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Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

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Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#261

Post by maximinus_thrax »

steveBK123 wrote: post #205
maximinus_thrax wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's say theres 100 apartments in the entire town, and they are all owned by the same company. Next let's say they build 50 more apartments and theres now 1000 apartments still all owned by the same company. Given the number of apartments has increased, renters now have more power to negotiate as the owners have more units they need to fill. Unfortunately, that's not what is happening on the ground. In my town, th…

I think a lot of people mistake cause & effect. What if the housing is being built because they expect rent to go up? If supply went up say 5% and rent went up 10%, what do people think would have happened in the 0% supply increase mirror universe? People can't just make you spend money. US has been underbuilding housing, especially in blue coastal cities, for generations. The last 25 years has seen a big move back t…

You're talking hypothetical, I'm talking factual and historical. There's no 'what ifs' here. There was price fixing and the courts are going to decide the magnitude. What you're saying is not false, it actually makes it worse, making already scarce housing even more inaccessible. It's actually quite amazing to see homeless people on the streets, service workers commuting hours/week, first responders not being able to afford living locally and at the same time more than half the newly built apartments empty just to help keep the price up.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#262

Post by asielen »

ktosobcy wrote: post #124
twelvechairs wrote: post #112

Its a delicate balance with these things. Residential brings life to the monotonous business areas and helps to improve housing supply (often not by an awful lot) but on the other hand, once you lose office sites they are generally gone forever (because of multiple ownership you can almost never convert from residential back to office) and even though the office market is taking a big hit from working from home / rem…

I never understood the need to concentrate all the offices in the single focal point of the city. And currently with WFH it seems to make even more sense to distribute office spaces in local "co-working" spaces and in the end mix residential with work making it intertwined (zoning in the USA, from what I understand, is weird as hack…)

Fair point if WFH is and remains the primary means of working.

On the other hand, if we believe the offices have value, as in people working together in one place has value, having offices in centralized locations because it is more of a known quantity for commuting.

Once you settle down roots, you don't want to have to upend your life if you lose your job or just want to find another job. And from the perspective of the company, you have more of a talent pool because you can recruit from all the other companies in the area with the benefit of not asking someone to move or change their routines.

I am in the camp of believing there being some benefit to people coming together to work on projects. Maybe not 5 days a week, but even if it is hybrid or occasional, there is still benefit for me to be central. I have worked 5 different jobs within 2 mile of each other and have never had to reconsider locations or commutes. I also benefit from being able to get lunch/drinks with old coworkers, attend impromptu 'meetups' and still make it home for dinner with my family because I can walk everywhere.

From a city planning point of view, there is a network effect to cities. Businesses move to cities because that is where there are services. Services are built because there is economy of scale to density.

Decentralized office locations means less density which means public transportation makes less sense, and dense services make less sense. Then you end up with Los Angeles (and Orange County). Which has lots of scattered office parks with little to nothing to do around them and that are only accessible by cars.

This is all a very American point of view. If instead we looked at European cities that were not built around cars and have good trains even for small hamlets, then absolutely, decentralized offices would make sense to me. It would satisfy my main concern of reliable transportation and ease of finding new jobs/networking.

So with many US city planning problems, the issue is our car centric culture.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#263

Post by aperson_hello »

steveBK123 wrote: post #195
aperson_hello wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undesirable apartments sound like code for low income/affordable housing to me... Add a few light pipes out to the outside walls and you can even get a bit of outside light inside!

Yes my point is that cutting the donut hole in is necessary to make them legal & desirable.

And my point is that desirable doesn't matter much if the goal is to get people housed. Yeah, you'll get less rent for the inner apartments, but that's how you make affordable housing - you make things cheaply and make sacrifices along the way to do so. Unless you don't want to live with the "poors"...

Legality is also highly related to "keeping them separated"

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#264

Post by lovich »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #210
hedora wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main advantage of living in a converted factory (there are a lot of these in the rust belt) is that you end up with an absolutely enormous space made out of cool materials. I was finding it hard to imagine that there are inner-city office buildings (high rises) that have floors so large that they couldn't be cut into, say 1/4'ths, with four residences on each floor, and each unit having 50% windows along its peri…

Due to fire code, to divide a high-rise into 4 corner units, you need to take up almost ~50% of the space for elevators, stairs and hallways. So you'd probably end up with close to 5k square foot condos - which isn't too ridiculous. You'd probably do 4 corner units and 4 non-corner units for a total of eight, and end up with each being between 2000 and 2500. The problem is, they'd be ridiculously expensive for a numb…

Given the Boston market this will still help everyone. My household is making north of 300k and was still having trouble bidding on home where there were dead cockroaches visible during the showing.

It feels wrong to build luxury housing when regular folk are suffering but if you build luxury housing to the point that the rich stop bidding on regular housing, or even better there’s so much luxury housing that everyone can get a good living space, it’s a net improvement for all of society

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#265

Post by achileas »

SoftTalker wrote: post #140
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call this the Chicago layout -many apartments are long and narrow. I have assumed it was to ensure access to two fire escapes. To hazard a guess, I have seen some that might only be 15’ wide, supporting a 10x10 room with a hallway to access it.

Chicago lots are long and narrow. Typical Chicago residential lot is 25x100 or so. Street in front, alley in the back, garage if you have one is a separate building fronting the alley. Many houses are built as "two flats" or "three flats" i.e. two or three houses stacked on top of each other.

This is really common in and around Boston too. The architectural style is from the area and we cal them three deckers (in Boston) or triple deckers (everywhere else). Lot size is probably similar, and they’re still highly valued (if kept up) to this day because of their construction and other benefits. I live in one now and others around me go for 750k+

https://www.dotnews.com/columns/2014/glorious-three-decker

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#266

Post by bombcar »

bandyaboot wrote: post #196
hedora wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main advantage of living in a converted factory (there are a lot of these in the rust belt) is that you end up with an absolutely enormous space made out of cool materials. I was finding it hard to imagine that there are inner-city office buildings (high rises) that have floors so large that they couldn't be cut into, say 1/4'ths, with four residences on each floor, and each unit having 50% windows along its peri…

I doubt that people in the market for a downtown apartment share the same priorities for selecting a home as people who would buy a McMansion. I also don’t think you can equate 10,000 sq ft over multiple floors with the same area on a single floor. I don’t know how that space would be designed in any practical manner that wouldn’t turn it into a labyrinth. I guess if someone wants a ballroom or a basketball court in…

Rural areas are replete with relatively average 2k sq ft houses with 10k sq ft+ “workshops” or “barns” - which often are just big areas that never actually did any farming, but are used for storing toys or hobbies.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#267

Post by bobthepanda »

aperson_hello wrote: post #263
steveBK123 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes my point is that cutting the donut hole in is necessary to make them legal & desirable.

And my point is that desirable doesn't matter much if the goal is to get people housed. Yeah, you'll get less rent for the inner apartments, but that's how you make affordable housing - you make things cheaply and make sacrifices along the way to do so. Unless you don't want to live with the "poors"... Legality is also highly related to "keeping them separated"

The problem is that the rest of the conversion, namely bathrooms and kitchens per unit and the required pipes, are also not cheap, to the point where if you wanted to rent out a lot of cheap units it would be easier to knock the building down and start anew.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#268

Post by davidjytang »

twelvechairs wrote: post #112

Its a delicate balance with these things. Residential brings life to the monotonous business areas and helps to improve housing supply (often not by an awful lot) but on the other hand, once you lose office sites they are generally gone forever (because of multiple ownership you can almost never convert from residential back to office) and even though the office market is taking a big hit from working from home / rem…

In Taiwan, we have a very large number of SMB which operates out of someone's apartment. If an apartment unit is up to office building code, then the apartment unit can be certified for a business license. Sometimes constructions are done to combine 2 or 3 apartment units into one bigger office.

So office sites may not be gone forever but could be converted for small businesses. (if Chicago laws allow it)

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#269

Post by HermanMartinus »

fswd wrote: post #144

Ironically, now you can work from home at your old work office. They wanted us back in the office, they got it.

Funny story. I recently stayed in an AirBnb that was literally my old office but turned into micro-apartments. Woke up sweating that I'd be late for standup.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#270

Post by anigbrowl »

jimt1234 wrote: post #85

I'm confused. Why is this program necessary? If building owners are sitting on vacant space because the demand for office space has dropped, while the demand for housing continues to rise, aren't they already incentivized to convert to residential space just based on the market conditions? Not sure why the city has to subsidize the property owners.

Because they're wildly over-leveraged because they were squeezing out every last drop of capital. Landlords are economic parasites who provide very little value to the larger economy. Kinda hoping cities just start eminent domaining the properties, there will never be a better time.
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