So you want to turn an office building into a home? | Hacker News Reader

So you want to turn an office building into a home?

nytimes.com

38 pointssamsolomon71 comments

> "Such floor plans and building shapes translate well to apartments (although, of course, a common bathroom for 20 units won’t do)."

Every floor would have to be completely ripped out and replumbed, you'd also want more insulation to avoid hearing the neighbors, ventilation systems for the kitchens and bathrooms, and probably about a dozen other issues necessitating a complete reconstruction program. It might be somewhat cheaper than building new housing from the ground up, but it's not going to be a quick easy operation.

Roughly how many months/years of rent is that? "Easy" and "hard" have to be understood in ROI terms, otherwise everything in the construction world looks intractably hard.

at least there are plenty of elevators

> Apartments, obviously, need operable windows to vent cooking fumes and brighten living space.

I for one would be perfectly happy to rent an apartment without any windows if it meant getting a place located in the heart of a major city.

> although, of course, a common bathroom for 20 units won’t do

Again, I’d be fine with dorm-style shared bathrooms as a trade-off for having an apartment with an excellent location.

I suppose the overall sentiment I’m feeling is that I’d enjoy living in a dorm-style building for young professionals. Go ahead and throw in some large common rooms while you’re at it. I get that this isn’t for everyone, but I think there’d be enough demand from individuals in a similar demographic (i.e. professionals in their early 20’s) to make this viable, especially somewhere like SF.

Washing people and clothes, and cooking, produce a lot of vapour which if not vented will produce mould. You will rapidly find that the health issues produced by mould are a more serious issue than location, which is why this is not left to the market.

True, but bathrooms and laundry can be shared amenities (like in a dorm). Ventilation can be accomplished without windows via ducting.

That really invites mold. Forced air ventilation may satisfy the building code but is not as effective—especially if the power goes out.

My experience is that powered ventilation (especially when controlled by a humidistat for a bath or timer for a kitchen) is more effective than opening a passive window.

The power is not out frequently enough in the US to be a detectable contributor to mold risk.

Absolutely. Unknowingly, I just wrote almost the exact comment as this. There's no shortage of TikToks's of people giving tours of their ridiculously small apartments in the outer boroughs. Imagine how alive the financial district could be with a influx of thousands of young people.

Leaving aside whether I'd want that as a young professional with a good job, I'd argue that there is a difference between a college dorm or a shared house situation and sharing facilities with a bunch of completely random people over which you have zero control.

ADDED: And it's almost certainly a fantasy to think that shared amenities and residents would be young professional friendly rather than being more in line with those who rent SROs today. (Although as the article notes, these conversions are expensive--so they almost have to be luxury apartments--rather than SROs with shared facilities.)

I don't think it can get much worse than a shared college dorm. People shitting in communal showers. People not knowing how to do laundry breaking the machines. Building fire alarms going off multiple times per week. People having zero respect for shared bathrooms pissing all over the toilet seats and floor.

I think the one thing you need to make the bathroom situation work is someone constantly cleaning them. Assuming you have a fair amount of residents should be possible. I think you also need to set things up in a way where someone can't just linger in the shower for an hour. I don't know it's hard and people suck. They'll shave in the shower and leave a nasty mess for others.

Twice I’ve seen one of the higher ups add a private bathroom attached to their office. (in additional to the bathroom that the normal employees use by the elevators).

Once because of IBS and once because they liked taking mid-day showers.

Added bathrooms shouldn’t be a problem.

Adding one shower/bathroom that's used by one executive is easy, you can connect it to the existing plumbing.

Adding 20-40 bathrooms, each of which can be used by multiple people, will cause a whole new set of problems.

> Apartments, obviously, need operable windows to vent cooking fumes and brighten living space

I assume this must be some building code law, otherwise there's a lot of room to get creative with active ventilation. If assumptions were challenged, there's a lot more possibilities for how to convert these spaces. A lot of people would be willing to rent a windowless space with a shared bathroom (e.g. https://www.fastcompany.com/90740511/heres-what-its-like-liv...) if it meant they could live in a great location. Example: What if windowless apartments had a built-in 12" video wall like the one this YouTuber inexpensively DIY'ed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv88wM6AN6Y

> A lot of people would be willing to..

Sure, for a couple of years, when you're young and just using your house to sleep. Problem is that people who are not willing would also end up in these semi-houses.

> What if windowless apartments had a built-in 12" video wall

That would look really cool, but would do little for receiving the health and mood benefits of natural daylight. Or for the sense of being connected with whatever is out there.

> That would look really cool, but would do little for receiving the health and mood benefits of natural daylight. Or for the sense of being connected with whatever is out there.

Add in some more light sources around the display that stimulates sunlight (something like CoeLux) and you might be able to get at least the mood benefits and some of the health ones too.

Artificial sunlight therapy is frequently used in countries that gets very dark during the winter, where there isn't many sunlight hours. I remember some friends many years ago went to those kind of therapies in the winter times and felt benefits from it. Not sure exactly what light sources they used, but if you can manage to buy those, maybe it'll be at least a bit better?

This literally sounds like something out of a cyberpunk dystopia novel

You don't want to live in 3 m2 room that just have a bed, TV with 24/7 news/ads and a giant display simulating the outside?

Come on, you wanna live cheaply in the middle of the city, you're gonna have to sacrifice something!

Joking aside, I agree, sounds dystopian. I'm just having fun with the idea I guess.

I'm so naïve, I hadn't even considered ads. These apartments could have multiple revenue streams. Imagine if the ads were something really innocuous, like slow TV to promote travel.

An interior space filled with artificial light and real plants could definitely be superior to an apartment with a window overlooking a noisy and dirty highway (for example).

Note: Real plants don't freshen the air in the dark, and need darkness cycles to rest.

Also, if you don't have a green thumb, good luck taking care of them.

Plants are beneficial to well being even if they aren't actively cleaning the air. Darkness cycles would happen for the plants when they do for the resident, while sleeping. There are lots of low maintenance plants that can grow exclusively on indoor light, and even without soil (e.g. Pothos). It's not for everyone, but would be a good option for many.

This sounds like a depressing solution.

You're talking about full spectrum lighting and seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

I'd posit that a fake view of nature is superior to the real view of many windows (that look out on alley's full of dumpsters, etc.). One study showed that looking at pictures of nature could be beneficial: https://www.sciencealert.com/just-looking-at-photos-of-natur...

I'm open to the idea that a video wall--which could even have a real outside view feed--isn't necessarily that dystopian. Having stayed in hundreds of urban hotels, I'd actually say the view is suboptimal more often than not.

On the other hand, shared bathrooms/kitchens/etc. are going to be a non-starter for most people. Especially, as you say, once you get beyond the live for a few more years like you're still in college demographic.

Then don't rent/buy it? Why should this be an illegal choice for an adult to make?

Because there are health and safety issues that some adults are happy to overlook whilst society, eventually, picks up the bill.

Fire safety I can see; health benefits sound like a rather dubious claim.

Poor housing has detrimental physical and mental health benefits, I'm not sure many people would find this such a dubious statement?

Countless situations, like living in a rainy climate, have detrimental physical and mental effects, but we still allow it.

I think adults should be able to evaluate if they can put up with missing the health benefits of a window for improved location or reduced cost. Life is about tradeoffs.

Maybe, but the reason there are rules and regulations relating to many everyday activities is that when people make decisions about their own lives those decisions can result in negative impacts to society as a whole.

OK, I think not having fire protection in my building can save me a lot of rent. And yes, I have picked an extreme example to validate my point just have you have done.

I'm literally responding to the example in the thread. And I agree with you on fire safety (of course, that could also be taken too far).

Not everybody gets to actually choose though..

What about "the bill" associated with not having affordable housing, and people being forced to either pay for overpriced units, or having to live 1 hour from work?

From the article, the conversions in Manhattan are producing apartments that rent from $3,500 to $7,000 per month because the conversions are too expensive for lower-end housing. There's presumably some trickle down supply effect but these conversions are not producing affordable housing directly.

>From the article, the conversions in Manhattan are producing apartments that rent from $3,500 to $7,000 per month because the conversions are too expensive for lower-end housing

But presumably some of that pricing is because of all the work needed to make those units comply with code? In the nytimes article they mentioned that for one of the conversions, they had a make a courtyard (literally cutting a hole into the building). I can't imagine that would be cheap. On the other hand if building codes allowed for shared bathrooms/kitchens and windowless bedrooms, all you'd have to do for a "conversion" is rip everything out and put in some drywalls.

For that matter, why not just move in bunk beds and call it a day. Even quicker and cheaper.

Absolutely, why not, if people prefer cheap bunk beds?

Because it's a race to the bottom. Eventually, if allowed, these may become the only affordable houses for many people. Landlords can split up their (already small) apartments, install a video wall in the back, and call it two apartments, asking only a little under twice the rent. Given the housing shortage (and the lack of remote working options for lower paying jobs), people would have little choice but to accept it.

That would only happen if renters preferred lower cost / better location to windows. So why should you or the government be able to tell them that they can't make that choice?

> Sure, for a couple of years, when you're young and just using your house to sleep. Problem is that people who are not willing would also end up in these semi-houses.

For sure. These dwellings are not meant for every stage of life, but they might be perfectly suited to people living by themselves (young or old).

IIRC part of the need for windows at least in some places is fire code requirements to have at two ways of exit for each bedroom, so that you can get out even if the fire is between you and the exit - this normally is satisfied by a door + external window, but won't get satisfied by a video wall.

Maybe because I’m in Canada but I’m not aware that this is part of the fire code here at least.

I live in a 12th floor apartment. My bedroom has has a window, but it’s not one that opens in a way that a human could fit through. Even then, a 12 story fall is pretty tough.

Definitely. I'm not a fire code expert, but the windows in the example buildings in the article are definitely not for egress. Active fire suppression (e.g. sprinkler systems) might be why that is allowed.

I've stayed in plenty of suite hotels with kitchens (and, obviously, bathrooms). They don't depend on opening a window to vent.

The solution in the article of creating an inner "courtyard" seems to me to be absolutely horrendous, from a livability perspective.

Imagine your only windows being into a tunnel 300 feet from the open sky. That's not actually a source of natural light. Sure, it's a possible source of ventilation. But really, this sounds like dystopian housing as opposed to anything someone would actually want to live in.

That being said, it does have a convincing argument for converting older, smaller footprint buildings.

Yeah, the moment I saw a photo of the "courtyard" my reaction went from "clever modern solution" to "what a bleak place to live"...

I've stayed in hotel rooms that were on a light well. Yes, you pretty much might as well not have a window. It's actually pretty common, especially on lower floors, for hotel rooms to be directly facing some other building and for many rooms not to have much of a view or natural light.

I lived in a place like that when I was young. It was fine. Many, many young people get their first Manhattan apartments this way.

A couple points from the article:

- Older buildings are both less attractive as commercial space and easier/better to convert to apartments because their footprint makes it easier to get natural light and windows typically open. (That "courtyard" they added to one of the newer buildings being converted seems like it will be a pretty partial solution especially for apartments on lower floors.)

- These conversions are expensive so the resulting apartments are on the luxury end so you're not going to have shared bathrooms or kitchens.

widely seen as the most ugly (and corrupt, from the builders/landlords practices) block of flats in london,uk, is Centre Point (corner of new oxford st and charing cross rd) - originally intended as offices. i cannot imagine why people that can afford to live there would want to live there.

This article is kind of silly, as it seems to be based on the idea that nothing would be done to change the layout of these buildings before opening them up as living facilities. There's no reason each floor couldn't be gutted and refitted as lifing units; they currently reconfigure office layouts at will to suit the tenants.

It's kind of reminiscent of some of the arguments about grow houses made when cannabis was being legalized. The opponents couldn't seem to wrap their heads around the idea that when warehouses became available legally there was no more need for grow houses. If office buildings are being used as housing there's zero reason to keep them configured as office buildings.

The entire article is about the process of completely adapting the buildings so that they can be used for apartments.

great, but they are forgetting one more detail. Even existing apartment buildings need to be fixed for remote renters. i.e. FLOW https://a16z.com/2022/08/15/investing-in-flow/

> For Adam, the successes and lessons are plenty and we are excited to go on this journey with him and his colleagues building the future of living.

I’m sorry, this is a joke right?

> I’m sorry, this is a joke right?

Yes, but please don’t tell Andreesen Horowitz; they aren’t in on the joke.

Oh they are, they just cynically believe there are enough rubes that can be sold on the “vision”.

I read that. I still don’t know what FLOW is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTHMwJ8kzjw

People still take Adam Neumann seriously?

for me there is a world of difference between him and someone like Elizabeth Holmes. Holmes committed crimes and put people's health in danger. Adam was just very good a playing the VC game.

> Adam was just very good at playing the VC game.

And he is still playing that game! If in five years we all discover he turned this into a giant nepotistic money-losing dumpster fire and left his VC firm holding the bag while he got a cool $1B exit package, no one has a right to be mad.

to be fair, the $350 million a16z put in is secured by the 4,000 multi family apartment buildings he owns. i.e. he transferred the deeds from his own company to this joint thing owned by him and a16z in order to get the 350.

Adam AND his wife are both unethical people bordering on fraud. I wouldn't buy or believe anything he says. He has still not taken responsibility for We Work, his part in its decline, and what appeared to be massive financial impropriety. Adam is a C-suite grifter, plain and simple.

>That is suddenly no longer true. This newfound flexibility has triggered the “Great Resignation”, where people prioritized other factors over professional considerations. Many people are voting with their feet and moving away from traditional economic hub cities to different cities, towns, or rural areas, with no diminishment of economic opportunity.

>https://jobs.lever.co/flowlife

>All jobs ON-SITE

I'm gonna pass on this venture fixing the problem, they can't even dogfood their own founding principles.

well that's not fair, that's like a company trying to build a settlement on the moon and complaining they are making all their workers build the necessary steps to get there on earth!

Think he pitched it as ‘WeWork for residential’?

a collection of articles about flow... https://remoterenters.com/

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