8 ms·

Commercial buildings can't be easily converted into housing - notably, plumbing is not designed for smaller units and can't be retrofitted.

ZunarJ5 5mo ago
Sounds like a job for people who don't have one, and a roof for people without.
MyHonestOpinon 5mo ago
Yeah, that is big one. Perhaps we need to rethink housing. Shared restrooms, bathrooms, and kitchens. Keep the same restrooms on every floor. A gym with individual showers and a food court on specific floors.
- AlotOfReading 5mo ago
  What will distinguish these structures from slums in 10 or 20 years?
  - ipaddr 5mo ago
    Marketing
  - red-iron-pine 5mo ago
    unless you're an owner and control the means of production anywhere you live will be a slum in ~20 years
  - blitzar 5mo ago
    They have a roof that isnt a motorway.
    - AlotOfReading 5mo ago
      The context I'm referencing here is victorian flophouses and HK bedspace apartments, not American homeless encampments.
  - supertrope 5mo ago
    Colleges call these dorms.
  - toomuchtodo 5mo ago
    Why is public housing in Vienna not slums? https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=vienna%20housing&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
    - kube-system 5mo ago
      Because they are designed to be residential housing?
  - JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
    > What will distinguish these structures from slums in 10 or 20 years? The neighbourhood. When I moved to New York in my twenties, I had roommates. Everyone had roommates. That meant sharing a bathroom and kitchen. Not only did this breed camaraderie and teach me to not be a dick, it also freed up cash so I could enjoy the city and save.
- evklein 5mo ago
  Except this goes against American individualism on every front. Americans really only fit one sort of mold in terms of what they want: single family home, owned outright (usually mortgaged though). You can extrapolate that out to cities as well: young urban professionals pine for polished condos or lofts with nice views and located in trendy neighborhoods, but their "unit" is still theirs totally, with no shared primary amenities (by that I mean kitchens and bathrooms, not features like pools or gyms). It just so happens that America is luckily predisposed to this kind of living, with an abundance of space to accommodate lots of people in their own non-shared living spaces. The problem with that though is that you limit the opportunities for business, because space is cheap, so you have to implement regulations and zoning to create opportunities for moneymaking and before you know it you can't actually build housing anymore, despite the abundance of space sitting right there.
  - adjejmxbdjdn 5mo ago
    This is historically incomplete. American cities were replete with dorm room style housing. These were especially popular with new migrants to the city. An incredibly large percentage of apartments in cities like NYC are used as multi family housing with several housemates sharing them to save on rent. The reality is that the reason such housing doesn’t exist/isn’t more widespread is because cities have passed laws eliminating them. Before the white flight to the suburbs, the attempt was to keep the poor out of cities where the rich lived by eliminating housing of this sort since the poor couldn’t afford single family housing. This led to a proliferation of laws that required bathrooms and kitchens in every unit, etc.
    - mono442 5mo ago
      Isn't it also the fact the almost no one wants to live like that? The expectations has changed and there's probably little demand for such type of housing.
      - triceratops 5mo ago
        People rent bedrooms in single-family homes all the time. The only difference between that and dorm-style housing is the size of the building.
- Sam713 5mo ago
  Genuine question, who would actually want to share an intimate space like a kitchen or bathroom with dozens of other strangers on a daily basis? This is obviously a common setup in college dorms or prison, but that is specifically because it’s a temporary (and extreme) cost saving measure, or because you’ve lost the right to participate in society (i.e. prison, which is viewed by some societies to be cruel and inhumane). I lived with housemates for many years to save money and afford housing, but I could at least choose the few housemates with whom I shared those spaces.
  - MyHonestOpinon 5mo ago
    I honestly do not know hoping that someone smarter than me figures it out. I suppose it will depend on the execution. If it is comfortable, looks nice, if it creates community, amenities, price, location, etc.
mothballed 5mo ago
Having lived in some midwestern cities with a bunch of extra "not easily converted" warehouses, I've seen lots of "illegal" art collective operations where they just put all the extra plumbing on the ground floor where it is easily retrofitted (you can even raise the floor with a false bottom for plumbing if no other option) and then everyone shares a big kitchen, then the upper floors where retro fitting is more difficult are for habitation. Maybe the HVAC unit is undersized or something, or some other safety factors are substandard due to these people not having the money to improve it further, who gives a shit it is better and safer than living on the streets. Obviously since it's illegal these aren't advertised but they're quite prevalent, and issues are rare enough that now decade past muh Ghost Ship Warehouse is the constant drum being beat by the brain dead building code worshippers who actually bought the line of bullshit that having people homeless and freezing and shitting in the streets was actually a 'written in blood' advantage.
gopher_space 5mo ago
Commercial buildings can't be easily converted into housing that provides the same return. Once the current owners have gone out of business it'll be profitable to turn them into flats. The arguments against conversion assume you care about the current owner's financial situation.
- LinuxAmbulance 5mo ago
  It's not so much the owner's financial situation, but rather that it'd be cheaper to build new homes than to retrofit a ten floor+ building's plumbing. You'd also have to install a bunch of showers, which could be a significant problem on its own. And then there's the increased amount of sewage, which the building might not be able to handle - even the local sewers might not be equipped to handle the uh... Load a large commercial building would generate with 24/7 occupancy vs 8/5 occupancy. The reason you don't see folks converting commercial spaces into residential isn't because it's not wildly profitable, but because building new purpose-built residential buildings would be cheaper than a conversion for anything other than one or two floors.
  - ReflectedImage 5mo ago
    Oh no, I live in a flat in a converted commercial building. They have been going wild in the UK converting office space to residential.
  - gopher_space 5mo ago
    > The reason you don't see folks converting commercial spaces into residential I do see this. That's my point. Your plumbing problem has been solved by not jamming a ton of people into the building.
  - joquarky 5mo ago
    > the increased amount of sewage How is there more than an office full of people?
    - quickthrowman 5mo ago
_DeadFred_ 5mo ago
Weren't the feds buying these to convert into very dense ICE detention housing? So they can support high density human habitation according to the Feds, but not normal housing according to who?
JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
> Commercial buildings can't be easily converted into housing - notably, plumbing is not designed for smaller units and can't be retrofitted I still haven't seen numbers that show this is a physics problem versus zoning problem. Worst case, make some things (e.g. washers and dryers, maybe even showers) communal.

ZunarJ5 5mo ago

Sounds like a job for people who don't have one, and a roof for people without.

MyHonestOpinon 5mo ago

Yeah, that is big one. Perhaps we need to rethink housing. Shared restrooms, bathrooms, and kitchens. Keep the same restrooms on every floor. A gym with individual showers and a food court on specific floors.

AlotOfReading 5mo ago
What will distinguish these structures from slums in 10 or 20 years?
- ipaddr 5mo ago
  Marketing
- red-iron-pine 5mo ago
  unless you're an owner and control the means of production anywhere you live will be a slum in ~20 years
- blitzar 5mo ago
  They have a roof that isnt a motorway.
  - AlotOfReading 5mo ago
    The context I'm referencing here is victorian flophouses and HK bedspace apartments, not American homeless encampments.
- supertrope 5mo ago
  Colleges call these dorms.
- toomuchtodo 5mo ago
  Why is public housing in Vienna not slums? https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=vienna%20housing&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
  - kube-system 5mo ago
    Because they are designed to be residential housing?
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  > What will distinguish these structures from slums in 10 or 20 years? The neighbourhood. When I moved to New York in my twenties, I had roommates. Everyone had roommates. That meant sharing a bathroom and kitchen. Not only did this breed camaraderie and teach me to not be a dick, it also freed up cash so I could enjoy the city and save.
evklein 5mo ago
Except this goes against American individualism on every front. Americans really only fit one sort of mold in terms of what they want: single family home, owned outright (usually mortgaged though). You can extrapolate that out to cities as well: young urban professionals pine for polished condos or lofts with nice views and located in trendy neighborhoods, but their "unit" is still theirs totally, with no shared primary amenities (by that I mean kitchens and bathrooms, not features like pools or gyms). It just so happens that America is luckily predisposed to this kind of living, with an abundance of space to accommodate lots of people in their own non-shared living spaces. The problem with that though is that you limit the opportunities for business, because space is cheap, so you have to implement regulations and zoning to create opportunities for moneymaking and before you know it you can't actually build housing anymore, despite the abundance of space sitting right there.
- adjejmxbdjdn 5mo ago
  This is historically incomplete. American cities were replete with dorm room style housing. These were especially popular with new migrants to the city. An incredibly large percentage of apartments in cities like NYC are used as multi family housing with several housemates sharing them to save on rent. The reality is that the reason such housing doesn’t exist/isn’t more widespread is because cities have passed laws eliminating them. Before the white flight to the suburbs, the attempt was to keep the poor out of cities where the rich lived by eliminating housing of this sort since the poor couldn’t afford single family housing. This led to a proliferation of laws that required bathrooms and kitchens in every unit, etc.
  - mono442 5mo ago
    Isn't it also the fact the almost no one wants to live like that? The expectations has changed and there's probably little demand for such type of housing.
    - triceratops 5mo ago
      People rent bedrooms in single-family homes all the time. The only difference between that and dorm-style housing is the size of the building.
Sam713 5mo ago
Genuine question, who would actually want to share an intimate space like a kitchen or bathroom with dozens of other strangers on a daily basis? This is obviously a common setup in college dorms or prison, but that is specifically because it’s a temporary (and extreme) cost saving measure, or because you’ve lost the right to participate in society (i.e. prison, which is viewed by some societies to be cruel and inhumane). I lived with housemates for many years to save money and afford housing, but I could at least choose the few housemates with whom I shared those spaces.
- MyHonestOpinon 5mo ago
  I honestly do not know hoping that someone smarter than me figures it out. I suppose it will depend on the execution. If it is comfortable, looks nice, if it creates community, amenities, price, location, etc.

mothballed 5mo ago

Having lived in some midwestern cities with a bunch of extra "not easily converted" warehouses, I've seen lots of "illegal" art collective operations where they just put all the extra plumbing on the ground floor where it is easily retrofitted (you can even raise the floor with a false bottom for plumbing if no other option) and then everyone shares a big kitchen, then the upper floors where retro fitting is more difficult are for habitation. Maybe the HVAC unit is undersized or something, or some other safety factors are substandard due to these people not having the money to improve it further, who gives a shit it is better and safer than living on the streets. Obviously since it's illegal these aren't advertised but they're quite prevalent, and issues are rare enough that now decade past muh Ghost Ship Warehouse is the constant drum being beat by the brain dead building code worshippers who actually bought the line of bullshit that having people homeless and freezing and shitting in the streets was actually a 'written in blood' advantage.

gopher_space 5mo ago

Commercial buildings can't be easily converted into housing that provides the same return. Once the current owners have gone out of business it'll be profitable to turn them into flats. The arguments against conversion assume you care about the current owner's financial situation.

LinuxAmbulance 5mo ago
It's not so much the owner's financial situation, but rather that it'd be cheaper to build new homes than to retrofit a ten floor+ building's plumbing. You'd also have to install a bunch of showers, which could be a significant problem on its own. And then there's the increased amount of sewage, which the building might not be able to handle - even the local sewers might not be equipped to handle the uh... Load a large commercial building would generate with 24/7 occupancy vs 8/5 occupancy. The reason you don't see folks converting commercial spaces into residential isn't because it's not wildly profitable, but because building new purpose-built residential buildings would be cheaper than a conversion for anything other than one or two floors.
- ReflectedImage 5mo ago
  Oh no, I live in a flat in a converted commercial building. They have been going wild in the UK converting office space to residential.
- gopher_space 5mo ago
  > The reason you don't see folks converting commercial spaces into residential I do see this. That's my point. Your plumbing problem has been solved by not jamming a ton of people into the building.
- joquarky 5mo ago
  > the increased amount of sewage How is there more than an office full of people?
  - quickthrowman 5mo ago

_DeadFred_ 5mo ago

Weren't the feds buying these to convert into very dense ICE detention housing? So they can support high density human habitation according to the Feds, but not normal housing according to who?

JumpCrisscross 5mo ago

> Commercial buildings can't be easily converted into housing - notably, plumbing is not designed for smaller units and can't be retrofitted I still haven't seen numbers that show this is a physics problem versus zoning problem. Worst case, make some things (e.g. washers and dryers, maybe even showers) communal.