There are plenty of office buildings in cities that are empty. There’s literally a space in New York called billionaire’s row where billionaires buy and sell condos to each other while never actually living there whatsoever. They don’t even rent it out to anyone. These condos exist solely for speculation and circular trading and money laundering.
Maybe it’s not enough for every single homeless person or to support upward mobility for all, but it’s definitely not just some random crack house in the boonies.
And those conversions are not easy. These buildings don’t have plumbing or HVAC for residential use, and they have huge internal spaces that leads to units with no windows which we don’t normally allow for good reason
There are plenty of office buildings in cities that are empty. There’s literally a space in New York called billionaire’s row where billionaires buy and sell condos to each other while never actually living there whatsoever. They don’t even rent it out to anyone. These condos exist solely for speculation and circular trading and money laundering.
Maybe it’s not enough for every single homeless person or to support upward mobility for all, but it’s definitely not just some random crack house in the boonies.
Office spaces are not suitable for housing as-is, they have to be converted. So again, capitalism had failed to build housing where it is needed.
And regarding housing as speculative assets, another user pointed out there's not enough of those to actually solve homelessness
And those conversions are not easy. These buildings don’t have plumbing or HVAC for residential use, and they have huge internal spaces that leads to units with no windows which we don’t normally allow for good reason