Comment on They really want people to RTO
Nobody@lemmy.world 7 months ago
While slumping over a desk for 9 hours straight improves back health. Prevents 100% of cases of lumbago.
It’s not just that the old money dragons of commercial real estate are losing money, it’s also that middle management nothings need to exert their authority over you in person to feel relevant.
WFH makes every company money on decreased overhead. The war against it is 100% commercial property landlords that collect rent in the billions.
Fuck every single one of those fucking assholes. They are destroying our world to squeeze out just a little more.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 7 months ago
I mean if our zoning wasn’t so overly strict, those real estate holders could cash in on enormous rent prices by transforming that commercial space into apartments.
Then there would be more housing supply, rents would go down, homelessness would improve, and those real estate holders would be able to get back to making profit, and there’d be less lying about the pros and cons of working from home.
All of it could be better, through the mechanism of consensual mutual profit that we call the free market. If only the government weren’t constantly enforcing largely arbitrary rules about how this block can house people but that block can only be for offices.
Keeping rendering plants away from preschools is fine. Arbitrarily telling people they can’t put beds and kitchens into a commercial space and let people live there is not.
There’s profit being lost AND people going homeless because there is a third party constantly preventing us from making the deals that mutually improve our lives.
And they’ve convinced you the real estate owners are the evil ones.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Unfortunately the building codes for office and residential buildings are very different and it’s damn near impossible to convert many offices into residences.
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
That’s okay, I’ll take a whole floor with no showers or kitchen for a cheap price.
It’s not hard, it’s just not profitable meaning they have to take a lost, you know, like everyone else who makes a bad investment.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
It doesn’t matter what you’ll “take”. It’s illegal to live in a building that doesn’t meet code for residential units. Stuff like natural light as well as adequate plumbing and ventilation are important.
And they wouldn’t just be converting entire floors into single units. Those would be beyond luxury sizes. You think a 50 storey building can afford to become a 50-unit apartment? How is that going to solve our housing crisis? Don’t be dense.
For a conversion to work, they would need to be able to convert every floor of an office building into sufficiently dense housing. But office buildings are typically laid out with very deep footprints, where much of the internal layout of the building is far from any sources of natural light. Humans need access to natural light, which is why it’s not legal to sell a unit where the main rooms don’t all have windows. That can’t be fixed without tearing down the building and building something new.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Perhaps it’s still more profitable than letting a building sit there un-used. The market should be allowed to try.