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Comment by black_13 | Hacker News Reader

Turn to housing

That sounds easy, but it's expensive and difficult. The infrastructure (plumbing, HVAC, electric, egress) needs of office and other commercial spaces are very different compared to what residential units need.

So, for example: Bathrooms. While there may have been one or two [sets of] bathrooms per section of floor in commercial use, and this worked fine, residential tenants want at least one full bathroom all for themselves in their relatively small 1, 2, or 3-bedroom spread.

Or kitchens: What might have been a few limited break-room-type kitchenettes per floor needs to be a full kitchen, per-unit.

Those pipes need to live somewhere. (And this can be accomplished, but it's a somewhat monumental task to design and implement.)

Given prices, I think a lot of singles who don't spend much time at hone would rather have a dorm like technical residence in an ideal location. It is of course illegal to have a boarding house in the Boston area because it would lead to a plague, of lower real estate prices.

That means even higher density, which means even more problems with things like HVAC and egress: Certainly, an independent adult -- even one who is willing to live with communal bathrooms -- would like to set their own temperature and not die in a fire.

There's no free ride here, I don't think. Again, they're solvable problems but they're expensive to solve.

I hope they learned something and aren't using forced hot air.. I don't really think the challenges are that high if lab space was designed poorly it is still better than typical Boston area residential, which certainly won't let you turn down the heat.

As for fire safety and egresses it basically begins outside the unit, so a hotel or boarding house and a office space actually have the same egress rules while a 3 bedroom is a death trap.

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