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AluminumKnuckles t1_j618bye wrote

Reply to comment by KaiDaiz in Mayor Adams unveils proposal to convert Midtown offices into apartments by psychothumbs

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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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zaptrem t1_j62isft wrote

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

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Evening_Presence_927 t1_j64ej3h wrote

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

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koreamax t1_j69ik2x wrote

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

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Evening_Presence_927 t1_j69j7ij wrote

How many people is that?

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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.

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Evening_Presence_927 t1_j69ls12 wrote

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

Have fun with your anecdotal evidence.

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koreamax t1_j69tz08 wrote

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

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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

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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?

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Evening_Presence_927 t1_j6a5fmm wrote

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

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koreamax t1_j6a5oa0 wrote

Get outside of my bubble? Projecting much?

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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