The White House is opening up $45 billion in federal funds to developers looking to turn big-city office buildings into homes.

The White House kicked off a multiagency push on Friday to help finance real-estate developers convert more office buildings in big cities emptied by the pandemic into affordable housing, taking aim at the nation’s housing crisis.

The initiative looks to harness an existing $35 billion in low-cost loans already available through the Transportation Department to fund housing developments near transit hubs, folding it into the Biden administration’s clean energy push.

It also opens up additional funding sources and tax incentives, offering a new guidebook to 20 different federal programs that can be tapped by developers and offers technical assistance in what can end up being tricky and expensive conversions.

A third peg of the program will see the federal government draw up a public list of buildings it owns that could be made available for sale to help bolster development.

“These downtowns and central business districts that we are taking about today often already designed and orientated around public transit,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a press briefing. “Our intention is to make the most of this opportunity to add more housing near transit in ways that not only reduces the cost of housing, but also often reduces the cost of transportation.”

    • @[email protected]
      5•1 year ago

      I am actually pretty optimistic on that front. Mostly because those buildings are already up to code for office workers and keeping hallways to the various fire exits is a “solved” problem. Also, after you get a dozen or two floors up, windows stop being particularly useful for survival and are more about quality of life.

      What I DO expect are horror stories and likely a new “twitch meta” of playing the audio of people fucking in the next apartment over and the inevitable doxxing and shaming that goes along with that. Also HVAC hell as we already learned that a LOT of office buildings and facilities are calibrated for a specific type of occupancy and caused massive temperature swings during the lockdown portion of covid.

      Oooh, maybe a story or twelve about how someone smoking weed on the other side of the building resulted in everyone’s PS7 getting destroyed by water. But I think California already requires sprinkler heads in apartments so that is not going to be unique to this?

      • @[email protected]English
        1•1 year ago

        I’ve had sprinklers in apartments. Usually they’re a bit smarter than office ones. They didn’t turn on through the whole building and only come on after the smoke detector has been going for a bit.

        • @[email protected]English
          4•1 year ago

          I have them in my current apartment. They aren’t activated by the fire alarm, they’re heat activated so if there’s no actual fire the sprinkler doesn’t turn on.