Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

KaiDaiz t1_j613ycd wrote

Big if its financially feasible to convert to housing vs tear down/rebuild and even bigger if its going to be affordable housing. You taking some of the most expensive dollar per sf commercial commercial space and you expect owners to convert it into affordable housing? lol

94

AluminumKnuckles t1_j618bye wrote

The spaces will be easier to fill than offices. Better to have some income than none. I agree it would be a stretch to make it affordable housing, but maybe that'd work better in the mid to low rise office buildings.

52

KaiDaiz t1_j619hww wrote

I say if we want to build mass affordable housing...we are looking at the wrong place to build it. Rather spend the zillions of subsidies and forgo taxes from abatements. Use that fund and energy to build many more affordable housing units in the cheaper 1hr+ zones from midtown.

There you get affordable housing. Look at the housing crisis post ww1 and ww2. We didn't build a ton of housing just in Manhattan. we expanded and built massively in the outer boroughs. That's what ease the housing crisis. Its no coincidence most housing in bk were built in the 1920-40s and most in queens in the 50s and up

−10

Dragon_Fisting t1_j61n4qf wrote

The pain point this solves is that the offices are empty. People just will not ever go back to work in the same numbers as they did pre-pandemic no matter how hard the JP Morgan CEO whines. We need to do something with that unoccupied space, and what better than to make Midtown a neighborhood instead of a sterile cubicle farm again.

36

Evening_Presence_927 t1_j62ga22 wrote

Won’t we just run into the same problems that happens to current luxury housing stock? Foreign millionaires and billionaires are going to buy one or two of them and never use them for investment purposes, meaning it won’t actually go to the middle and working class people who actually need affordable spaces.

−1

zaptrem t1_j62isft wrote

If you actually flood the market that demand will quickly be met.

10

Evening_Presence_927 t1_j64ej3h wrote

The market isn’t flooding with affordable units, though, so the demand isn’t being met anyway.

1

koreamax t1_j69ik2x wrote

Everyone I know that's applied for affordable housing has gotten it

1

Evening_Presence_927 t1_j69j7ij wrote

How many people is that?

1

koreamax t1_j69l4cl wrote

My wife and I, two other couples, one couple who each got it in the same building so they have their own apartments (its kinda weird) and a single co worker. Obviously its a small number, but part of the issue with affordable housing is you have to apply....it isnt just handed out.

1

Evening_Presence_927 t1_j69ls12 wrote

That’s not the issue at all, but okay.

Have fun with your anecdotal evidence.

1

koreamax t1_j69tz08 wrote

So what's the issue? My antidotal evidence is better than your lack of evidence

0

Evening_Presence_927 t1_j69v52p wrote

Lack of evidence? My evidence is the average rent in the city. Do you really expect someone to afford a $3000 apartment on minimum wage? Lmao

1

koreamax t1_j6a4b4h wrote

Average rent is such a misleading number. Not everyone is entitled to live in Midtown. I don't, I live in an outer borough because I can afford it. Does your average account for standard deviation?

1

Evening_Presence_927 t1_j6a5fmm wrote

Yes? It’s not just midtown. It’s everywhere, bro. Get out of your bubble.

1

koreamax t1_j6a5oa0 wrote

Get outside of my bubble? Projecting much?

I don't live in Midtown. What are you even talking about?

1

Evening_Presence_927 t1_j6a7n6o wrote

Neither do I. I’m probably in the part of Manhattan that’s the closest to livable for a DINK household anyway.

1

Dragon_Fisting t1_j659dh8 wrote

These units just intrinsically won't be worth as much.

Yes, developers tend to only build luxury housing, because they are greedy and want to maximize profit. But part of the reason they do that is because building anything is very expensive, so if they're going to build they might as well go all in and build expensive condos.

These would be different because the building is already there. The builder will avoid a lot of the costs, and on the flip side the units will be constrained by the existing building, which was built as cheaply as they could get away with because nobody cares how nice a cubicle farm is. It would make economic sense to build more sanely priced apartments and make a quick buck instead of tearing down the building to build more luxury. It's actually better for their short term profit for once.

0

Evening_Presence_927 t1_j65et82 wrote

> It would make economic sense to build more sanely priced apartments and make a quick buck instead of tearing down the building to build more luxury. It's actually better for their short term profit for once.

Based on what exactly? If anything, the flip will incentivize them more to make those apartments luxury, because the people in the area are rich anyway and they’ll probably already put a lot of money into plumbing the building and making sure it has apartment code safety measures.

1

psychothumbs OP t1_j61s5n4 wrote

It's not going to be converted to affordable housing, just regular expensive market rate housing. The hope is that building more market rate housing will alleviate the housing shortage and put downward pressure on rents.

50

joyousRock t1_j625jac wrote

Yep, Can’t have more affordable housing without more housing

32

damnatio_memoriae t1_j62mu7i wrote

that's always the hope but have we ever seen that actually happen? i haven't seen it in my lifetime. these days giant real estate corporations control the supply. they can keep it low and prices high simply by sitting on units and not putting them on the market, and then use those vacancies to claim losses. it's a win-win for them to keep rents high even while building more units.

6

Fortisimo07 t1_j63gpri wrote

It very obviously happened during covid (although instead of cranking up supply, demand dropped). Landlords weren't able to "control the supply" in that case and prices dropped significantly

11

damnatio_memoriae t1_j64mrs7 wrote

sure but that's different. that happened because people left the city en masse, not because they built too many units -- and it didn't last. it happened post-9/11 too. demand for housing here is driven by the desirability of the city itself more than anything. when the city is desirable, which is like 98% of the time, then they can charge whatever they want and keep units vacant or off the market. when the city isn't desirable, they offer a couple months free and then rent goes right back up.

1

Fortisimo07 t1_j64puh7 wrote

Yeah but if they could truly control the supply like you're claiming, changes in demand wouldn't matter because as the demand went down they could just artificially limit the supply. They cannot do that (at least not to the extent that your claiming)

2

TheAJx t1_j645gr0 wrote

LMAO. It's not giant real estate corporations controlling the supply. Its local homeowners. There was one neighborhood activist group that fought to preserve a parking lot.

>they can keep it low and prices high simply by sitting on units and not putting them on the market, and then use those vacancies to claim losses. it's a win-win for them to keep rents high even while building more units.

This is also bullshit. Look up vacancy rates in New York.

Also, why do people think that landlords are playing this convoluted long con of keeping units off the market for long periods of time, earning zero rental income, in the hopes of earning more rental income sometime int he distant future? How does that work?

7

psychothumbs OP t1_j64enr1 wrote

The problem is it's not like there's just one landlord or just one developer. They are competing against each other in a market. The way they have controlled supply for many decades now is with legal restrictions on new supply.

2

09-24-11 t1_j63i41y wrote

If the city is able to convert these offices (and there are a lot of them) into expensive market rate apartments that is a step in the right direction. THEN the city and people can have the option to BUILD new affordable housing. So now there is housing stock for high, medium and low earners.

Will that happen? I fully doubt it. Every conversion and new project will be marketed to luxury renters and the “affordable” housing will be smaller/independent landlords.

1

Evening_Presence_927 t1_j62ghjc wrote

Isn’t the issue the same as the current market rate housing stock? Foreign millionaires and billionaires buying up one or two units for investments and never using them? How exactly is that going to create downward pressure on rents?

−1

m1a2c2kali t1_j62jnza wrote

Well the foreign billionaires would be buying this unit instead of another unit?

15

psychothumbs OP t1_j63bygo wrote

Unused units like that are a pretty small proportion of the housing stock, and it's not like billionaires will buy more apartments in the city based on more being built.

11

Onion-Fart t1_j62oeq4 wrote

It would be nice if there was a law saying that you need to occupy a property for a certain amount of time per year to own it and not rent it

1

Head_Acanthisitta256 t1_j61y84e wrote

That hope is absolutely that, hope. If anything it’s a pipe dream with the moronic supply side housing theory.

−14

psychothumbs OP t1_j622cxr wrote

The theory that increasing supply lowers prices?

15

Head_Acanthisitta256 t1_j6237f8 wrote

The theory that increasing HOUSING supply will lower market rate prices for a neighborhood. The market will artificially inflate market rate pricing to make a profit(by not even creating affordable housing). L.I.C. and Downtown Brooklyn for example.

The only way to create affordable housing is to ACTUALLY build affordable housing. Not exclusively build luxury or market rate units that only raises market rates in a neighborhood.

−12

psychothumbs OP t1_j63c4sa wrote

Housing is not some magic exception to how supply and demand works. The way they are artificially inflating the market rate is by limiting supply, and that's what we need to change.

8

Head_Acanthisitta256 t1_j63cdil wrote

Limiting AFFORDABLE housing!!!!

−6

psychothumbs OP t1_j63cksp wrote

Well supply of subsidized 'affordable' housing but also the supply of market rate housing, which results in the market rate not being affordable for many.

4

cucster t1_j63ev2u wrote

People should understand that any housing is better than no housing at all, even if all the offices become "luxury" housing, their existence will put downward pressure on all rents since People who xan afford may move there.

12

smackheadmuppet t1_j61tgrv wrote

Good luck renting that commercial space if it's not in Hudson Yards or right next to Grand Central. Manhattan Commercial is f*****d and everybody knows it.

6

CultofCedar t1_j62a198 wrote

My father was a city worker and worked near wall street before 9-11. After they built tower 4 the city had some kinda deal to lease a bunch of space to help fund it so his group (city auditors) were some of the first to move into it.

The old office building is now 180 Water iirc and cost like 5k a month lol.

3

snoberto77 t1_j61kd8b wrote

Affordable lmfao have u ever seen a price in NYC??

1