What it would take to turn all those empty office buildings into homes

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It sounds like dream solution to America’s housing crisis, but experts say converting "zombie towers" in increasingly deserted downtowns into homes could be a logistics nightmare. Still, cities like New York, Boston and Cleveland are embracing the idea of residential retrofitting and providing incentives to do so. The Biden administration is easing the way with federal programs and tax breaks. Local leaders are accelerating changes to zoning and construction restrictions.

Here's the urgent reason behind the push: More office space is sitting empty in the US than at any point since 1979, Moody's Analytics recently reported. It's all a hangover from the Covid-19 pandemic, when employees started working remotely and never came back in full force. Meanwhile, the US has lagged behind by about 5.5 million housing units over the past 20 years, according to the National Association of Realtors, as builders failed to keep up with housing needs.

Sometimes former office locations can be good places to live, especially in high-density cities and areas with soaring demand for residential housing like Manhattan. In other cities, though, there may be no nearby stores, schools, or public transit. Office space and homes are also two fundamentally different types of buildings, according to builders and architects. Problems include a lack of natural light, the need for individual controls for heating, and ceiling heights that make electrical and HVAC retrofits impossible.

There's no formula for turning an office into a home, according to a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. "Every project has to reinvent the wheel," he says, calling it "much harder than building from scratch."

??? Read the full story from CNN's Anna Bahney for two other reasons why it's so hard to convert office space to livable and likeable housing.

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