after COVID the number of companies that either did not renew commercial leases or defaulted on existing leases jumped significantly. banks saw this and quietly extended commercial leases and relaxed payment dates and penalties to stave off a crisis in 2023. Joe Biden even injected ten billion dollars in assistance to commercial real estate and publicly demanded all federal workers "return to office." the government owns its real estate by and large, so this was largely an expression of solidarity with the landed gentry.
moving into 2025...it does not appear to be working. Many corporations are not falling in line to prevent the collapse and instead are seeking short-term gains as they realize massive savings by ditching commercial landlords. productivity and worker satisfaction is also improved. even climate change is impacted positively by work from home efforts.
unpopular take: It is (financially) critically important that all workers return to the office. a crash in the commercial real estate sector would cause solvency problems for large cities dependent on cashflow from office workers. the auto sector (repair and sales) would also take a massive hit at a time when Stellantis is facing down a potential bankruptcy. the locus for most states in terms of homeless outreach and drug treatment is their city, which would receive serious cutbacks at a time when the opioid and fentanyl crises are still of great concern.
barring some sort of major shift in policy (which wont happen) at the federal level, the US economy was not prepared to move to a work-from-home model.