The Guardian, February 10, 2023, Is living in an empty office the answer to the housing crisis?
The 2022 State of the Nation’s Housing report from Harvard University revealed that the US housing supply is at a deficit of 3.8m homes. Meanwhile, in a city like San Francisco, where the availability of affordable housing has reached an acute crisis, the downtown business district has all but hollowed out. Now that remote work has become the norm, with knowledge workers logging in from everywhere and anywhere, only 73% of the city’s office space is in use, according to one study by the real estate firm CBRE.
To many, the fix is obvious: turn the unused office space into apartments. This rejiggering – applicable in numerous metropolises across the nation – would create housing for those in need, while giving downtowns a much-needed jolt of new life.
