of cost and effort to convert them to something that will still be expensive and weird, if even possible to meet the legal requirements of residential space. https://sfstandard.com/housing-development/turning-downtown-offices-into-housing-isnt-the-solution-you-think-it-is/ https://sfstandard.com/housing-development/turning-downtown-...

ethbr0 4y ago
Maybe SF should relax the legal requirements of residential space, then? If they choose not to build sufficient housing... they can at least choose to use what they have. A windowless room with a community bathroom doesn't sound appealing, but at a certain price point it's better than nothing.
- s0rce 4y ago
  As long as its safe to occupy for permanent living it should get permitted, not sure how its much different than a hostel/rooming house-like arrangement. You don't need a kitchen and bathroom in your unit to live.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    Safety will always be a top argument to constrain and block off new housing. Look at current building codes. Sure all those things make us safer -- if you ignore the homeless left on the streets and the people who no longer have money left over for good food, education, and healthcare after paying the high price it costs to build an up-to-code house in America. You can restrict housing practically as tight as you want by raising permitting requirements, safety assessments, and safety factors and other safety features until it's practically impossible for anyone but the rich to build. There are people out there that would be safer in a run-down tinder-box shack than an up to code and zoned house. Not because the house is safer, but because it allows them to have an affordable roof over their head and round out their finances for other things that bring them wellbeing. Building and zoning codes fail to account for this.

hollywood_court 4y ago

Those commercial spaces make it incredibly easy to build them however you like. The access to plumbing and electrical would make it simple to convert them into small dwellings.

yodon 4y ago
Modern office buildings only have plumbing available in the center of the building. The flooring is designed to function as a highly efficient membrane. If you start punching holes in the flooring to place plumbing and toilets away from the central core you weaken the floor membrane to the point where it loses the required structural integrity. If you try to build raised flooring to provide space for the plumbing the cost of the raised flooring becomes prohibitive. For most large modern office buildings it is cheaper to take them down and build new than to try to retrofit them for residential use.
- hn_version_0023 4y ago
  Every place I've ever lived had plumbing in the walls. Now, it also had it in the floors, so your point is well taken. But I seriously doubt that a central plumbing stack is a serious holdup on plumbing out an entire floor. Then again, I don't have any real experience, so I'm very much being optimistic here without actual hands-on knowledge. I could be very wrong, and would love to hear why!
  - tcmart14 4y ago
    So, this is me reaching back aways in memory. Walls with plumbing through them are held to different standards to other walls. Walls with plumbing use 2 by 6s. Builders and architects try to optimize by making as few walls as possible walls with plumbing because they are more expensive. Your regular walls use 2 by 4s. So yes, some walls have plumbing running through them, but not all. Any architect and contractor will try to optimize cost by having as few walls as possible with plumbing. Which is why in some apartments, neighboring bathrooms in units will be close or share some wall space.

121789 4y ago

From my understanding, it’s just like a legacy code base. It is just easier/cheaper to start from scratch than converting the entire thing a piece at a time.

GekkePrutser 4y ago
Cost isn't the only thing. Tearing down and rebuilding is probably much slower than conversion.
nemo44x 4y ago
That's mainly how renovations go. Just easier to have the demo team demo and then have the trades come in and do their thing. Working around existing infrastructure and integrating with it is unpredictable and messy. Not to mention, once you touch something you have to bring it up to code so best to leave it alone or replace it entirely. I did a renovation once where the idea was to preserve a few of the old wood windows that would be lost due to the nature of the renovation. The original idea was to reuse them and move them into the new renovated space and install them. Turned out it was going to cost more to carefully remove them, fit them, etc than just buying the highest end Marvin windows. So new windows were purchased and the old ones are used for parts now.

lizknope 4y ago

It seems like a logical thing to do. A few articles on why it is difficult. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/real-estate/why-empty-offices-aren-t-being-turned-housing-despite-lengthy-n1274810 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/real-estate/why-empty-offic... https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/07/28/should-dcs-empty-office-buildings-get-turned-into-apartments/ https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/07/28/should-dcs-empty-of...

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> why it is difficult The argument in the Washingtonian hints at a policy solution. It cites a "lack windows on at least two sides" with cavernous floors making "direct natural light" rare. The "complexity of adding hundreds of bathrooms and kitchens (not to mention the accompanying venting and plumbing)" is real. "Turning rooftops into amenity spaces" is not. So yes, these aren't going to become luxury apartments. Will they have less direct sunlight and no rooftop garden? Yes. Are those remotely necessary? Of course not. Fewer windows doesn't mean no windows; this isn't a safety issue. We will probably need code amendments. But that would require political will to legalize affordable housing.

guywithahat 4y ago

The underlying issue is government preventing development of both houses and office space. If you were to build more housing in any capacity that would risk lowering housing values and people (including politicians) would lose tens or even hundreds of millions in assets. This would be incredibly unpopular and won't happen anytime soon

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
> The underlying issue is government preventing development of both houses and office space. We live in a democracy. The underlying problem of government is voters. Most home owners (especially in The Bay) refuse to allow anyone to build anything because they see that as a threat to their home value.
- tcmart14 4y ago
  This guy gets it. It is NIMBYism at work. Whether it is keeping those ugly affordable apartments out of my neighborhood or wanting the housing supply restricted so I can keep my home value at peak value.
  - woah 4y ago
    Building with no affordable units in it? Beyond the pale, the evil developers hate poor people and the units will all be bought be foreign billionaires who won't live there. Building with x% percentage affordable units in it? Not enough affordable units and the units are not affordable enough. This will not offset the gentrification caused by the market rate units. Building with high percentage of deeply affordable units in it? You can't just solve societal problems by throwing housing at it. The residents who will live in these deeply affordable units need social services to get their lives back on track. Building with 100% deeply affordable units with on site social services? You can't put a homeless shelter in our neighborhood! The honest working class residents of this neighborhood have suffered enough from gentrification without having the homeless problem dumped on them too!
- ErikVandeWater 4y ago

paxys 4y ago

Sure the Bay Area housing crisis can be pretty easily solved if you throw zoning laws out of the window. Don't need to convert office space for that.

evr1isnxprt 4y ago

But doing reasonable things without deference to “how things have always worked in our society” is unconscionable. Think of the loss of figurative identity a minority of landlords might incur!

niffydroid 4y ago

Where I live in the UK, they've converted multiple office blocks to student accommodation. They are also tearing down block of flats due to other structure issues. Generally it's easier to build housing on green field rather than brown sites due to contamination etc. Once you convert the office to housing, when you need office space you'll have to build it somewhere

cjrp 4y ago

They started promoting this in the UK in ~2013 when the planning laws were relaxed[0]. The early conversions were pretty poor I think; badly-sized and without enough natural light. [0] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/planning-measures-will-make-best-use-of-underused-buildings-for-providing-new-homes https://www.gov.uk/government/news/planning-measures-will-ma...

chrisseaton 4y ago

They’re doing this in the UK, and there’s something seriously dystopian about the space it ends up creating somehow. I’m sure it’s better than nothing, but it’s not ideal.

asveikau 4y ago

During the summer I heard a KQED segment of some prominent examples of this from SF and why it's very expensive to do, rare to be able to pull off. Maybe it was this one: https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101889483/what-would-it-take-to-revive-san-franciscos-deserted-downtown https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101889483/what-would-it-take-... Just to pick one example out of a hat, the discussion of elevators was one that made an impression on me. They said the allocation of elevators for residential vs office space is very different, and in some SF examples they had to put in entirely new elevators and staircases. Seems there's lots of these things you wouldn't think about unless you're in that industry...

innagadadavida 4y ago

Agree, but will never ever happen thanks to commercial RE mafia errrr lobby... Most of the commercial RE is vacant but still somehow get tax breaks and they also keep the rents very inflated. I don't buy this argument of "this is not fit to be a home" - neither are the streets, parks and sidewalks. The commercial RE mafia err the lobby is very powerful and they will protect their interests no matter what. These spaces are already up to code for fire and habitability. They have bathrooms. All you need to do is put more bathrooms and have small 10x10 rooms like they have in Japan with a bed, coat hanger, table and chair. This is just temporary to house the homeless and get them off the streets. Give preference to folks that have a job. To make is sweeter for the owners, the city can keep the tax breaks that they already get for keeping the place vacant and get rid of all other tax breaks given to the commercial RE folks.

pessimizer 4y ago
> I don't buy this argument of "this is not fit to be a home" - neither are the streets, parks and sidewalks. Are you proposing that the city rent out licenses to live in the streets, parks and sidewalks, or are you just pooh-poohing the entire idea of housing standards? How do you feel about food standards?
- innagadadavida 4y ago
  I’m proposing new standards to house the homeless who sleep on the streets. Specifically if a building is empty and already fit for humans to occupy, it should be ok to put some beds there and allow people to be moved from the streets. This post is not about food.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

foobiekr 4y ago

The real solution to the housing crisis in the bay area is to shift the center of jobs to the south - san jose. There is more land there, the city is willing to build highrises, and so on. The "crisis" is because people went from a focus on the already-crowded peninsula to the ultra-limited-space SF.

coryfklein 4y ago

What kind of imaginary universe would allow for converting downtown SF office space into residential, but not let you simply build new houses? Both are impossible for the same reason, doing just about anything in SF is impossible.