12 ms·
Enough Empty Office Space for 160k People in San Francisco
- Overtonwindow 4y agoTwitter's headquarters is for sale, that could be a good option for a homeless shelter
- notyourwork 4y agoIt basically was surrounding by homeless camps. What a mess that part of market street is.
- convolvatron 4y agoTo be fair, that part of market used to be worse…in a different way than today. Twitter moved into that situation with eyes open
- notyourwork 4y ago100%, and 2 blocks behind it things remain.
- justahuman74 4y agoI'm curious why they made this choice in the first place
- notyourwork 4y agoWhy they chose that building or why they chose to sell it?
- GalenErso 4y agoEnough future residential space for 40k people in San Francisco.
- trabant00 4y agoThat point was addressed in the article: > And yet again, while it’s tempting to see, promote or editorialize an opportunity to convert all the vacant office space in San Francisco into housing, the conversion of existing office space to residential use still makes absolutely no economic sense for the vast majority of San Francisco buildings, due to the relative value of each use and the costs of conversion.
- ltbarcly3 4y agoThen they are permanently going to be abandoned.
- Overtonwindow 4y agoNot likely. You won't have a permanently abandoned building in a city like that. Someone buys it or it comes down.
- maerF0x0 4y agoExactly. the owners go bankrupt. It's auctioned for a present price that looks like a bond of it's future cashflows. This is why rent doesn't always track purchase prices. People who bought a long time ago, or are picking up distressed assets have a lower capital base than those who bought recently or at peak prices. Because they have a lower capital base they only need to compete with, on a risk adjusted basis, with other recurring revenue investments (like bonds). Now, because bond rates have sky rocketed recently, that means the value of the buildings has plummeted (remember risk adjusting). If a building value has plummeted, and it's vacant, the owner has a good chance, potentially an incentive to just walk away from it.
- orangepurple 4y agoThere are abandoned buildings in Manhattan that have been sitting untouched since the early 80s
- blakesterz 4y agoIt's interesting to compare it to other cities: https://www.commercialedge.com/blog/national-office-report/ https://www.commercialedge.com/blog/national-office-report/
- laweijfmvo 4y agoSeems like not much of an outlier at 19% vacancy. I wonder why SF made the headline when Atlanta is at 20%...
- cultofmetatron 4y agogood. maybe they'll start seriously considering building more housing and mixed use zones like normal cities in every other country. SF city planning min-maxed for a very particular demographic and economic paradigm. that time period is over. adapt or die.
- spookthesunset 4y agoWhy would somebody working from home live in a tiny apartment downtown? Successful WFH requires a dedicated private office, which is something you’ll never see in a downtown apartment. Downtown areas are screwed. There is no point living downtown if you don’t also work there. All those people who lived downtown are now gonna contribute to suburban sprawl. That of if they are junior, will just be working from their parents house.
- cultofmetatron 4y agothere are plenty of reasons to live downtown. maybe there will be more coffeeshops and coworking spaces. I'm in Barcelona right now but whether here, medellin, bangkok etc, there is a huge demographic of educated workers who like livign in the city area but wan the freedom to walk around a beautiful economically diverse environment. I for one wouldn't mind a apartment where I can walk to a number of parks and cafes and social areas. The problem in SF is one found all over america. we don't have have proper third places. The closest thing I have to a hangout whenever i'm back stateside is the gym or starbucks.
- mathverse 4y agoCo-working spaces are really really nice but I suspect they will prove to be just an eccentric, boutique-like, expensive things that companies actually hate to use. Vast majority of them would prefer to sign a lease for 7y for a building instead of overpaying for a small space with nicer interior. The reality is that companies really want assembly lines for office workers.
- spookthesunset 4y ago
- mathverse 4y agoWe will definitely see a push from all the hedge funds and billionaire class to bring back people to the office. WFH is a privilege only US/EU people enjoy. Vast majority of people in Asia are herded to work from the office.
- notyourwork 4y ago> hedge funds and billionaire class For why? Because they want rent money... If people WFH, the companies renting these offices will terminate leases. Or is there some other reason that time and time again I see claims like this?
- mathverse 4y agoControl over economic activity and supply and demand. Office space was very expensive, leases were signed for a certain period of time and it was impossible for anyone not big enough to break into that space. Coupled with economic activity from all the workers needing to be at a certain place for a certain time it was a dream. Now all economic activity from this is uncontrolled. Workers spend their time and money on things they actually want instead of being forced to consume.
- Longlius 4y agoThe people who are major shareholders in companies also tend to hold other assets like commercial real estate.
- gibsonf1 4y agoA potential solution: 1. SF fixes the crime problem so its safe to be downtown. This requires many policy changes. 2. The rents are lowered to the point where the space is all used. This will cause many buildings to go bankrupt, be bought at huge discount by new owners, then enabling the cheaper rent. Painful but necessary. However, if 2 happens without 1, the space will remain empty. I used to commute by bike to work in SF downtown office space every day - it was ideal. But because of 1., I no longer consider that an option, or just working down there at all.
- shmatt 4y ago1 and 2 can't work together unless the private market is somehow cancelled and the government retains ownership of the buildings If downtown becomes some safe green utopia, rents triple downtown SF has a limited amount of square footage available to buy or rent. If it becomes an amazing place 1,000,000 workers will want those 160,000 spaces
- gibsonf1 4y agoNot sure I understand your point. 2 will happen because of the market anyway. My point is mainly that without 1, people won't return, so then both the current owners and new owners of the buildings will go bankrupt and SF will become another Detroit.
- maerF0x0 4y agoAmerica has experienced flight to the suburbs and urban price crashes in the past (iirc previously due to crime too) . Eventually the price gets low enough that people come back. Then we get mad about "gentrification" and create policies that invite crime back. Rinse and Repeat.
- ignormies 4y ago> iirc previously due to crime too "White flight" was definitely about more than just crime
- uptownfunk 4y agoSo, is SF dead like everyone is claiming or is that just a misconception? Sometimes I fantasize about running for mayor and saying: 1/ No tolerance for drugs and crime 2/ Rehouse and rehabilitate the homeless 3/ Improve public schools But I wonder if saying that would get me canceled in 2023. Or if not those three what are the top of mind issues for SF residents?
- encoderer 4y agoRun on number one. That’s the mandate. A safe and clean city. It requires homeless solutions and better schools to achieve.
- uptownfunk 4y agoFunny how something so tablestakes and common sense can be the basis for a potentially successful political run
- zdragnar 4y ago#1 will almost certainly get you cancelled, but you can't even get #2 as mayor. The best you could hope for is to pull a Giuliani. Not all homeless need rehabilitation, not all homeless want housing. When they do, not all trust the government enough to make their lives better through these efforts. (I say this through the experience of friends who are social workers specializing in dealing with homelessness) If you really wanted to get rid of homelessness, you need: 1/ A massively expanded budget for running shelters, temporary and long term housing 2/ Compulsory institutionalization to get people who are addicted or mentally ill off of the wrong drugs and onto the right ones (along with the requisite therapy) as appropriate 3/ Eliminate all of the feel-good laws, policy changes and cash handouts that allow camping in public spaces which enable long-term homelessness. An actual goal of no vagrancy means pushing people into steps 1 and 2. Pitching a tent on a sidewalk or in a public park either gets you a fine or, if you can't pay, put into the system. 4/ A massive police presence in the short term to deal with the gangs and cartels - local and foreign - who have been making a killing running hard drugs into and through legal grey zones such as (though certainly not limited to) homeless encampments. Simple legalization of drugs won't be sufficient to stop this, though it may help. Unfortunately, that does also run counter to #1.
- coding123 4y agoThat's 1/4 the actual number of homeless people in the entire United States.
- MadVikingGod 4y ago> There is now 15.4 Salesforce Towers, or 909 Salesforce Tower floors, worth of empty office space Man we will do anything to not use the metric system. ;)
- ravenstine 4y agoLOL I have come to both agree and disagree with you. When I was a geeky kid, I would groan whenever someone used "football fields" as a form of relative measurement. All the time, on TV, I would be watching something educational and the host would describe something as being "more than 2 and a half football fields large!" It used to be really common and I just assumed that people were either dumb or way too obsessed with football. As a fully grown adult, I actually came to respect the football-field as a legitimate unit of measurement. It's something we are all familiar and can wrap our minds around in a way that traditional units don't. Same thing goes for pints, cups, etc. For Silicon Valley types, maybe "Salesforce tower floors" can mean something. haha Inches, however, can die in a bloody fire. The meter scale will always be more straight forward than having to think twice about which friggin' fraction of an inch is bigger or smaller than another.
- beerandt 4y agoDecimal inches (and feet) are pretty common, especially in engineering and surveying.
- ASalazarMX 4y agoThis could be gradually changed if they said "100 meters, about a football field", so people started to visualize metric units naturally.
- kungito 4y agoFootball fields aren't even of fixed size
- ravenstine 4y agoMaybe that's hardly relevant? If the football field unit is intended to paint a mental picture as opposed to being an objective physical measure, the fuzziness of the football field size may not matter. It may even be a good thing if the size of a football field varies by locality. Good point, however.
- talideon 4y agoTurn it all into affordable accommodation and most of the ground floors into retail space suitable for communities.
- Ozzie_osman 4y agoI don't have exact figures, but NYC converted a bunch of commercial space to residential post 911. I moved to NYC in 2006, and the cheapest rent we could find was a converted apartment building on Wall St. The interesting thing is how that area transformed over time. Right after 9/11, it was empty (lots of destroyed office space, barricades, etc), then the offices started to fill back up but with only 1 or 2 residential buildings, which meant very little else, especially on nights and weekends (no grocery stores, shops, etc). Over the years, as more residential space filled up, the shops and stores came, the coffee shops and restaurants extended their hours at nights and weekends, and the whole area came to life.
- mancerayder 4y agoSomething similar happened with Williamsburg. There was a lot of whining about 'gentrification' that was thinly-veiled NIMBYism: Williamsburg was rezoned for density and residential; many new units were built and replaced things like low density housing and warehouses.
- throwayyy479087 4y agoDon’t forget the weird Brooklyn “Blood and Soil” of only welcoming natives
- mancerayder 4y agoThat's really common in NYC. There's this word that's used, community, to create in and out groups based on arbitrary periods of time. For example, the last 30 years, anyone after that is a sort of foreigner moving in. You see this in anything from Yelp reviews to activist commentary. The city predates the United States, and has had waves upon waves of many different types of people moving in and out of it. And every time there's this dangerous word, community, used to try to ossify neighborhoods into belonging to one group or another.