Yep and it will end in massive public giveaway in free loan money to retrofit buildings to something useful, like residential(yes I know of the challenges but there is no better option). Even progressive cities are fucked because their downtown cores that they sold gladly sold out or allowed to be developed out from under their constituents have almost all their tax dollars coming from CRE so they are levered to pro up CRE.
I hope they’ll do retrofits. I wonder what that would do to the housing market. If it actually made housing affordable a huge chunk of investors and home owners would be royally pissed. Great way to decrease homelessness, and I might be able to afford a house, but I doubt they’ll do it for that and previous reasons.
The other sad part is it answers many problems on traffic and congestion by doing what most countries do to enable density; build up not out with incredible efficiency gains. There are many social benefits as well and in a society that struggles with depression and loneliness as much as America, hard to think of a solution that solves as many problems as taking empty buildings and adding affordable housing.
There is at least one other option: Vertical Farming. I saw one of these in San Francisco go up, but there’s quite a few cities trying it out:
