NEW YORK (WCBS 880) -- A City Council member wants to look at the possibility of converting empty office and store space into affordable housing.
Neighborhoods like Midtown have become a shell of their former selves amid the pandemic, with “very expensive, but very vacant commercial office space,” said Council Member Justin Brannan.
The New York Times reports that nearly 14% of Midtown’s office space is empty—more than at any point since 2009.
Brannan sees an opportunity to convert that office space into affordable housing.
“Even past a vaccine, you may not see a lot of these commercial offices filled the way that they were, but the affordable housing crisis is certainly not going away,” Brannan said.
The first step in Brannan’s proposal would be creating a task force that could study the feasibility of the idea.
Brannan admits that it wouldn’t be a quick fix and there are a number of challenges, such as rezoning.
“There would be a considerable amount of things that would have to happen here for this to sort of be a one-stop shop to get this done,” Brannan said.