If this trend continues, I wonder if these office spaces can be converted to apartments. SF is in desperate need of living space
This problem is entirely of the Bay Area’s own making. They have been pursuing exclusionary housing policies while cranking up taxes and spending for a long long time. Now the revenue base for those taxes are collapsing at the exact time they need the revenue to weather the storm.
This is not true. The first was either in Modesto in 1885, LA in 1908, or NYC in 1916, depending on how you define things. Definitely not SF, though.
Doesn’t really change your point, I just want to correct an urban legend.
You missed a "not" there.
You talk about that like it's a law of Physics.
It's not.
Plus, land-use laws would have to change, which is also extremely difficult.
Right up until 50% of the city center is empty. You’ll see those laws changing real soon.
But I wonder what people could do with commercial office space so cheap? For startups that can't really go 100% remote (mostly hardware) that's a dream come true!
(There are only 96 five-minutes bathroom breaks available during 8-hour work day, to share between all employees.)
The homes built under these rules are generally poorer quality, they tend to be smaller and more expensive to run than an otherwise equivalent new build home. But they are homes, and it's not as though San Francisco has too many of those.
At the extreme of what can be done, Birmingham is a British industrial city, and once upon a time as it began to take off there was enormous pressure to build homes so they constructed what were called "Back to backs". These were groups of homes packed together "back to back" so that you only had windows facing out one way, the other three sides of your home were walled in by other housing. They were squalid and almost all of them were torn down, although the World Wars diverted resources so that the last of them ceased to be homes only in the mid-20th century.
But historical preservation means Birmingham still has one set of Back to Backs, most of which is a museum you can tour to see how they were lived in during different periods, but one home was instead converted into a fairly nice two person overnight apartment you can hire. They plumbed a modern bathroom with shower and toilet, kitchen and so on, and of course in the 21st century we can light interior spaces cheaply and easily so it doesn't feel permanently gloomy, also of course it's just one couple in a double bed for one or two nights, whereas these would have been homes for families of eight people for a lifetime...
So yes, if there's money you can add everything. A Back to Back as constructed has zero running water, let alone sewage, unlike an office building so they'll have had to use modern narrow bore sewage pumping and other expensive tricks to make it work, but if the building would otherwise sit empty...
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/mar/02/will-these-be-...
You forgot to read the rest of the sentence including the very important “due to cost”.
No shit we can technically do it and have done it.
There are intentional communities that support themselves with their own, often agriculture based, products sold on the open market. Plus the usual homesteading.
The skills needed for this kind of work are not highly specialized and in general not well paid, therefore levelling the playing field for everyone in the group.
I think the opportunity cost for IT professionals building a SaaS to support the community is a lot higher, and while I would love to see that work, the chances of key community members dropping out to make more money for themselves is fairly high. I'm not sure if a simple time based system for everyone involved is fair, given the high upfront investment to get the skills needed for IT work.
But yes, your statement is true. What SF needs is a revamp of its zoning and "neighborhood preservation" policies that are not setting it up for resilience against things like this.
I therefore have a doubt about the current COVID-19 Office Space Glut in San Francisco, let alone the Bay Area, on top of all that.
It's a temporary shift and things will balance out in a few years.
Between the high tax corporate rates of SF & California along with increased salary due to cost of living, an SF-based engineer must produce 2x as much output as an engineer based elsewhere and 3x as one based on Canada.
Is this still true? Rents are plummeting because of people leaving. Plenty of apartments for rent right now. No need to convert commercial space.
There are dozens of cities that have everything else that SF has. If $$ goes away it will crash so hard it will make Detroit look like a model city.
My hope that after election hysteria is over and Vaccines get approved we will be back to something resembling normal by next summer. SF has a huge value as a place for tech with all its other faults it would suck to loose it
And beyond that, people will continue to live in SF just because they want to, not because they have to for their job. Sure, some people will leave because they never really wanted to live here in the first place, but I promise you there are plenty of us who will stay, regardless.