There’s a dream solution to America’s housing crisis and to its increasingly deserted downtowns: Convert the empty offices into homes.
Across the country, cities like New York, Boston and Cleveland are embracing the idea of residential retrofitting and providing incentives to do so. The Biden administration is easing the way with federal programs and tax breaks. Local leaders are accelerating changes to zoning and construction restrictions.
But will turning offices into homes actually work? And would you want to live in one?
Experts in housing, building, and urban planning say it may be difficult to convert office space to livable, likeable residential housing, but there’s an urgent reason they’re trying.
More office space is sitting empty in the United States than at any point since 1979, Moody’s Analytics reported earlier this week. It’s all a hangover from the Covid-19 pandemic; employees started working remotely and never came back in full force, creating “zombie towers.”
Meanwhile, the US has lagged behind by about 5.5 million housing units over the past 20 years, according to the National Association of Realtors, as builders failed to keep up with housing needs.
So can we just convert the excess offices into needed apartments?
“If only it were so easy,” said Harold Bordwin, principal and co-president of Keen-Summit Capital Partners, which handles commercial real estate restructurings. “Unfortunately, there are a whole range of hurdles.”
There’s no formula or scalable model for turning an office into a home, said Brett Theodos, a senior fellow with the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, part of the Urban Institute. “Every project has to reinvent the wheel,” he said, calling it “much harder than building from scratch.”