For sure. I agree with the idea of doing this provided that private companies assume all the risk and work to overcome all of the obstacles to doing this but at the same time we have to remember why we have to do this in the first place. Speculative investment should never have been allowed into the housing market in the first place and that’s why we’re here. That’s why nobody can afford homes. That’s why nobody can afford rent.
I wish it would be possible, but the amount of work to convert would make it more difficult than not. Honestly, I would love to see more community centers made from the abandoned malls at least as a starting point, and then go from there.
It makes me chuckle how, in a country where we’re spending a trillion and a half on war every year, if not more, half of the comments are like “but it costs too much”.
I don’t think it hurts the economy since moving people to producive areas increases productiviy.
It does hurt homeowners, who have managed to capture the regulatory regime by pressuring their city government into passing and maintaining zoning laws.
Except that they don’t have the necessary plumbing infrastructure to make that feasible. It’d be better and possibly cheaper to tear down entirely and build something actually designed for living.
What if you added a shit-ton of planters and skylights/lights in the huge main hallways (assuming skylights aren’t there already, which they are in a lot of cases), and put windows inward toward your year-round community gardens? The inward-facing walls tend to be glass, so would need to be replaced anyway, and those hallways and congregation spaces are more than wide enough for abundant edible greenery if there aren’t sales kiosks and junk everywhere. You could make a really inviting view entirely indoors.
Retrofitting the plumbing might be a bit of a problem unless you made everything high efficiency, and just built up the floor a bit, which I think could be a fairly minimal expense by going down the main hallways to existing facilities, with shared plumbing between two units/stores like a duplex. (those cement floors suck anyway, so you’d want it built up at least in the units). That makes it easily accessible for fixing. Or a lot of places have back hallways, you could run exposed plumbing through those and run directly into each unit.
Keep some of the kitchens in the food court running, open some markets/maker spaces or create hangout/childcare options in the big shops that can’t be converted to housing, and you can employ people and give them access to quality resources with whatever access issues they may have. Plus then you could rip out 90% of the parking lot and plant trees or build more housing or something. That sounds pretty economically sound to me, just not up front. And not profitable for anyone who would spend on it.
That place has the advantage of having rear windows since it was built before electric lighting. Most modern malls have windows only on the store front open to the interior.
A lot of these projects seem to require at least a partial rebuild of the site. So, you might tear down an anchor store and remove parking to add in apartments. Then, the remaining commercial real estate becomes more valuable since it can also be supported by residents.
We must have had very different homeless experiences. I would have gladly taken a micro apartment over a tent any day. Any. Day. It could have been in the middle of a desert for all I care.
A door that locks, a bathroom, a roof, and water easily accessible? Yeah, that is a million times better than the constant fear and animalistic mindset that comes with a lack of basic resources.
This. There were 2 malls near me where they spent nearly 10 years total trying different designs on paper trying to find a way for it to be cheaper to retrofit into housing, or anything useful really, and eventually they just tore both down and built new smaller structures on the footprint.
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