Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

bostonplans.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 413 posts

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#301

Post by Zircom »

mkoubaa wrote: post #168
balloonthief wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These projects are so interesting from an architectural/engineering standpoint, but then they hit you with the "rethink the rules that say how much green space an apartment needs or where its windows must be." I highly doubt the best long-term policy for a city's residents involves even less greenspace and natural light.

I highly doubt the best long-term policy for a city's residents is to have a housing shortage and for many to live on the street because of natural light concerns.

Homelessness and affordable housing aren't really related in this case. These people can afford and get housing if they wanted to, just not in their preferred area. But it's not like they're gonna just throw their hands in the air and decide to be homeless because they couldn't find a place exactly where they wanted. They'll just move somewhere else they can afford.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#302

Post by TulliusCicero »

bmitc wrote: post #58
thrill wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"know that they'll be able to find someone to pay" So, you're saying the demand remains greater than the supply?

What are you getting at? That is not necessarily the only conclusion that supports that, but it is one. A lot of urban designers just think that building apartment buildings will help with the demand problem in the same way that people think building highways alleviates congestion, which perhaps surprisingly urban designers know that that doesn't work for highways. And I see no evidence, at least in big metropolitan…

You absolutely could build your way out of highway traffic given sufficient lanes. However, given the constraints of land and how density inefficient cars are, you'd have to build double or even triple (etc) decker highways all over the place, which is totally economically infeasible.

Meanwhile, you can build a shitton of lanes out in the exurbs, sure, but then all the cars on your thirty lane highway have to go somewhere when they get into the city and land is a lot more scarce.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#303

Post by LatteLazy »

If we can replace significant amount of urban office space with residents, we can increase city densities a lot, moving people from less to more densely populated places. This is really really important as population density is basically the driver for all progress. Getting people into cities makes them healthier, happier, richer, less polluting, and longer living. This could be the next big driver of progress for western civilisation...

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#304

Post by alexvoda »

steveBK123 wrote: post #7

There was a cool OddLots episode recently where they talked to a guy who does Office to Residential work and some of the complexity. One thing he talked about, which I didn't know anyone did, was to actually cut through the ceiling/floorplate of buildings to basically "donut" them. This is necessary because many office floorplans are huge with modern HVAC and when converted into residential you end up with either und…

Of course this is only necessary because someone at some point decided it is ok for modern post-war offices to no longer have natural lighting and ventilation. Why would office workers ever need to see the sun?

According to the article, the pre-war buildings are easy to convert.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#306

Post by freeone3000 »

emmelaich wrote: post #288
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…

High-rises are not good for residential purposes. They are seriously isolating.

Versus what?

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#307

Post by JumpCrisscross »

michaelmrose wrote: post #289
lovich wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 everyon…

It's not clear that you can meaningfully effect availability of "regular" housing by building any reasonable number of luxury homes. Slightly reducing the cost of luxury apartments may attract more buyers from outside the city, average the rate of vacancy may increase without the price going down much. They can be purchased by the rich to be used as unlicensed hotels aka airbnb. They can be ought up as "investments"…

> not clear that you can meaningfully effect availability of "regular" housing by building any reasonable number of luxury homes

Most of New York's affordable housing is former luxury townhouses subdivided. You saw similar subdividing in Phoenix post crash. Every time people study this, they find building housing–any housing–eases prices. Yet every time a debate about building housing in high-cost areas comes up, someone comes out with this and throws a wrench in the gears. (The marginal property in a high-cost area will always be luxury. That's what high cost means.)

Anecdote: I've negotiated down my rent in New York based on new luxury developments nearby. I tallied up the cost of their amenities, saw how much I spend, compared the floor plans and showed my work to the landlord. Two units had already left, and I knew one had sized up to the luxury. Based on the math, it made sense–$200 for far more square footage. Landlord delayed but eventually agreed and reduced my rent to keep me.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#308

Post by JumpCrisscross »

aperson_hello wrote: post #185
bloppe wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is emergency egress. You need those shafts to be able to support external staircases with many dozens of people rushing down simultaneously in the event of a fire.

Do you? Most newer buildings go without external staircases (typically have two+ internals firewalled apart from each other)

> Do you?

No, the window requirement is another housing suppression tactic. In New York, it is common for apartments to be illegally subdivided. It's how a lot of people live because it's affordable. I've done it. It's fine.

Stairwells are necessary. But nobody on the 60th story of a high rise is egressing externally, FDNY's ladders don't even go that high. If you're only home at night, the window is a luxury. As evidenced by, when people are given a choice between more cash and a window, many choosing the cash.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#309

Post by steveBK123 »

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"

I dunno I think legal regulations on what is safe housing are pretty good, actually.

For example, in the absence of good legal housing, many poor (mostly immigrant) people in NYC live in illegal basement apartments. Every time there's a flash flood warning with a storm in the city, 5x/year, some of them die in their homes.

Ideally, poor people would also be able to live in legal apartments, provided we could actually build more.. and you know, die less!

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#310

Post by bregma »

RC_ITR wrote: post #275
bobthepanda wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> it would be easier to knock the building down and start anew. Idk where this meme started but it’s very far from reality. We as a species have only ever voluntarily demolished like 30 or so building above 35 stories because it’s insanely expensive to do so (most buildings were knocked down to make significantly larger ones in their place). In no world is it ever cheaper to tear down a high rise and start over. http…

> We as a species have only ever voluntarily demolished like 30 or so building above 35 stories because it’s insanely expensive to do so

The designed lifetime of yer typical neopostmodernist glass box office tower is about 25 years. Many of them are 50 years old at this point. They get torn down and replaced all the time.

Post reply on HN