I think the repurposing of commercial city heart buildings to residential is a good, laudible goal but I've read elsewhere it has a 20% success rate, viewed by industry insiders: It's really harder than it looks.
I don't want to white-ant anything a government does to try and fix the housing crisis and out of control rent/price upward spirals. Even at 20% I think this is worth doing.
I live in a different economy, and we're stuck in housing hell with a federal government $10b investment fund aimed at delivery of an annual $500m floor of revenue to help build public housing. It won't fix the problem because demand outpaces supply by so many orders of magnitude, this level of investment can't keep pace. It's also stuck in senate with no majority to the labor government.
The problem really vests down the food chain with State governments and Councils but they're fixated on longterm supply side, and "don't rock the boat" policies rather than the kind of structural reform we need (rent controls, long tenancies, and changes to the tax basis of investor property: really, this domain should be in superannuation funds and public housing not individual private investors)
Changing use of corporate/office space has been done here but mainly targetting the super rich downsizers who want to live in the inner city. Doing it for low cost housing would be good, because otherwise we're doing donut city stuff: workers have to commute in from the edge, priced out of the heart.
I hope it works out, but there is good reason for skepticism.
A residence is a very different use case from a commercial space. Are there schools? Transportation? Sanitation? Hospitals?
These aren't insoluble, but they're a small part of the reason a house is more than just four walls. There are many stakeholders and they need to work together.
(not discounting your socialized concerns. They're real. The view from industry is that quite apart from those critical, key questions, the actual fabric of the building and its design as an office means it can be counter-productive to try and convert it, costwise compared to tear down and remake)
I don't want to white-ant anything a government does to try and fix the housing crisis and out of control rent/price upward spirals. Even at 20% I think this is worth doing.
I live in a different economy, and we're stuck in housing hell with a federal government $10b investment fund aimed at delivery of an annual $500m floor of revenue to help build public housing. It won't fix the problem because demand outpaces supply by so many orders of magnitude, this level of investment can't keep pace. It's also stuck in senate with no majority to the labor government.
The problem really vests down the food chain with State governments and Councils but they're fixated on longterm supply side, and "don't rock the boat" policies rather than the kind of structural reform we need (rent controls, long tenancies, and changes to the tax basis of investor property: really, this domain should be in superannuation funds and public housing not individual private investors)
Changing use of corporate/office space has been done here but mainly targetting the super rich downsizers who want to live in the inner city. Doing it for low cost housing would be good, because otherwise we're doing donut city stuff: workers have to commute in from the edge, priced out of the heart.