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Perhaps these banks can convince their local governments to rezone the land use to convert them into residential or mixed.
by iwontberude 3y ago
Perhaps these banks can convince their local governments to rezone the land use to convert them into residential or mixed.
- diogenescynic 3y agoCommercial and residential buildings have different building codes. It would take years/decades to get approval and actually retrofit buildings. Cities like San Francisco chose to suppress residential housing and focused on commercial buildings because it was cheaper and required less infrastructure and made the city more money through payroll taxes. I'm glad they are being punished for their poor long term planning. Hopefully other cities learn from their mistakes and start to allow mixed use zoning, etc.
- malfist 3y ago> I'm glad they are being punished for their poor long term planning. This is a cold take. You shouldn't celebrate people getting hurt.
- diogenescynic 3y agoThere is a reason your hand hurts with pain after you touch a hot object. This teaches you not to do it again. This is just part of the grand experiment of the US--sometimes cities fail so other cities can learn/avoid the same mistakes.
- inasio 3y agoIt may not be as hard as you imagine, see e.g., Manhattan a few weeks ago: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-23/nyc-s-biggest-office-to-condo-conversion-opens https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-23/nyc-s-big...
- diogenescynic 3y agoManhattan's real estate laws are pretty different from the rest of the country. They already allow more mixed use real estate than anywhere else in the country. I think it's a bigger hurdle for a place like California and especially San Francisco to overcome (even more so quickly).
- bequanna 3y agoZoning is one issue but the big problem is converting commercial buildings to residential is often just as expensive as building new residential from scratch.
- jmye 3y agoI don’t understand the push to convert to residential. Absent proximity to jobs, who’s clamoring to live downtown in just about any city? Maybe downtown SF is still “cool” (for whatever value and age group you want to assign that to) and I just don’t know the Bay Area as well as my own city.
- iwontberude 3y agoPart of why no one wants to live in SF is because rent is too expensive and people are homeless there.