Perspective: Empty offices an untapped resource against homelessness

Though SJ's latest homeless stats signal we're making strides in a positive direction, there remains a core problem: Too many people are still living in inhumane conditions on streets, creekbeds, and public spaces. Thomas Elias proposes in the CA Focus that vacant local offices be repurposed into residential units, saving time and money while tackling the homelessness crisis.

The spate of heavy rainstorms that swept across California during the early weeks of January exposed a lot of problems: weak bridges, inadequate reservoir capacity, poor drainage on many city streets and helplessness in the face of inevitable mudslides, to name just a few.

But the rains revealed nothing more starkly than the failure so far of California’s many programs to help most of the homeless, a failure that exposed how useless has been the bulk of the $11 billion-plus allocated for homeless aid over the last year....

Some of California’s most prominent and powerful politicians often say they recognize this. New Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, whose city contains more than 56,000 homeless, declared a state of emergency over their situation on her first day in office last month. She wants to humanely eliminate some tent cities, but so far has moved only a few dozen persons indoors. Gov. Gavin Newsom put more than $10 billion for homeless services into the current state budget and billions more into his next planned budget. California has more homeless today than when the 2022-23 budget passed, and far fewer shelter beds than before the coronavirus pandemic....

Here’s an idea not yet in the anti-homelessness portfolio: Use part of the huge government allocations to buy or lease some of the hundreds of millions of square feet of vacant office and commercial space that now dogs many California property owners, the result of changes in working conditions for white collar workers. Studies indicate about one-third of them will likely operate permanently from their homes.

So far, California has seen only about 11,000 conversions to residential units permitted out of that vast space, makeovers state law now says can go forward without zoning changes. How about using some of the billions allocated to homelessness for this? It would allow far more units and take much less time than new construction.

Just as it’s time for a complete rethink of the overall housing crisis, where state officials announce new and different need estimates every few months, it’s also time for this kind of fresh thinking about housing the homeless.

This article originally appeared in the California Focus. Read the whole thing here.

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