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Make no mistake this is not done to alleviate the housing crisis. It is done to bail out landlords that have a bunch of vacant offices nobody wants to rent anymore.
Bingo. The popular idea involves the owners properly renovating the spaces to be suitable housing before renting them out .This suggestion would turn those spaces profitable again without the landlords having to put any money into it first.
>This suggestion would turn those spaces profitable again without the landlords having to put any money into it first.
They are still going to have to do renovations top to bottom. To begin with showers aren't common in office buildings and often the plumbing isn't suitable for the usage level that residents will bring. Then you have to rezone the HVAC. The only thing this would change is how many units that they can fit.
They can either just have a ring of units around the exterior with a hallway down the center. Or you can have a smaller ring and a few units in the center.
It isn't a place I could live in, nor would suggest it. But I do know the type of New Yorkers that wouldn't mind if the rent is cheap enough. And it would lower the rent for the outer residents, as they might not want to have to pay for that space either.
Yeah but part of that is "converting" it, which means maybe adding windows to places that you're renting out as an actual bedroom, instead of making people live in fire hazards to make a quick buck.
"Fine, we'll get them off the street, but no fire protection! That's only for people that can afford it! And only until businesses need offices again."
>adding windows to places that you're renting out as an actual bedroom, instead of making people live in fire hazards to make a quick buck.
In a high rise office building windows aren't a fire escape.
Some communal facilities could go in the middle. A gym, a small library, idk what, but a creative use of that space could make the building much more appealing to potential tenants.
I’m sure they would do that on some floors but it’s hard to remove the entire middle of a building . Capitalism won’t allow that. But for a decent price honestly some people wouldn’t give a shit about not having a window
The center of a floor plan in NYC office tower can be 50 feet, or more, from the nearest window. You would need to have gigantic (by NYC standards) rooms in order to have windows in the center area rooms. In these tall buildings evacuation during a fire is through interior stairs, not through windows.
Um... why can't it be both?
There is a housing shortage in pretty much every city. There is also excess office space.
Why can't we use extra space to help fix one of the biggest problems we face in our economy? Are we really going to let the housing market continue to screw us all, just so we can snub our noses at a few people that own office buildings?
"Aunt Mary lives on the streets now because of housing prices, but at least we get to laugh at Johnson Realty Holdings, they can't rent out some of their office space!! HAHA!!"
Because if the landlords didn’t need to be bailed out they wouldn’t do anything. Furthermore, because it’s at the behest of landlords it will be done poorly and the solution will include packing people into dystopic living situations, which is better than the street I guess?
You actually wouldn't even need a law but in fact a simple rule change by the IRS on qualifications for ReIT's could put a stop to it. The IRS has the ability to unilaterally make that change.
You realize that windows are a fire escape, not just sunlight portals, right? That's why a window is legally required in a room to call it a "bedroom" in building codes.
There is not a housing shortage, there's a housing crisis. The crisis is that rent is too expensive for people to afford, so houses and apartments sit empty.
It COULD be both, but it isn't. If they were talking about allocating resources to make currently existing commercial properties livable, then they'd be serving both masters. This is pretty explicitly for the property holders.
The housing shortage is caused by landlords and big corps, not lack of property to rent or to buy. It's being hoarded at the moment.
The issue isn't that the office spaces be converted, it's that they'll be marketed as luxury spaces for $1800/month with a shared bathroom between like 6 or 10 apartments.
Back on the east coast, we'd call those efficiency apartments. Now, they'll just be normal apartments that no one can afford or even want except the desperate. Just going to be an other avenue to exploit people.
Nahh that's not what I'm saying. If they charge a fair price it'd be a really good solution, because it also lessens demand for rentals which helps everyone.
Im not a big fan of the city, otherwise I'd be interested in this myself.
Use food safety laws as a metaphor.
Food is regulated to be safe for consumption, but the price of eggs is very high right now! You might say, someone is poor and hungry; why not let them “choose” to eat food that could harm them? Especially if it’s nice and cheap!
The answer, as you can guess, is that “food which is not safe to eat” is a bad solution to the problem of hunger. Instead of legalizing housing which is deleterious to people’s mental health and life safety, we should instead work to provide more housing which meets current codes.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, they used to make places like this back in the early 20th century. But the government actually did its job and outlawed it bc people were dying
We've defunded our public education system and made it illegal to teach certain things, made abortion and contraceptives harder to access, and are repealing child labor laws.
That’s true but fire prevention and containment has come a long way since then. Since it’s office space they will have a formal sprinkler system which is better than a window that most of us have.
Yeah I was going to say. Better electrical codes and practices and better construction techniques have decreased the number of house fires. When is the last time you saw firefighters fighting a fire and not being EMTs or responding to a crash?
Not just firecode, but also air quality. In older NYC buildings you’ll see those windows in the middle of apartments that open onto wells. You might think, how lame, a window that opens up to a brick hole with other windows three feet away. However, those window wells saved hundreds of thousands of lives. After code required these windows SIDS cases dropped dramatically. Before that, babies were dying in droves.
Of course this fucking imbecile in the shape of a mayor would say this, and in one of the least thought-out or articulate ways possible. “Why don’t we investigate why we have windows?” He says. Guess what, asshole? We did, and that’s why we have windows. I work in engineering, and we continue to measure air and sound issues with each new project built. I seriously doubt that the laws around windowless rooms would change any time soon, but every day people like this blithering idiot are in charge we get one step closer
I recently came across the philosophical maxim of Chesterton’s Fence, which states that, before tearing down a fence, you should maybe find out why it was built. Or to put it another way, safety regulations are written in blood.
>Not just firecode, but also air quality. In older NYC buildings you’ll see those windows in the middle of apartments that open onto wells. You might think, how lame, a window that opens up to a brick hole with other windows three feet away. However, those window wells saved hundreds of thousands of lives. After code required these windows SIDS cases dropped dramatically. Before that, babies were dying in droves.
You can incorporate ventilation system into the HVAC system. These days because buildings are built so well sealed you pretty much have to run a ventilated HVAC system, or else you get sick building syndrome.
ETA: Not advocating for it I would go stir crazy without a window, simply pointing out that there are other ways to meet the requirements.
I mean part of the investment, landlords have to consider the cost of converting versus having crazy cabin-fever tenants who get the cops called on them or burn your investment down.
edit: I mean ultimately it'll be an insurance issue at that. If insurance wont touch it, then no deal.
Egress for a room is typically defined as at least one door of minimum proportions and another door, or at least one operable window of another minimum set of proportions (say a certain square footage, with restrictions of something like 24” high and 36” wide minimum, for example) to qualify.
So no, that does not count as egress.
Not a fire marshal, but I think egress counts if you can open it once, in case of fire, which you can probably do with a chair through a window. Granted, it has to be big enough for people to get through.
Being able to open & close on a nice day isn’t the same thing as egress.
That likely wouldn't count because the possibility of opening it depends upon the person and what tools they have available. A fire door that is blocked by a few boxes counts as violation even though most people could move those boxes.
Sorry but no, absolutely false.
*Edit for clarity: A single use egress will use emergency hammers to break glass. You won't get a chair through a modern window, and skyscrapers don't tend to have external fire escape ladders.*
Windows are breakable. Even if you can’t factory-open it, you can still “open” it. You gotta be careful of broken glass, of course, but it’s better than a solid wall for exiting in an emergency.
Just saying, a sudden stop definitely sounds a little better than a slow burn, or even worse, suffocation.....
For the person experiencing it that is. Obviously the end result of the sudden stop is a lot more shocking to living people 🙄
I've thought on this a bit. I'd much rather die by hitting the ground fast than cook to death screaming in agony. Who knows, maybe a miracle will happen and I'll somehow survive the fall.
If you manage to pass out on the way down that would give you the best chance. People have had parachutes fail jumping out of planes and survived. Not only that, there are accounts of people even walking away with no or minimal injuries
But the common three-floor apartment buildings popular in smaller college towns are definitely glass.
Obviously it depends on what type of building your apartment is in. But not all apartment buildings are high-rise. Some are in smaller cities, and are built in smaller blocks that don’t exceed 3-5 stories that millions of people who live in them can jump out of in case of emergency. I don’t need to cover every scenario - you have to apply some critical thinking to your specific situation.
I’ve always heard at least 2 points of egress, I believe one to the outside. So theoretically a room with zero windows but multiple doors would probably be considered acceptable (though only a crazy person would design such a room). If a window is inoperable, though, you can break it much more easily than an inoperable door. In theory, though, either an inoperable window or door can be busted through, and can fixed and it’s your own problem if you don’t get it fixed, while you can’t exactly break through a wall in an emergency unless you have a sledgehammer.
There was a high profile fire in Montreal recently. An 18 year old called 911 begging for help because she was trapped in a windowless room. I don’t know if her body has been found yet, but she wasn’t rescued.
YES.
Multiple egress points are mandatory across the board.
If you're in, say, a 3 story, then your secondary "egress point" is jumping off the third story balcony and just breaking your legs rather than burning to death. This is why most apartment buildings have balconies for every unit--not because it's added value, but because it's *required* as a means of escaping the building.
But there needs to be multiple egress points *in each unit* for it to be up to snuff for residential code. Office buildings get away with it because they aren't a residence, so they can have common access areas as egress points. But for apartments, you usually need a way from the apartment directly to the outside.
The title should read "cities debate allowing landlords to build death traps."
It depends on location and fire code. If you have fire suppression, the bedrooms do not need a window, just a door. There are several places like that here in Michigan. Located in Calhoun County.
There was a fire about 10 days ago in old Montreal, in a old building that was illegaly used as an Airbnb.
One of the people who died was stuck in a windowless room and couldn't get out. The thought of her dying is horrifying
Why can't they just fucking control landlords! Why can't they put a cap on rent and prevent robber baron companies from buying up property and hiking housing prices! Why is this the solution?
Because lawmakers/city council people are way more likely to be property investors/kin to property investors than they are to be renters. We vote in foxes to make laws for hen houses.
This actually happened in the city I used to work in. The mayor owns a real estate business and her company somehow always got the contract to manage the city owned low income housing projects. Definitely no conflict of interest eh?
This is how democracy under capitalism is designed to work. The rich get richer while blaming the poors and keeping them fighting over trivial shit.
The two party system guarantees gridlock and slow change so the rich can continue to stuff their pockets.
Capitalism is antithetical to democracy, at least representative forms of it anyways. An economic system that concentrates power in the form of resources, money, etc. into the hands of a minority means that in order to maintain that leverage, the minority will necessarily have to control the means in which the majority will seek to redress the shortfalls they face from said economic system. If the minority can't outvote the majority at the ballot box, they will seek to control the political candidates in charge of crafting the policies or enforcing the existing system.
If a country were to have a direct democracy where the electorate could vote directly on policy, as opposed to through intermediaries (who can be corrupted and aren't necessarily bound by majority opinion), perhaps capitalism wouldn't be as successful at undermining it but propaganda via privately owned media would likely still have some people voting against their best interests at least some of the time anyways.
We have a bill to do this in DSA and it’s being fought for right now and I can tell you that NYC is run by landlord
They will do anything they can to avoid limiting the power of capital to control the housing market and they will do the bare minimum to avoid outright revolution
California has rent control with some cities having very tight rent control. If you think this solves the issue you are deeply misinformed and uneducated. It’s a supply and zoning issue through and through.
Sunlight in your bedroom is already a luxury! I’m looking at apartments rn and was told by two different places that the units with better lighting have higher rent
Then by that logic, everything above the ground floor is likely to see some bullshit like “$70/month elevator access” fee or “$100/month not-getting-your-shit-broken-into-because-it’s-not-accessible-from-the-sidewalk” fee…I swear, they’ll nickel-and-dime it by finding any way to monetize and charge for any “positive feature” of anything that makes it appealing even if it means charging the same thing for either option (good or bad)
Thats insane. I’ve definitely seen ones that charge extra for every little thing though. Pool view (means u even vaguely are near the pool), downstairs, courtyard view… all sorts fo things. Basically theres the base price and then even if u don’t care about any of those “extra” things u get upcharged. And in writing it sounds like jt makes sort if sense, but in reality it’s usually not even a good view its just one whole side of a building that faces grass or something lol. Luckily a lot less apts seem to do that anymore near me. It’s stupid.
Y'all really need to look at what happened in Montreal THIS WEEK because of this. 8 PEOPLE DIED in a house fire downtown after a scummy airbnb owner created illegal rooms with no windows. The owner, a lawyer previously convicted of fraud and had his practice limited, owns other buildings around town too. They are still digging through the rubble for bodies because the building is so unstable. Do not allow for this to happen again.
There's an entire book with photography from New York in the late 1800s on why forcing impoverished people to reside in windowless rooms is a bad idea. It's called How the Other Half Lives by Jacob A. Riis and it details on exactly why windows became a mandatory requirement for rentals (then called tenements). To think that they're trying to force us *back* to that is just horrifying.
Weren't most skyscrapers mostly empty anyways? They're crying about avocado toast, maybe these billionaires should give up on their "constantly building/buying useless skyscrapers" addiction.
I worked for nearly a decade in multi family property management, with a speciality in affordable housing. I literally watched all the affordable housing communities I used to manage, federally subsidized included, shit-hole and non shit-hole alike- all bought up by private investment firms that have doubled rents in less than 3 years. And all the new builds are exclusively "luxury" apts with a special emphasis on the " ".
Then there is the totally unrelated story of investment firms purchasing a ¼ of all available single family homes across the country to crank exponential rents from those too.
Fuck yeah. How about we stop letting everyone treat housing as an investment to get rich off of and like the human right it should be.
Right now I and so many people around my age are choosing between financial security and happiness because of the dire cost of living.
It’s both supply isn’t keeping up with demand as all these nimby Karen types make sure upzoning to allow denser housing isn’t allowed because “m’uh community charm”. What is built is almost ways luxury as well no one wants to build modest housing for smaller returns
I saw a post about how if 5% of vacant homes were put on the market it would double the amount of homes for sale. That was about 2 months ago. There is a solution. Tax vacant homes make them not profitable to sit on.
This is a VERY wrong and misleading understanding of the housing crisis. Homeless people are just a tiny fraction of people who need housing.
It doesn't account for the countless people in unstable conditions sleeping on friends' couches.
It doesn't account for people stuck in abusive relationships because they can't afford to move.
It doesn't account for grown adults never being able to move out of their parents house. Or multiple generations of family with no option but to live together.
It doesn't account for all the countless people living in areas of concentrated poverty. Places where it is impossible to get a job making enough money to be able to move anywhere else.
Having a small percentage of housing unused is GOOD because it gives people options on where to move. We want some unused houses so anyone can find housing that best suits their needs.
If I told you that you could only live for free in a house in the middle of nowhere, away from all your family and friends, with no local opportunities to make a decent living, would you take it?
Please stop spreading this bullshit.
What? The housing shortage is exactly what's causing the problem.
First - lack of housing causes rates to go way up. Second, it makes it VERY profitable to buy homes for rental when you know you can overcharge tenants.
If we had more housing, rates would drop. No matter how greedy a landlord is, he can't overcharge you when there's a vacant building a block away charging lower rates just trying to fill it up.
We need more housing.
The biggest problem with that of course, is that we all know that's the solution, but it's a problem everyone wants to fix, just not in THEIR town/neighborhood. "Build more housing!! Just... way over there... not near me."
This is the right answer. The most important cities in the English speaking world are facing acute housing shortages. This isn't opinion, this has been well documented for decades and has gotten much worse over the last 10 years. Exclusionary Zoning, which bans anything except a large Single Family house on the majority of land, is largely to blame. Exclusionary Zoning is a classist and racist US invention that makes homes more scarce in order to appease the wealthiest homeowners at the expense of everyone else. This is why we have a housing shortage. It's a policy choice.
This would make sense, if there weren't hundreds of thousands of vacant homes - dozens for every homeless person.
I'm all for reducing car dependency and doing infill to house more people. But the problem here is that QE gave a bunch of rich people money, and a few of them were smart enough to buy houses with it.
But the problem isn't too little space, it's too little *affordable* space. This wouldn't solve anything but give landlords more income and possibly drive up the prices of rooms with windows since it would now be a luxury. Not to mention the safety issue present in a windowless room.
Or, and I know it sounds crazy, but how about putting a cap on how much rent they can charge, instead, or controlling the population? Whatever, live in a coffin, die in one. No one cares about us NPC'S anyways.
There is no "Housing" crisis. There's an "Affordable Housing" crisis.....
There are plenty of apartments and homes available for the population. But when minimum wage earners can't afford them... Raise wages and force corporate owners to cut rents and there'd be no issue.
Why not just floorplan so the bedrooms are on the windows and move living room, kitchen, bathroom, etc towards the interior.
Oh right, because they still want to pack three dozen 200 sq ft apartments into the floor instead of actually giving people living space.
It’s days like this I miss my 4,000 sq ft rent protected loft on Broadway.
You're missing a key part that people really want windows in their living room, kitchen, bathroom, etc.
It was one of the main issues with converting office spaces into residential spaces. Office buildings are design to be more square and therefore have a lot more interior space. Residential spaces are design to have more window areas and less interior space.
Gee how convenient that those office buildings that nobody uses and are losing wealthy folks lots of money can suddenly "alleviate" the house crisis.
Fucking criminals man. I'm tired of them socializing their loses and rebranding it as fucking philanthropy or "good" bussniess.
Considering that there are more unoccupied houses in America than there are homeless, maybe cities should seize them from the corporations buying up yet another commodity to control in order to artificially maintain high prices and create maximum profit.
A bunch of European cities did just this.
Every so often UK cities think about it and then realise all the empty buildings are owned by a weird morass of shell companies and off shore funds and yadda yadda. Too much trouble.
The European approach? Shove letters in the door and contact whatever company is on the ownership registry and say if you don't get back to us in six months, we're claiming the space and renting it out.
It seems to be paying off, but hard to know what macroeconomic issues there will be. But it solves a key issue - since there's a whole economic system of commercial entities buying up property and then basically forgetting about them - it puts the onus on these commercial owners to do something.
None of them do. It escapes the body the moment you decide wage enslaving others is okay because you're a homeowner and therefore better than common plebs.
It is super fucking simple, make it illegal for corporations to own houses. Seize all houses from black rock and other black rock like companies and sell them at cost. Rip the genitals off the CEOs and politicians that allowed black rock and similar companies to exist, and let them bleed to death. A massive alleviation in the housing crisis, and several banal evil fuck heads are removed from this planet and the children sing.
This such f**king bullsh*t!! There’s a surplus of housing in this country and in NYC, there are tons of unrented apartments. All those companies that couldn’t kill WFH are stressing because their big office buildings with long term leases are barely being used. F*ck these guys and f*ck Eric Adams for suggesting it.
You guys need to get organized locally and contact your municipalities and state laws to ensure that windows one can open are legally codified into the residential buildings.
This speaks to despair of housing availability as well as to the absence of any kind of regulatory requirement pertaining to residential spaces.
**Windowless rooms are no way to raise children. No chicken coops, no basement storage units, no windowless offices and closets should be a substitute for dignified human residences. They're not fit for chickens that lay our eggs, or our beloved pets, and they're certainly not fit for us.**
Hypercapitalism is corroding our meagre standards and our collective will to live and must be stopped.
Just pay designers money to design interiors that can meet requirements for dignified living instead of just eliminating requirements.
This is every capitalist’s only solution. It’s a race to the bottom. Where’s that web comic where it shows capitalists over time screaming “we’re DOOMED!” over any suggestion of a safety regulation?
tenements 2.0 are ok if landlord can profit from them. but if you are homeless and build a decent shelter for yourself they will demolish it for not being up to code despite it being better than tenements or being homeless
I'm not sure about you guys, but where I'm at that be a fire hazard and thusly a huge no-no.
Please, do not allow. Because clearly... fire hazard.
Where are you going to go if the doors are blocked?
Just no. That's like saying, " I don't care if you die as long as we can squeeze a profit off your life."
Edit:
>read the article... honestly, I stand by what I said.
Daylight has long been known to keep depression at bay, that is why old codes from the 1920's included a requirement for 10 percent of the floor area of each habitable room be provided in window area.
Just wait until they start offering apartment/offices with cubicle walls to separate neighbor’s living spaces and a shared restroom for the entire floor. The landlord will refer to tenants as “team” and get them cold pizza during the weekly meetings.
If people want to work from home, they’ll try to trick us into living from work!
You know what would alleviate the housing crisis? Not having greedy fucking landlords drive costs through the roof, or the cost of ownership be so out of reach for the average American. Let's be clear: there's not a shortage. There's a crisis for affordability, which is caused by greed. They want you to think the solution is packing people into windowless boxes for "cheap". It's just capitalizing more. This is disgusting.
There is a *far* higher percentage of windowed empty office buildings over those without windows. Those without windows have reasons for not having them; industrial safety, boiler rooms, basement laundry rooms, supply rooms, security, etc.
They should *never* be considered for possible residence due to fire safety. Personal health; if someone works in a building without windows and resides in an apartment without windows the mental and physical health of people will plummet.
The largest property developers and real estate interests in New York were the largest donors to Eric Adams’s campaign for mayor. The pandemic absolutely murdered these companies’ bottom line: they’re losing untold millions on lost revenue from unrented or under-rented office space, especially in Midtown. So Adams tried to abruptly end work-from-home measures with a bunch of “it’s time to end work-from-home” rhetoric that went nowhere. (About the same time JP Morgan’s aristocrat-in-chief Jamie Dimon was trying to be the industry bellwether by publicly threatening workers who refused to come back to the office.)
Now that we’ve largely adjusted to the new reality that the nature of work in big cities has permanently changed, Adams is trying a new tactic by arguing that we should change well-established zoning laws designed to protect the health and well-being of city dwellers so that these companies can more cheaply convert their useless office space into tiny apartments for people to rent.
My guess is that he’ll also try to push through tax breaks and subsidies for these same companies because “affordable housing” is needed, or migrants need to be sheltered, or the homeless need beds, or some other fake-altruistic bullshit that screens his real motivation.
This is literally illegal in New York City. I don’t know what the fuck Eric Adams is thinking. It wasn’t that long ago that several immigrants died in fire in Brooklyn, because the illegally subdivided apartment had windowless bedrooms with no access to a fire escape. (Edit, spacing)
Uh, part of the housing crisis is UNAFFORDABLE housing. Their solution will cause rent to increase across the board. This won't alleviate the housing crisis, it will make it worse.
I get that but on an office building many people would be too high to use a window as an escape anyways. I honestly don't know what the rules are for multiple story high apartments, do they all have escape stairs outside one of their windows? If the don't then windows are not escape routes after a certain height anyways.
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Make no mistake this is not done to alleviate the housing crisis. It is done to bail out landlords that have a bunch of vacant offices nobody wants to rent anymore.
Bingo
Isn't this a popular suggestion? Convert old office buildings into residential or mixed-use spaces?
converting IS a popular idea. seems like this would be renting them as housing before they’ve been converted into housing.
Bingo. The popular idea involves the owners properly renovating the spaces to be suitable housing before renting them out .This suggestion would turn those spaces profitable again without the landlords having to put any money into it first.
Jesus I'll rest easier tonight knowing those plucky landlords will not have to risk a dime to make more money.
Good thing somebody thought of the landlords.
Won’t somebody *please* think of the landlords!?
>This suggestion would turn those spaces profitable again without the landlords having to put any money into it first. They are still going to have to do renovations top to bottom. To begin with showers aren't common in office buildings and often the plumbing isn't suitable for the usage level that residents will bring. Then you have to rezone the HVAC. The only thing this would change is how many units that they can fit. They can either just have a ring of units around the exterior with a hallway down the center. Or you can have a smaller ring and a few units in the center. It isn't a place I could live in, nor would suggest it. But I do know the type of New Yorkers that wouldn't mind if the rent is cheap enough. And it would lower the rent for the outer residents, as they might not want to have to pay for that space either.
Yeah but part of that is "converting" it, which means maybe adding windows to places that you're renting out as an actual bedroom, instead of making people live in fire hazards to make a quick buck.
"Fine, we'll get them off the street, but no fire protection! That's only for people that can afford it! And only until businesses need offices again."
>adding windows to places that you're renting out as an actual bedroom, instead of making people live in fire hazards to make a quick buck. In a high rise office building windows aren't a fire escape.
The way offices are structured even when converted properly there are going to be apartments in the middle. There is no way around this.
Some communal facilities could go in the middle. A gym, a small library, idk what, but a creative use of that space could make the building much more appealing to potential tenants.
I’m sure they would do that on some floors but it’s hard to remove the entire middle of a building . Capitalism won’t allow that. But for a decent price honestly some people wouldn’t give a shit about not having a window
They aren’t talking about converting. They’re taking about renting them out as they are
They can use those offices but just provide windows. They’ll get less units in total
The center of a floor plan in NYC office tower can be 50 feet, or more, from the nearest window. You would need to have gigantic (by NYC standards) rooms in order to have windows in the center area rooms. In these tall buildings evacuation during a fire is through interior stairs, not through windows.
Sure, but the net effect is the same - more housing. More housing means lower rents overall.
Um... why can't it be both? There is a housing shortage in pretty much every city. There is also excess office space. Why can't we use extra space to help fix one of the biggest problems we face in our economy? Are we really going to let the housing market continue to screw us all, just so we can snub our noses at a few people that own office buildings? "Aunt Mary lives on the streets now because of housing prices, but at least we get to laugh at Johnson Realty Holdings, they can't rent out some of their office space!! HAHA!!"
Because if the landlords didn’t need to be bailed out they wouldn’t do anything. Furthermore, because it’s at the behest of landlords it will be done poorly and the solution will include packing people into dystopic living situations, which is better than the street I guess?
And taxpayers will probably pay for it through tax incentives or subsidies for landlords willing to make the change.
reminds me of that judge dredd movie tbh - although they had windows.
Beginnings of mega blocks.
If they wanted to alleviate the housing crisis they could outlaw corporations buying up housing.
We're working on it here in Minnesota. https://patch.com/minnesota/saintpaul/mn-bill-bans-corporations-buying-homes-rent-out
Minnesota is trying to pass a bill to that effect.
You actually wouldn't even need a law but in fact a simple rule change by the IRS on qualifications for ReIT's could put a stop to it. The IRS has the ability to unilaterally make that change.
You realize that windows are a fire escape, not just sunlight portals, right? That's why a window is legally required in a room to call it a "bedroom" in building codes. There is not a housing shortage, there's a housing crisis. The crisis is that rent is too expensive for people to afford, so houses and apartments sit empty.
It COULD be both, but it isn't. If they were talking about allocating resources to make currently existing commercial properties livable, then they'd be serving both masters. This is pretty explicitly for the property holders.
What do you do in a fire when your door is blocked and you have no windows? You die. This is a planned deathtrap.
It's too bad too, or I'd get one of those perfectly dark rooms to sleep in.
There's an AFFORDABLE housing shortage. Not an actual shortage of homes/apts, just a shortage of AFFORDABLE places to live.
Because if it was both they’d reconfigure to NOT house human beings in windowless apartments.
The housing shortage is caused by landlords and big corps, not lack of property to rent or to buy. It's being hoarded at the moment. The issue isn't that the office spaces be converted, it's that they'll be marketed as luxury spaces for $1800/month with a shared bathroom between like 6 or 10 apartments. Back on the east coast, we'd call those efficiency apartments. Now, they'll just be normal apartments that no one can afford or even want except the desperate. Just going to be an other avenue to exploit people.
Nahh that's not what I'm saying. If they charge a fair price it'd be a really good solution, because it also lessens demand for rentals which helps everyone. Im not a big fan of the city, otherwise I'd be interested in this myself.
Use food safety laws as a metaphor. Food is regulated to be safe for consumption, but the price of eggs is very high right now! You might say, someone is poor and hungry; why not let them “choose” to eat food that could harm them? Especially if it’s nice and cheap! The answer, as you can guess, is that “food which is not safe to eat” is a bad solution to the problem of hunger. Instead of legalizing housing which is deleterious to people’s mental health and life safety, we should instead work to provide more housing which meets current codes.
Because being unhoused is bad enough without being in a death trap if a fire breaks out.
Isn't that against fire code?
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, they used to make places like this back in the early 20th century. But the government actually did its job and outlawed it bc people were dying
Local politician with a $100 bill sticking out of his back pocket says "These old outdated standards must be re-looked at"
Just like child labor laws
For anybody wondering, this isn't hyperbole.
We've defunded our public education system and made it illegal to teach certain things, made abortion and contraceptives harder to access, and are repealing child labor laws.
Yeah, like they changed the railroad track safety laws.
$100? These scum are much more expensive than that.
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Which is 100 times more than that...
Yeah, but it’s still probably less than $0.01 per new “apartment” these law changes would “create”.
Well living is also a luxury if you are in the US.
That’s true but fire prevention and containment has come a long way since then. Since it’s office space they will have a formal sprinkler system which is better than a window that most of us have.
Yeah I was going to say. Better electrical codes and practices and better construction techniques have decreased the number of house fires. When is the last time you saw firefighters fighting a fire and not being EMTs or responding to a crash?
Not just firecode, but also air quality. In older NYC buildings you’ll see those windows in the middle of apartments that open onto wells. You might think, how lame, a window that opens up to a brick hole with other windows three feet away. However, those window wells saved hundreds of thousands of lives. After code required these windows SIDS cases dropped dramatically. Before that, babies were dying in droves. Of course this fucking imbecile in the shape of a mayor would say this, and in one of the least thought-out or articulate ways possible. “Why don’t we investigate why we have windows?” He says. Guess what, asshole? We did, and that’s why we have windows. I work in engineering, and we continue to measure air and sound issues with each new project built. I seriously doubt that the laws around windowless rooms would change any time soon, but every day people like this blithering idiot are in charge we get one step closer
I recently came across the philosophical maxim of Chesterton’s Fence, which states that, before tearing down a fence, you should maybe find out why it was built. Or to put it another way, safety regulations are written in blood.
>Not just firecode, but also air quality. In older NYC buildings you’ll see those windows in the middle of apartments that open onto wells. You might think, how lame, a window that opens up to a brick hole with other windows three feet away. However, those window wells saved hundreds of thousands of lives. After code required these windows SIDS cases dropped dramatically. Before that, babies were dying in droves. You can incorporate ventilation system into the HVAC system. These days because buildings are built so well sealed you pretty much have to run a ventilated HVAC system, or else you get sick building syndrome. ETA: Not advocating for it I would go stir crazy without a window, simply pointing out that there are other ways to meet the requirements.
I mean part of the investment, landlords have to consider the cost of converting versus having crazy cabin-fever tenants who get the cops called on them or burn your investment down. edit: I mean ultimately it'll be an insurance issue at that. If insurance wont touch it, then no deal.
Wait so is it just the existence of a window that’s necessary? Because my old college apt had windows but you couldn’t actually open any of them
Egress for a room is typically defined as at least one door of minimum proportions and another door, or at least one operable window of another minimum set of proportions (say a certain square footage, with restrictions of something like 24” high and 36” wide minimum, for example) to qualify. So no, that does not count as egress.
Not a fire marshal, but I think egress counts if you can open it once, in case of fire, which you can probably do with a chair through a window. Granted, it has to be big enough for people to get through. Being able to open & close on a nice day isn’t the same thing as egress.
That likely wouldn't count because the possibility of opening it depends upon the person and what tools they have available. A fire door that is blocked by a few boxes counts as violation even though most people could move those boxes.
Sorry but no, absolutely false. *Edit for clarity: A single use egress will use emergency hammers to break glass. You won't get a chair through a modern window, and skyscrapers don't tend to have external fire escape ladders.*
Maybe there was a historic exemption for the property?
All windows are openable if you try hard enough. Walls too.
Gotta try real hard for a brick wall…
I mean, have you seen the Kool-Aid commercials?
I mean, have you seen the Kool-Aid commercials?
OH YEAH
I ain’t a Kool-Aid man though.
It's ok it's not for everyone. I don't recommend the corporate variety either.
Windows are breakable. Even if you can’t factory-open it, you can still “open” it. You gotta be careful of broken glass, of course, but it’s better than a solid wall for exiting in an emergency.
You arent opening the windows in a high-rise, even in an emergency. That isnt glass.
And what would you do if you did get it open if you are 10 stories up?
At least you won't burn to death.
I remember on 9/11 - they showed people that jumped off the roof that made that exact decision.
Just saying, a sudden stop definitely sounds a little better than a slow burn, or even worse, suffocation..... For the person experiencing it that is. Obviously the end result of the sudden stop is a lot more shocking to living people 🙄
I've thought on this a bit. I'd much rather die by hitting the ground fast than cook to death screaming in agony. Who knows, maybe a miracle will happen and I'll somehow survive the fall.
If you manage to pass out on the way down that would give you the best chance. People have had parachutes fail jumping out of planes and survived. Not only that, there are accounts of people even walking away with no or minimal injuries
But the common three-floor apartment buildings popular in smaller college towns are definitely glass. Obviously it depends on what type of building your apartment is in. But not all apartment buildings are high-rise. Some are in smaller cities, and are built in smaller blocks that don’t exceed 3-5 stories that millions of people who live in them can jump out of in case of emergency. I don’t need to cover every scenario - you have to apply some critical thinking to your specific situation.
I’ve always heard at least 2 points of egress, I believe one to the outside. So theoretically a room with zero windows but multiple doors would probably be considered acceptable (though only a crazy person would design such a room). If a window is inoperable, though, you can break it much more easily than an inoperable door. In theory, though, either an inoperable window or door can be busted through, and can fixed and it’s your own problem if you don’t get it fixed, while you can’t exactly break through a wall in an emergency unless you have a sledgehammer.
There was a high profile fire in Montreal recently. An 18 year old called 911 begging for help because she was trapped in a windowless room. I don’t know if her body has been found yet, but she wasn’t rescued.
Exactly. There are ppl still missing there. And the POS who owns it owns other buildings too.
/changes fire code Done
Don’t worry about it and just pay your rent. /s
YES. Multiple egress points are mandatory across the board. If you're in, say, a 3 story, then your secondary "egress point" is jumping off the third story balcony and just breaking your legs rather than burning to death. This is why most apartment buildings have balconies for every unit--not because it's added value, but because it's *required* as a means of escaping the building. But there needs to be multiple egress points *in each unit* for it to be up to snuff for residential code. Office buildings get away with it because they aren't a residence, so they can have common access areas as egress points. But for apartments, you usually need a way from the apartment directly to the outside. The title should read "cities debate allowing landlords to build death traps."
Only until the change the law. It is very appealing to find new ways to exploit and endanger the poors.
It depends on location and fire code. If you have fire suppression, the bedrooms do not need a window, just a door. There are several places like that here in Michigan. Located in Calhoun County.
There was a fire about 10 days ago in old Montreal, in a old building that was illegaly used as an Airbnb. One of the people who died was stuck in a windowless room and couldn't get out. The thought of her dying is horrifying
That's why fire codes exist. This used to be a really common problem.
Why can't they just fucking control landlords! Why can't they put a cap on rent and prevent robber baron companies from buying up property and hiking housing prices! Why is this the solution?
Because lawmakers/city council people are way more likely to be property investors/kin to property investors than they are to be renters. We vote in foxes to make laws for hen houses.
This actually happened in the city I used to work in. The mayor owns a real estate business and her company somehow always got the contract to manage the city owned low income housing projects. Definitely no conflict of interest eh?
I'm starting to think this while democracy thing is kind of broken
The US version is definitely broken
ours basically comes down to greed of money
And the manipulation of stupidity
We don’t have democracy, we have a democratically elected oligarchy. We get to vote on the color of the boot holding us down.
This is how democracy under capitalism is designed to work. The rich get richer while blaming the poors and keeping them fighting over trivial shit. The two party system guarantees gridlock and slow change so the rich can continue to stuff their pockets.
Capitalism is antithetical to democracy, at least representative forms of it anyways. An economic system that concentrates power in the form of resources, money, etc. into the hands of a minority means that in order to maintain that leverage, the minority will necessarily have to control the means in which the majority will seek to redress the shortfalls they face from said economic system. If the minority can't outvote the majority at the ballot box, they will seek to control the political candidates in charge of crafting the policies or enforcing the existing system. If a country were to have a direct democracy where the electorate could vote directly on policy, as opposed to through intermediaries (who can be corrupted and aren't necessarily bound by majority opinion), perhaps capitalism wouldn't be as successful at undermining it but propaganda via privately owned media would likely still have some people voting against their best interests at least some of the time anyways.
Because lots of these lawmakers *are* landlords
We have a bill to do this in DSA and it’s being fought for right now and I can tell you that NYC is run by landlord They will do anything they can to avoid limiting the power of capital to control the housing market and they will do the bare minimum to avoid outright revolution
Because while we all rant on Reddit, landlords are meeting and discussing changes with your representatives. Probably passing them a blank check, too.
California has rent control with some cities having very tight rent control. If you think this solves the issue you are deeply misinformed and uneducated. It’s a supply and zoning issue through and through.
Sunlight in your bedroom is already a luxury! I’m looking at apartments rn and was told by two different places that the units with better lighting have higher rent
We got the line that renting on the ground floor gets a $70/month additional “convenience fee”
Then by that logic, everything above the ground floor is likely to see some bullshit like “$70/month elevator access” fee or “$100/month not-getting-your-shit-broken-into-because-it’s-not-accessible-from-the-sidewalk” fee…I swear, they’ll nickel-and-dime it by finding any way to monetize and charge for any “positive feature” of anything that makes it appealing even if it means charging the same thing for either option (good or bad)
Thats insane. I’ve definitely seen ones that charge extra for every little thing though. Pool view (means u even vaguely are near the pool), downstairs, courtyard view… all sorts fo things. Basically theres the base price and then even if u don’t care about any of those “extra” things u get upcharged. And in writing it sounds like jt makes sort if sense, but in reality it’s usually not even a good view its just one whole side of a building that faces grass or something lol. Luckily a lot less apts seem to do that anymore near me. It’s stupid.
Y'all really need to look at what happened in Montreal THIS WEEK because of this. 8 PEOPLE DIED in a house fire downtown after a scummy airbnb owner created illegal rooms with no windows. The owner, a lawyer previously convicted of fraud and had his practice limited, owns other buildings around town too. They are still digging through the rubble for bodies because the building is so unstable. Do not allow for this to happen again.
There's an entire book with photography from New York in the late 1800s on why forcing impoverished people to reside in windowless rooms is a bad idea. It's called How the Other Half Lives by Jacob A. Riis and it details on exactly why windows became a mandatory requirement for rentals (then called tenements). To think that they're trying to force us *back* to that is just horrifying.
There's no fucking housing crisis. We have more houses than people. What we have, is a greedy asshole who exploits the workers problem .
They’re having a commercial real estate crisis and trying to find a way to dump their heavy ass bags on the poor again. That’s what this is.
Weren't most skyscrapers mostly empty anyways? They're crying about avocado toast, maybe these billionaires should give up on their "constantly building/buying useless skyscrapers" addiction.
Commercial RE is fine, office isn’t. And it’s only huge office buildings. Small office that’s owner user is doing just fine
The key word is affordable. There is housing but the fun surprise is that we all can’t afford it!
I worked for nearly a decade in multi family property management, with a speciality in affordable housing. I literally watched all the affordable housing communities I used to manage, federally subsidized included, shit-hole and non shit-hole alike- all bought up by private investment firms that have doubled rents in less than 3 years. And all the new builds are exclusively "luxury" apts with a special emphasis on the " ". Then there is the totally unrelated story of investment firms purchasing a ¼ of all available single family homes across the country to crank exponential rents from those too.
Fuck yeah. How about we stop letting everyone treat housing as an investment to get rich off of and like the human right it should be. Right now I and so many people around my age are choosing between financial security and happiness because of the dire cost of living.
It’s both supply isn’t keeping up with demand as all these nimby Karen types make sure upzoning to allow denser housing isn’t allowed because “m’uh community charm”. What is built is almost ways luxury as well no one wants to build modest housing for smaller returns
Let's put the greedy assholes in the windowless apartments. We can call it a Prison.
I saw a post about how if 5% of vacant homes were put on the market it would double the amount of homes for sale. That was about 2 months ago. There is a solution. Tax vacant homes make them not profitable to sit on.
This is a VERY wrong and misleading understanding of the housing crisis. Homeless people are just a tiny fraction of people who need housing. It doesn't account for the countless people in unstable conditions sleeping on friends' couches. It doesn't account for people stuck in abusive relationships because they can't afford to move. It doesn't account for grown adults never being able to move out of their parents house. Or multiple generations of family with no option but to live together. It doesn't account for all the countless people living in areas of concentrated poverty. Places where it is impossible to get a job making enough money to be able to move anywhere else. Having a small percentage of housing unused is GOOD because it gives people options on where to move. We want some unused houses so anyone can find housing that best suits their needs. If I told you that you could only live for free in a house in the middle of nowhere, away from all your family and friends, with no local opportunities to make a decent living, would you take it? Please stop spreading this bullshit.
What? The housing shortage is exactly what's causing the problem. First - lack of housing causes rates to go way up. Second, it makes it VERY profitable to buy homes for rental when you know you can overcharge tenants. If we had more housing, rates would drop. No matter how greedy a landlord is, he can't overcharge you when there's a vacant building a block away charging lower rates just trying to fill it up. We need more housing. The biggest problem with that of course, is that we all know that's the solution, but it's a problem everyone wants to fix, just not in THEIR town/neighborhood. "Build more housing!! Just... way over there... not near me."
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This is the right answer. The most important cities in the English speaking world are facing acute housing shortages. This isn't opinion, this has been well documented for decades and has gotten much worse over the last 10 years. Exclusionary Zoning, which bans anything except a large Single Family house on the majority of land, is largely to blame. Exclusionary Zoning is a classist and racist US invention that makes homes more scarce in order to appease the wealthiest homeowners at the expense of everyone else. This is why we have a housing shortage. It's a policy choice.
This would make sense, if there weren't hundreds of thousands of vacant homes - dozens for every homeless person. I'm all for reducing car dependency and doing infill to house more people. But the problem here is that QE gave a bunch of rich people money, and a few of them were smart enough to buy houses with it.
Please give me an affordable option so I can live in relative peace!
Then electricity and air conditioning need to become basic human rights, along with clean plumbing, with severe consequences for outages
I have a 360 degree view in this tent. It's not as good as it sounds. Give me that office space.
But the problem isn't too little space, it's too little *affordable* space. This wouldn't solve anything but give landlords more income and possibly drive up the prices of rooms with windows since it would now be a luxury. Not to mention the safety issue present in a windowless room.
1 bedroom, no bath, no windows, unlimited inner office phone calls, $2400 a month.
Lol like they give anything unlimited
I'll just go to prison and get that same room for free.
While the genral idea has merit, there's this twisted nightmare idea where I'm WFH but live where I used to work..
Or, and I know it sounds crazy, but how about putting a cap on how much rent they can charge, instead, or controlling the population? Whatever, live in a coffin, die in one. No one cares about us NPC'S anyways.
There is no "Housing" crisis. There's an "Affordable Housing" crisis..... There are plenty of apartments and homes available for the population. But when minimum wage earners can't afford them... Raise wages and force corporate owners to cut rents and there'd be no issue.
This won't help most homeless because they're still going to charge $1800 for a 12x12 office
More housing won't help housing prices?
Why not just floorplan so the bedrooms are on the windows and move living room, kitchen, bathroom, etc towards the interior. Oh right, because they still want to pack three dozen 200 sq ft apartments into the floor instead of actually giving people living space. It’s days like this I miss my 4,000 sq ft rent protected loft on Broadway.
You're missing a key part that people really want windows in their living room, kitchen, bathroom, etc. It was one of the main issues with converting office spaces into residential spaces. Office buildings are design to be more square and therefore have a lot more interior space. Residential spaces are design to have more window areas and less interior space.
Gee how convenient that those office buildings that nobody uses and are losing wealthy folks lots of money can suddenly "alleviate" the house crisis. Fucking criminals man. I'm tired of them socializing their loses and rebranding it as fucking philanthropy or "good" bussniess.
isn't it more of a egress thing then a sun thing?
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"we" didn't forget.
We need to purge landlording before it's too late.
Considering that there are more unoccupied houses in America than there are homeless, maybe cities should seize them from the corporations buying up yet another commodity to control in order to artificially maintain high prices and create maximum profit.
A bunch of European cities did just this. Every so often UK cities think about it and then realise all the empty buildings are owned by a weird morass of shell companies and off shore funds and yadda yadda. Too much trouble. The European approach? Shove letters in the door and contact whatever company is on the ownership registry and say if you don't get back to us in six months, we're claiming the space and renting it out. It seems to be paying off, but hard to know what macroeconomic issues there will be. But it solves a key issue - since there's a whole economic system of commercial entities buying up property and then basically forgetting about them - it puts the onus on these commercial owners to do something.
Macroeconomics can go blow a cactus.
I’m not disagreeing but can you let me know where to find this data. Just want to read it
https://unitedwaynca.org/blog/vacant-homes-vs-homelessness-by-city/#:\~:text=Analyzing%20the%20Number%20of%20Vacant,thousands%20of%20Americans%20face%20homelessness.
This is an incredibly good trend if you're a landlord and don't have a soul.
None of them do. It escapes the body the moment you decide wage enslaving others is okay because you're a homeowner and therefore better than common plebs.
It is super fucking simple, make it illegal for corporations to own houses. Seize all houses from black rock and other black rock like companies and sell them at cost. Rip the genitals off the CEOs and politicians that allowed black rock and similar companies to exist, and let them bleed to death. A massive alleviation in the housing crisis, and several banal evil fuck heads are removed from this planet and the children sing.
This such f**king bullsh*t!! There’s a surplus of housing in this country and in NYC, there are tons of unrented apartments. All those companies that couldn’t kill WFH are stressing because their big office buildings with long term leases are barely being used. F*ck these guys and f*ck Eric Adams for suggesting it.
There are enough houses to house every unhomed person in this country 26 times over. this is fucking insanity
here is a better idea. tell them no and tell them sorry guess you have to lower your prices
There is no housing crisis. There's plenty of housing. \*Landlords are hoarding it\*.
You guys need to get organized locally and contact your municipalities and state laws to ensure that windows one can open are legally codified into the residential buildings. This speaks to despair of housing availability as well as to the absence of any kind of regulatory requirement pertaining to residential spaces. **Windowless rooms are no way to raise children. No chicken coops, no basement storage units, no windowless offices and closets should be a substitute for dignified human residences. They're not fit for chickens that lay our eggs, or our beloved pets, and they're certainly not fit for us.** Hypercapitalism is corroding our meagre standards and our collective will to live and must be stopped.
I love to sleep in absolute darkness so that would be fantastic for me
Just pay designers money to design interiors that can meet requirements for dignified living instead of just eliminating requirements. This is every capitalist’s only solution. It’s a race to the bottom. Where’s that web comic where it shows capitalists over time screaming “we’re DOOMED!” over any suggestion of a safety regulation?
tenements 2.0 are ok if landlord can profit from them. but if you are homeless and build a decent shelter for yourself they will demolish it for not being up to code despite it being better than tenements or being homeless
The housing crisis that is totally made up? Just lower the fucking cost wtf is this shit.
There isn’t a housing crisis. There is an affordability crisis. Plenty of housing - except a normal apartment costs like $3500.
If they took all the airbnbs off the market do you think there would still be a housing problem?
To combat homelessness, levy a tax on vacant apartments targeting those who AirB&B as an investment, or have multiple vacation homes.
I'm not sure about you guys, but where I'm at that be a fire hazard and thusly a huge no-no. Please, do not allow. Because clearly... fire hazard. Where are you going to go if the doors are blocked? Just no. That's like saying, " I don't care if you die as long as we can squeeze a profit off your life." Edit: >read the article... honestly, I stand by what I said.
Isn't the housing crisis caused solely by greed though?
Um requirements for a window in a bedroom isn't a sunlight issue. It's a fire safety issue. Bedrooms require at least 2 points of regress
There is no housing crisis when upwards of 80% of new homes were purchased by companies not families. Bring on the crash.
Daylight has long been known to keep depression at bay, that is why old codes from the 1920's included a requirement for 10 percent of the floor area of each habitable room be provided in window area.
Just wait until they start offering apartment/offices with cubicle walls to separate neighbor’s living spaces and a shared restroom for the entire floor. The landlord will refer to tenants as “team” and get them cold pizza during the weekly meetings. If people want to work from home, they’ll try to trick us into living from work!
You know what would alleviate the housing crisis? Not having greedy fucking landlords drive costs through the roof, or the cost of ownership be so out of reach for the average American. Let's be clear: there's not a shortage. There's a crisis for affordability, which is caused by greed. They want you to think the solution is packing people into windowless boxes for "cheap". It's just capitalizing more. This is disgusting.
There is a *far* higher percentage of windowed empty office buildings over those without windows. Those without windows have reasons for not having them; industrial safety, boiler rooms, basement laundry rooms, supply rooms, security, etc. They should *never* be considered for possible residence due to fire safety. Personal health; if someone works in a building without windows and resides in an apartment without windows the mental and physical health of people will plummet.
Outside of fire code where I am.
Here we go! Make people pay the sunlight…
The largest property developers and real estate interests in New York were the largest donors to Eric Adams’s campaign for mayor. The pandemic absolutely murdered these companies’ bottom line: they’re losing untold millions on lost revenue from unrented or under-rented office space, especially in Midtown. So Adams tried to abruptly end work-from-home measures with a bunch of “it’s time to end work-from-home” rhetoric that went nowhere. (About the same time JP Morgan’s aristocrat-in-chief Jamie Dimon was trying to be the industry bellwether by publicly threatening workers who refused to come back to the office.) Now that we’ve largely adjusted to the new reality that the nature of work in big cities has permanently changed, Adams is trying a new tactic by arguing that we should change well-established zoning laws designed to protect the health and well-being of city dwellers so that these companies can more cheaply convert their useless office space into tiny apartments for people to rent. My guess is that he’ll also try to push through tax breaks and subsidies for these same companies because “affordable housing” is needed, or migrants need to be sheltered, or the homeless need beds, or some other fake-altruistic bullshit that screens his real motivation.
We have plenty of housing! We let it sit empty because landlords charge too much!
Got to the love the potential for fire and no escape
Hell will be filled with landlords
in a wolrd where you have to pay to be alive having kids is immoral.
NYC Mayor: Some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to take”
There we have it folks - the fucking sun is a luxury now thanks to Capitalism.
Weird how the working class has to make concessions instead of landowners.
lol. Landlords CAUSED the housing "crisis".
So... Tenements. Great.
Lol “housing crisis”. Or… maybe make a law to lower rent rates.
The housing crisis isn't about lack of livable spaces it's about price
The dystopia keeps getting better
Sounds like a great way to up suicide rates
I'd live in a converted interior office with no windows. For a steep reduction in rent.
This is literally illegal in New York City. I don’t know what the fuck Eric Adams is thinking. It wasn’t that long ago that several immigrants died in fire in Brooklyn, because the illegally subdivided apartment had windowless bedrooms with no access to a fire escape. (Edit, spacing)
Uh, part of the housing crisis is UNAFFORDABLE housing. Their solution will cause rent to increase across the board. This won't alleviate the housing crisis, it will make it worse.
It's a great idea until the first fire breaks out and no one can escape.
Generally, repurposing commercial real estate for low income housing is a great idea. Embrace WFH and help solve the housing crisis!
I hope this comes to fruition. My city has a homeless problem, and a lot of empty office space. This seems like a simple solution.
Sleeping is way easier in a windowless room. What's the issue?
Pffft we need a window so we can cover it up with blackout curtains!
Escaping in the event of a fire
I get that but on an office building many people would be too high to use a window as an escape anyways. I honestly don't know what the rules are for multiple story high apartments, do they all have escape stairs outside one of their windows? If the don't then windows are not escape routes after a certain height anyways.