Funny you said that. It’s totally possible, at significant expense, to convert an office building to a residential tower that meets all current codes. Might get a few more buildings converted if you loosened regs and offered subsidies/financing. But at the end of the day, 3% of office buildings have been converted because office prices are starkly higher than home prices per square foot, and most landlords prefer to make more money (or hold out for more money while refinancing their mortgages). There’s more of a trend of buildings adapting to different commercial uses rather than making offices into homes.

There was a Times article about it. Today. https://t.co/RPxiSmYE2p (paywall waived)

City and state governments would get way more bang for the buck simply building new housing on available lots. There are literally empty lots all around NYC. But they’re privately owned, not for sale, not being developed (yet), and the state is terrified to use their eminent domain powers. I guess they prefer having a shelter system with tens of thousands of beds instead.

Agreed. How long are we going to let all this vacant commercial space sit unused, before we take action and convert these to residential.