Now we don't need offices. So convert them to apartments to lower housing costs in the short term, and telework means people won't move to cities as much in the long term.

This is actually a good idea...

But the White House initiative will make more than $35 billion available from existing federal programs in the form of grants and low-interest loans to encourage developers to convert offices into residential.

Developers will do this anyway if the offices are empty, why not use that money for a government program to guarantee down payments of first time home buyers?

The developers are doing fine, it's the average American that's struggling, stop funneling money to the people who already have a shit ton of it, trickle down doesn't fucking work

[–] 353247532631@lemmy.world 107 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Agreed. This is a good idea overall, but the implementation smells like a bailout of commercial real estate developers to me.

[–] bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Ding dong ding!

But also to a point, it will take a significant amount of work to convert office space to residential. Just utilities alone will be an adventure, and you'd better hope the building was set up with decent truck lines down the core of the structure to begin with. It's not like "hey let's throw up some walls, boom, apartments." You need adequate power distribution, and water/sewer connections to each apartment to fulfill each unit having it's own kitchen and bathroom. Commercial spaces are generally build to accommodate different usage.

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