America’s cities have a ‘once-in-a-generation’ opportunity to convert office space to apartments — now comes the hard part
Looking across America’s major cities, researchers say there’s a wide swath of aging and under-used office buildings that are ripe for reinvention as energy-efficient apartments.Roughly 11% of office buildings in big cities and surrounding areas are prime candidates for conversion... Looking across America’s major cities, researchers say there’s a wide swath of aging and under-used office buildings that are ripe for reinvention as energy-efficient apartments.
For context, the study said builders have created roughly 260,000 apartment units in an average year over the past two decades. Meanwhile, a record-high 21.6 million renters paid more than 30% of their monthly income on housing in 2021, Harvard University researchers recently concluded. It’s not a new idea turning industrial and commercial buildings into residential space, Gupta noted. What’s brought the issue into hard focus is the rise of remote and hybrid work, he said.The interest rates are high for developers who want to finance the purchase and conversion of sites, the study said. There’s an array of zoning and building codes that, in their current form, might not allow the flexibility to switch.
The law “never explicitly mentions green office conversions” the authors said, but they said several parts could be applicable. That includes a $27 billion fund for greenhouse gas reduction which could help pave the path for conversions, they said. Those changes could make up to 136 million square feet of office space eligible for conversion to residential living, yielding approximately 20,000 new homes over a decade. A proposed state-level tax incentive would ensure that there are affordable units too and not just market-rate apartments, the report said.
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