I saw a pretty shocking statistic the other day that 17.4% of office space in Manhattan is currently available for rent, meaning that office space is in even less demand now than in the time immediately after 9/11.
It's pretty clear. Workers aren't going back into the office. If it's not happening now, it's probably not going to happen ever (at least in the numbers we saw before the pandemic).
Now, what's the opportunity here in my eyes? Let's say in the final post-pandemic world, at least 10% of office space in New York City that was in-use before the pandemic is no longer needed, which feels like a conservative estimate. What do you do? You put up some drywall. You install a bit more plumbing. You section things off into studios and one-bedroom apartments. You build affordable housing and effectively leverage the office space that will never be needed again to solve New York City's homelessness problem.
We have stumbled into the opportunity of a lifetime to get a roof over every homeless person's head simply by utilizing space that will otherwise be overtaken by spiderwebs.
Do I expect landlords to start doing this? Absolutely not. They're all still going to have sexual fantasies about pre-pandemic rents. Am I surely oversimplifying things? Absolutely. I know you can't just convert offices to apartments overnight. But it feels like a mortal sin to let people sleep on the streets under "Now Leasing!" signs.
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