Upzoning right up there in the “do something” camp. It does not create affordable housing but it’s better optics than cutting services to pay for housing or doing nothing at all.

It’s a shame to have so many buildings sit empty downtown and a need for housing and to get more eyeballs/feet on the street and…no effort to make downtown housing happen.

Lewis is to be commended. This will work. Want to know how I know? Easy. If people will live in those fucking apodments, they will live anywhere. Is that "vibrant" enough?

I mean, if we want revenue back to fund all kinds of progressive programs, why not be on board with this? I’m not understanding the hairsplitting.

Few people are going to want to live downtown unless you turn it into a neighborhood: schools, parks, grocery stores, etc. For what it costs and the time it takes to reinvent downtown, we can make much more progress in already existing neighborhoods that people already want to live in.

Of course, the real issue here is revitalizing downtown because that’s a top priority for the Downtown Seattle Association, Chamber of Commerce, and other ‘downtown boosters.’ And how many of them live downtown? How many of them are going into a downtown office five days a week?

Everything helps. If Office Towers can be converted to Hotels, then they can be converted to Apts or Condos.

The old US Bank Building was converted to a hotel twenty years ago. And the Renaissance Hotel was built be either a hotel or an office building.

@4: Downtown already has plenty of residences, because many persons want to live there. As the demand for office space adjusts to the reality of working from home, retrofitting some office towers into homes makes a lot of sense.

@3: The Stranger fully intends to use the housing crisis to destroy single-family housing (SFH) zoning. That’s why upzoning the entire city is always their only answer. Not building more in Belltown, not developing the dozens of empty lots along MLK’s light-rail line, not retrofitting downtown buildings. Every housing unit added in those places subtracts from the Stranger’s goal of tearing down pretty old SFH for ugly triplexes, of jamming currently livable SFH neighborhoods with traffic no transit exists to serve. Those are the Stranger’s goals, and they do not want to let a perfectly-good housing crisis go to waste just because more housing can be created better, faster, and less-expensively elsewhere in the city.

Converting offices to housing is what you do ..."when you don't know what you are doing".

If the city would simply work together with developers -- reduce the red tape, lengthy permit process and change the zoning to allow taller buildings along main corridors... then we'd have an abundance of reasonably priced units of housing.

You have the demand... the prices are rising rapidly because of the restricted supply. Increase the supply and lower the cost of construction and your problem will be resolved.

further, you need to carve out the homeless as part of the equation.... they are by and large (75%) ... drug addicts, alcoholics and mental patients..... they can't rent as they don't have the physical mental means or ability to rent. they need treatment first.

@9 you think developers will ‘pass the savings’ on to renters? Nopes. They will charge whatever they can get for it. We would need more units than just upzoning along arterials to increase the supply that significantly. Plus upzones don’t necessarily = developments.

In the old days we used to keep what we killed.

Spent days roaming downtown, hunting for condos or empty warehouses, and we turned them into nice little apartments and then filmed dystopian SF movies about it.

We could literally buy it today, put tiny houses in there tomorrow, and middle class people would pay to rent it. Upzonong will lower prices, and Manolitos doesn’t understand that people with substance use issues mainly are using them as a coping mechanism when they’re already homeless. Most meth users are not homeless. Meanwhile, if no one had disabilities, somebody else would be homeless. We’re playing musical chairs, and the number of people on crutches doesn’t affect the number of people left standing when the music stops, it just affects which of us are more likely left standing.

@13 ignore Mr. Tiny Hands. He's a long standing trolling moron.

It's ridiculous to assume the same developers currently converting dated SFH properties into luxury townhomes are suddenly going to start turning office space into low income housing. If any office towers are converted, they would almost certainly be turned into luxury units.

There's always the possibility that poor people may not want to live downtown, particularly if they have children.

@14 We can add reading comprehension to your list of deficiencies.

Just because one has a different opinion doesn't mean one is a troll. Name calling suggests you agree with my conclusions and are unable to refute them intelligently.

@13 I indicated that in the discussion of housing shortage, it would be prudent to deal with the homeless separately due to their addiction issues or mental issues. Not exclude them. .. learn to read. The point being you have two class of home shortages or sheltering issues.... those who make money but find it difficult to afford housing and those who can't pay as they are addicts. Two very, very different issues all together.

For the homeless substance abuse patients... yes they would be patients, you have them in a treatment facility, cure and rehab before you present them to a normal housing situation. An addict and mental patient can't pay rent. The only intelligent thing you said was they use drugs to cope... let give them another option -- TREATMENT.

For the other situation, there is no surer solution than to increase the housing stock to drive down the cost. If the city would pull its head out its arse and just adopt policies which encourage the creation of housing rather than sticking with the current regime of poor, slow moving, antagonistic policies which retard housing then we might get this issue of affordability resolved.

The city will never be able to buy, build and maintain housing stocks to solve this problem.... and they have no talent for this area. bloated, stupid, ill-equipped. Look at the SPS ... they couldn't even figure out that declining enrollment over three years would result in deficit funding.... imagine if you gave folks of this ilk control over housing.

"Converting Offices Into Housing Isn’t About Housing"

No, what it is, is about turning millionaire and billionaire real estate developers into even bigger millionaire and billionaire real estate developers.

It's about capitalism. And political corruption. And money.

@18 Sadly it is about capitalism. That is the economic system in the US.

There is this underlying current in the city that a capitalist can't work in harmony with the communist or socialist.

That somehow, a capitalist is "taking something away from the socialist"... but perhaps, if we grow the pie, everybody will benefit.

If you look at the other end of the telescope, its the socialist which seeks to take from the capitalist and give it to the masses. That's a bit of a problem given the US constitution if you follow. But I guess we can ignore the history, US constitution, bill of rights ... and the horrific history of socialism and communism. We just look the other way.

Remind again how that turned out in the USSR... and the east block... how's Cuba doing these days... all sterling examples of the socialist paradise. -- Quashing of free speech, human rights, dignity... free elections.

@18 As Margaret Thatcher suggested when dealing with England's broken economic system... socialism work perfectly, until you run out of other people's money

Cast your eyes to the hot mess in France ... the strikes over the government pensions which can't be funded..... we'll get a little taste of that soon when Social Security confronts reality.

you think developers will ‘pass the savings’ on to renters?

Yes. That is the way the market works. You only reason landlords charge a lot for really shitty apartments (or really nice ones) is because there aren't enough of them. It is why prices in this city went up so high in such a short period. It is why other countries (especially Germany and Japan) have low housing prices. They build housing to match demand -- we don't.

Anyway, this will help a little bit, but not a lot. There are only so many buildings that make sense for conversion. Lewis is right -- even if there are a lot of conversions downtown, it is still relatively little in the way of new housing. To address the ongoing housing crisis, we need to address the fact that the vast majority of privately held land (roughly about 2/3) is zoned single family. This acts like a cartel, limiting supply. Other regulations (like design review) do the same.

Adding more housing will help life downtown, but again, this won't be a lot. We should look at other uses, such as schools or medical clinics. There is not a lot of difference between an office building and a school. The Merchant Marine Hospital (Pacific Tower) has gone back and forth with a mix of classrooms, offices and medical facilities.

@21 Rock on. You got it. Its a supply issue and problem. Create more housing units and the price will fall.

How you do that efficiently.. well the best way is to build new units designed to be residential units... as opposed to trying to convert old ones which are not designed, zoned or configured to be be housing units. it can be done, but its not necessarily efficient.

That can be done by having the developers, builders working in concert with the zoning, permit and building codes.... instead of having to fight government half wits who impede and zone like zombies.

@21, @22, yeah see also health insurance/ACA. Did offering “more supply” make health insurance any cheaper? No, neither health insurance nor housing are widgets that more supply equals lower price. They are services that people need to survive and will pay more for. It also happens that very moneyed people live in this town and will buy up price of new housing. Market failure is also an Econ 101 fundamental. Look it up. No developer going to build their way out of fat profits.

@23: If we want more housing to rent at below-market rates soon, then the government has to build it. If we want more affordable housing in future, then we just have the private sector build huge amounts of luxury housing now, because today’s luxury housing is tomorrow’s affordable housing.

None of that will help Seattle right now, because Seattle’s population increased by 50% over just a few years — and, ignoring the sideshow which is the homeless population — all of the new arrivals had good-paying jobs. That will drive rents skyward no matter what you build, and we know this, because Seattle was already adding record numbers of new housing units. Increase in demand simply outran increase of supply, and not by a small margin. There’s nothing magical about it.

If this generates any new housing then that is a good thing. We should definitely be pushing the city to do more, but it doesn't make sense to denounce them for doing something.

@21 Ross, you changed questions there. You started with "will developers pass savings on" to "will developers adjust prices based on demand/supply ratios". In some cases there might be a correlation between cost savings and demand/supply ratios because cost savings might increase supply relative to demand. But that's an indirect relationship. Sellers don't pass savings on except when they're forced to, and they're not always forced to. Particularly with essential goods and services, where private markets do the most damage.

@19 Monalitos There is merit to the idea that we can lift everyone up by growing the pie. But that's not how modern companies work - while trying to grow the pie, they also grow the share of the pie that the owners have control of. The religious devotion to capitalism present throughout this country, particularly among the politically powerful, is deeply harmful (and if we had a similar devotion to socialism then it would also be harmful in different ways - but we don't and so the current wave of socialist support is a good thing).