The latest leftist talking points is "we will just convert empty office space into housing". The problem with that? The engineer for office spaces are entirely different, offices typically have one set of bathrooms per floor, no showers, their plumbing and electrical are designed for housing loads nor the sewer, even the internal walls are often light weight movable things so office space can quickly and cheaply be reorganized but doesn't fit the safety or security requirements for homes.
In short, to convert one of these over you will have to pay massive costs gutting the entire building, the costs will easily be half the cost to purchase the building, and we haven't even spoken about parking or fire standards and how they are different between offices and homes. In short, it completely falls apart in the details and it is probably cheaper to just do something else (like destroy low rise and replace with midrise that is at least design specifically for housing needs).
