Hacker News Reader

Comment by biggoodwolf | Hacker News Reader

Who's gonna pay the real estate taxes? LOL

I don't know if you're asking to be tongue-in-cheek, but this is a salient question.

Normally, government buildings ("Held for public use") don't pay property taxes. This can be a serious issue in municipalities where large portions of the non-residential real estate is held by a higher-level governmental entity, such as Jackson, Mississippi, where the state government makes up a large bulk of the functional real estate, and thus does not contribute to the municipal tax base (while still making substantial infrastructural demands).

[0] NY state example: https://www.osc.state.ny.us/files/local-government/publicati...

Unhoused homeless people actually have a non-zero cost to the cities they’re in, whether it comes to incarceration or other costs.

Cities could convert these office spaces into homeless shelters and save money.

The reason you rarely see offices turned into housing is they don’t have enough plumbing or windows to be residences. It’s almost always cheaper to tear the buildings down and start over than try to retrofit.

Fairly long discussion (and good Nytimes article) a couple weeks ago.

tl;dr It can be done. You're better off with older styles of office buildings. It's expensive so you end up with luxury apartments.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35120366

I hadn’t heard this before. Do you have a source for this?

Sounds like not a real thing and someone trying to make a point on the interwebs. I've lived in buildings that were converted from commercial to residential of various forms as well as having a parent that was in construction doing this very thing.

Yes, by default commercial buildings have centralized plumbing for common facilities. That is easily remedied with a few holes added into the concrete, and new plumbing run.

Enough windows? WhatTheHuh? Commercial => Residential building conversions do often end up with some "unique" floor plans sometimes referred to as "shotgun" layouts due to their long and narrow designs. This ensures each unit has some windows (most often you can't open them as the original design didn't open). Interior spaces get converted into other common area/use spaces without window access.

> This ensures each unit has some windows (most often you can't open them as the original design didn't open).

Could this be a problem for fire codes? Having multiple ways out of a bedroom for example. I've been in commercial buildings that seem like total death traps in a fire. Even if you get manage to break a window you'd have little chance of surviving the jump, and any kind of ladder long enough to reach the ground would be impractical.

While I'm no Fire Marshall Bill, I have some personal experience with getting permits and certificate of occupancy. I would think that if the commercial building's design was good enough to be approved, then it'll probably be okay for residential as well. You'll find out quickly enough if the plans are going to be approved or not. Before you can even get a permit, you have to submit your plans for all of the units. At that point, your plans will be inspected for known issues. For example, there is a formula used for the size of a room and the number of people (max capacity figures) that will determine how many points of egress that room is required to have. For a private residential unit, that number will probably be pretty small and easily within the limits for a single door out of the unit. The permitting stage is also where they will consider the number of stairwells to get to the lower floors. They will look at how far away from those stairwells on average each unit's exit is. Fire extinguishers will probably be required within units as well as the obvious need for sprinklers.

We already have residential high-rises. There's precedent for living in a building you can't jump to the ground from. Plus, I would hope the same fire code would apply to an office people spent 8+ hours of their day in.

The first thing that comes to mind is most office buildings don't have showers, so that's probably the biggest one.

I'd say most cities are better off not having homeless shelters. Otherwise you'd become a magnet for homeless. What happened to catering to the actual tax-payers?

The problem is the homeless, not their unhoused/housed status. Never saw so many ambulances on a daily basis as on a hotel that was repurposed for homeless. (Owner was pretty happy having his crummy hotel filled at a $200/night rate ;) )

You may be right, but this:

> Cities could convert these office spaces into homeless shelters and save money.

does not follow from this:

> Unhoused homeless people actually have a non-zero cost to the cities they’re in, whether it comes to incarceration or other costs.

Most countries dont have high property taxes like USA has in many states.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com