cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/1125686
Archived version: https://archive.ph/vL1mC
Archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20230806071111/https://www.businessinsider.com/employees-work-from-home-benefits-as-good-as-raise-2023-8
On the sustainability front:
WFH means people aren’t commuting. This is good, as we use less energy, particularly gas in our cars. On the down side, public transit agencies may have to dramatically cut service, increasing people’s reliance on cars to get around. At an extreme level, they may go bankrupt due to lack of ridership.
Energy - home energy use has increased home residential energy use by between 7% and 23%. Lower income residents who do not have air conditioning can also suffer disproportionately. Higher income workers can readily afford expensive home upgrades, like adding a home office. Since empty commercial buildings still need to be heated and cooled, the energy savings aren’t as great.
Real Estate - the US will need to delete 18% of its commercial real estate. There is trillions of dollars worth of commercial real estate debt maturing in the next 3 years that will be worthless. I’ve actually seen vacancy rates approaching 30% in many downtown markets.
This will leave every major city with a giant hole in its central city and cause major economic disruption in both the real estate investment market, construction I distry and walkability of cities. We may be staring down the barrel of another “white flight to the suburbs” that we saw empty out cities from the 1950s through the late 1990s.
The upside to these empty buidings is they can - and should be - transitioned to housing. It’s just the rich companies who own the buildings don’t want to have to invest any money in that.
Gov’ts should force them to, but that won’t happen either. :/
I am all for converting commercial to residential. However, a civil engineer or architect (I can’t remember)on reddit explained all of the reasons that’s not practical or sometimes even feasible due to how commercial buildings are constructed. Plumbing, electric, HVAC, etc aren’t designed for units. Retro fitting is cost prohibitive to the point where they’d need to be torn down and built from scratch.
I don’t know how accurate that is, but it sounded legit.
Yet other engineers have said it can be done by refitting the window-facing offices as sets of single/double units with the interior of the floor as communal kitchen/gathering spaces, and separate floors for larger family units and spaces.
It’s not that hard to figure out ways to do it but companies will have to be forced, either by threat of bankruptcy or gov’t rules.
