Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by kqr2 1465 days ago
S.F. has nearly 16 million square feet of vacant office space. Why can't it become housing?

https://archive.ph/znGkU

1 comments

16M square feet is last year’s estimate. Wonder what the figure is today
These numbers seem tiny. Even if it all converts into 1000 sq ft residential homes, 18,000 new homes will not be enough to solve the housing shortage.

Definitely would help a ton though, and I probably shouldn't be hopeful of a single solution here.

1000 sq ft (92 sq m) is a quite decent family apartment. For young singles or couples without kids, half of that is pretty decent. 20-25-30k new homes is nothing to sniff at, even if it won't solve the full problem.
San Francisco has dropped back to 2013 population levels.