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Absolutely. Low-income housing is the perfect use for all this extra office space. San Francisco has a problem where the low-income people who work to serve hig

Absolutely. Low-income housing is the perfect use for all this extra office space. San Francisco has a problem where the low-income people who work to serve high-income people can't afford to live in the city that they work in. Converting office space into affordable housing is a win for everyone, except the landlords, but I won't shed a tear for them ;-)

kasey_junk 4y ago
Who do you expect will pay for the conversions if not landlords?
- porcc 4y ago
  Obviously government subsidy..
  - HEmanZ 4y ago
    Meaning taxes
    - mc32 4y ago
      Or, good old QE. Who wants to live in a city if you can work from home? If you are poor and need housing subsidies and there are no jobs for you, there is no reason to live in the city to begin with. People go live where the jobs are. Without "white collar" jobs producing demand for services, there is much less demand for "blue collar" jobs. If it's just cooping people up, there are cheaper ways to house people than maintaining expensive buildings that need financing and upkeep.
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    Subsidies.... to the landlords who own the buildings? Or are you saying this will be owned and operated by the government?
chrisseaton 4y ago
We've tried to convert offices to homes in the UK, and there's something particularly dystopian about the result. I think they have to make strange trade-offs to make the space useful, and its ends up being not very nice. I'm sure it's better than being on the street, but it isn't nice.
- marcinzm 4y ago
  NYC has build a lot of dedicated public housing and even then dystopian is probably a good summary of the result.
  - grepLeigh 4y ago
    I grew up in the Sedgwick projects in the Bronx, and my grandma still lives there. She's been in the same rent-controlled apartment for 40+ years, which was affordable to her as a small business owner (hair/beauty salon). She's now living independently at age 86, thanks to a social security check and a community where she's everyone's abuela. Rent-controlled housing made it easier to divorce her abusive husband and start a business back in the 60s. How is that dystopian?
    - achenet 4y ago
      not the person you are responding to, but I think they meant dystopian as in the "vibe" of the place. For example, many housing projects in France (where I live), tend to be basically large concrete rectangles, with very little green space. When compared to posher neighborhoods, with lots of trees everywhere, this can seem a little claustrophobic/totalitarian/dystopian. It feels like a less "human friendly" environment than you stereotypical suburb with front lawns.
      - grepLeigh 4y ago
        I see where that's coming from, but to offer an alternate perspective the suburbs seemed "dystopian" to me at first - we moved upstate for middle/high school. The same 6-8 Stepford model homes on every street, strip malls filled with the same 10 stores (Walgreens/CVS, Costco/Walmart, etc), people dressed VERY similarly, and nobody walked anywhere. The teens in my suburban high school seemed way less happy and did more/harder drugs compared to the Bronx. I'm not saying the projects were lovely. The elevators smelled like piss. But public housing - even ugly public housing - was a huge part in enabling two generations of single moms (my mom + grandma) to raise their families, start businesses, and thrive.
giantg2 4y ago
Theoretically, the wages should come up to make it possible to live there, assuming the service providers are actually having trouble hiring. It seems to me there might be some disconnect in demand and supply of various labor types (not many unskilled jobs compared to the number of unskilled workers, vs not many software devs but lots of openings). It seems these forces drag the bottom down while pushing the top higher. Edit: why disagree?
- abeppu 4y ago
  > Theoretically, the wages should come up to make it possible to live there, assuming the service providers are actually having trouble hiring. Why, theoretically, would wages rise enough to make it possible for any worker to live in the city? I think the situation where workers with the worst alternatives and weakest negotiating position are stuck commuting into SF from outside is unfortunate but theoretically entirely understandable; SF wages aren't forced to rise to support someone living here, but only to be high enough relative to wages elsewhere to compensate for the cost of commuting.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    "but only to be high enough relative to wages elsewhere to compensate for the cost of commuting." True, but then the implied issues with not living in the city you work in become moot if truly compensating for the commute and cost of living outside the city.
    - abeppu 4y ago
      I think maybe you mean something by "truly compensating" which isn't actually being achieved. But the lesser compensation we are achieving is still sufficient to impact people's behavior. Suppose you're able to get two part time jobs with relatively little predictability in your shift schedule. Both are minimum wage, but one is in SF where the minimum is $17/hr and another is in Concord at $14/hr (the state minimum for a company with <25 employees). Say you live in Antioch, and can get to the Concord job in around 35 minutes for $4 with BART, and get to the SF job with more than 1h and $7.30 on BART (one way). So for every shift in SF you pick up, you get a $3 premium per hour relative to the Concord job, but for the first 2 hours that just goes to cover your extra BART fare, _and_ you lose an extra hour in transit. In dollars you still come out ahead on an 8 hour shift in SF relative to in Concord, but I think it would be unreasonable to say that "the implied issues ... become moot".
dymk 4y ago
You can't just convert office space into residential space. Completely different building codes. Just the retrofit for the plumbing makes it untenable.
- throw8383833jj 4y ago
  I know this will get downvoted but, I say Throw the building codes out the window. Housing people is more important than regulations. If it made a difference to your ability to get shelter, which would you rather choose: have shelter or live in a illegal tent under a bridge resting assured with the knowledge that there's a big book of rules in place.
  - trentgreene 4y ago
    The problem is not all codes are meaningless regulation, and some of the important ones are indeed expensive (and vice versa). If you yolo it, you get cases like the Grenfell tower fire, and a lot of people literally die.
  - grepLeigh 4y ago
    This is how you get housing tenements, and SF has a history of over-paying for impermanent housing solutions (like tents in a parking lot, or cots in a navigation center). Not all buildings in SF are high-rise open-plans. If you're imagining converting Salesforce tower, I see how that would seem impractical. Most commercial office space in SOMA (old warehouse buildings) can be converted into live/work lofts.
  - dymk 4y ago
    Building codes were written in blood (and for much of the plumbing code, human feces and black mold).
    - achenet 4y ago
      anyone up for a rewrite in Rust? :D
- SoftTalker 4y ago

kasey_junk 4y ago

Who do you expect will pay for the conversions if not landlords?

porcc 4y ago
Obviously government subsidy..
- HEmanZ 4y ago
  Meaning taxes
  - mc32 4y ago
    Or, good old QE. Who wants to live in a city if you can work from home? If you are poor and need housing subsidies and there are no jobs for you, there is no reason to live in the city to begin with. People go live where the jobs are. Without "white collar" jobs producing demand for services, there is much less demand for "blue collar" jobs. If it's just cooping people up, there are cheaper ways to house people than maintaining expensive buildings that need financing and upkeep.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  Subsidies.... to the landlords who own the buildings? Or are you saying this will be owned and operated by the government?

chrisseaton 4y ago

We've tried to convert offices to homes in the UK, and there's something particularly dystopian about the result. I think they have to make strange trade-offs to make the space useful, and its ends up being not very nice. I'm sure it's better than being on the street, but it isn't nice.

marcinzm 4y ago
NYC has build a lot of dedicated public housing and even then dystopian is probably a good summary of the result.
- grepLeigh 4y ago
  I grew up in the Sedgwick projects in the Bronx, and my grandma still lives there. She's been in the same rent-controlled apartment for 40+ years, which was affordable to her as a small business owner (hair/beauty salon). She's now living independently at age 86, thanks to a social security check and a community where she's everyone's abuela. Rent-controlled housing made it easier to divorce her abusive husband and start a business back in the 60s. How is that dystopian?
  - achenet 4y ago
    not the person you are responding to, but I think they meant dystopian as in the "vibe" of the place. For example, many housing projects in France (where I live), tend to be basically large concrete rectangles, with very little green space. When compared to posher neighborhoods, with lots of trees everywhere, this can seem a little claustrophobic/totalitarian/dystopian. It feels like a less "human friendly" environment than you stereotypical suburb with front lawns.
    - grepLeigh 4y ago
      I see where that's coming from, but to offer an alternate perspective the suburbs seemed "dystopian" to me at first - we moved upstate for middle/high school. The same 6-8 Stepford model homes on every street, strip malls filled with the same 10 stores (Walgreens/CVS, Costco/Walmart, etc), people dressed VERY similarly, and nobody walked anywhere. The teens in my suburban high school seemed way less happy and did more/harder drugs compared to the Bronx. I'm not saying the projects were lovely. The elevators smelled like piss. But public housing - even ugly public housing - was a huge part in enabling two generations of single moms (my mom + grandma) to raise their families, start businesses, and thrive.

giantg2 4y ago

Theoretically, the wages should come up to make it possible to live there, assuming the service providers are actually having trouble hiring. It seems to me there might be some disconnect in demand and supply of various labor types (not many unskilled jobs compared to the number of unskilled workers, vs not many software devs but lots of openings). It seems these forces drag the bottom down while pushing the top higher. Edit: why disagree?

abeppu 4y ago
> Theoretically, the wages should come up to make it possible to live there, assuming the service providers are actually having trouble hiring. Why, theoretically, would wages rise enough to make it possible for any worker to live in the city? I think the situation where workers with the worst alternatives and weakest negotiating position are stuck commuting into SF from outside is unfortunate but theoretically entirely understandable; SF wages aren't forced to rise to support someone living here, but only to be high enough relative to wages elsewhere to compensate for the cost of commuting.
- giantg2 4y ago
  "but only to be high enough relative to wages elsewhere to compensate for the cost of commuting." True, but then the implied issues with not living in the city you work in become moot if truly compensating for the commute and cost of living outside the city.
  - abeppu 4y ago
    I think maybe you mean something by "truly compensating" which isn't actually being achieved. But the lesser compensation we are achieving is still sufficient to impact people's behavior. Suppose you're able to get two part time jobs with relatively little predictability in your shift schedule. Both are minimum wage, but one is in SF where the minimum is $17/hr and another is in Concord at $14/hr (the state minimum for a company with <25 employees). Say you live in Antioch, and can get to the Concord job in around 35 minutes for $4 with BART, and get to the SF job with more than 1h and $7.30 on BART (one way). So for every shift in SF you pick up, you get a $3 premium per hour relative to the Concord job, but for the first 2 hours that just goes to cover your extra BART fare, _and_ you lose an extra hour in transit. In dollars you still come out ahead on an 8 hour shift in SF relative to in Concord, but I think it would be unreasonable to say that "the implied issues ... become moot".

dymk 4y ago

You can't just convert office space into residential space. Completely different building codes. Just the retrofit for the plumbing makes it untenable.

throw8383833jj 4y ago
I know this will get downvoted but, I say Throw the building codes out the window. Housing people is more important than regulations. If it made a difference to your ability to get shelter, which would you rather choose: have shelter or live in a illegal tent under a bridge resting assured with the knowledge that there's a big book of rules in place.
- trentgreene 4y ago
  The problem is not all codes are meaningless regulation, and some of the important ones are indeed expensive (and vice versa). If you yolo it, you get cases like the Grenfell tower fire, and a lot of people literally die.
- grepLeigh 4y ago
  This is how you get housing tenements, and SF has a history of over-paying for impermanent housing solutions (like tents in a parking lot, or cots in a navigation center). Not all buildings in SF are high-rise open-plans. If you're imagining converting Salesforce tower, I see how that would seem impractical. Most commercial office space in SOMA (old warehouse buildings) can be converted into live/work lofts.
- dymk 4y ago
  Building codes were written in blood (and for much of the plumbing code, human feces and black mold).
  - achenet 4y ago
    anyone up for a rewrite in Rust? :D
SoftTalker 4y ago