Commented on this elsewhere [1], but egress into a fireproofed stairwell is a safety-neutral compromise. It's against code, however.
That's the point. It's vestigial code that could be loosened to promote housing supply.
The tallest ladders in the FDNY's inventory go up to 100'. (They were testing a 300' rig, but I don't know if it was deployed.) They aren't designed to recover people from burning skyscrapers.
Say you have a fire on floor 8. The floor is full of smoke and residents can't reach floor 7 from 9. Pull up a ladder truck to a window on floor 9 and they can escape from there.
Which means you don’t have to have a window in the apartment you’re in.
There are apartment buildings in Hell's Kitchen with communal toilets and showers for each floor. There is still running water to each apartment, but I'm not sure that has to be a requirement. (My college dorm didn't have running water.)
Sure. But not with the existing CRE stock. My prediction is code won't be compromised. We'll raze the buildings and construct new housing. It will never be as cheap as the alternative could have been, or, more pointedly, than what tens if not hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers endure. (Quite happily, I may add.)
You're talking about prewar walk-ups that have been converted to de facto SROs. Also, those are mostly downtown, not in Hell's Kitchen. They're cheap and mostly occupied by young people who can't afford anything else, because they're incredibly undesirable ways to live, limiting their market rental price. Some number are also rent-stabilized and occupied by longtime residents, for the same reasons.
There is no way that you can seriously argue that doing this for newly-constructed skyscrapers would result in units that can be sold at the price that the building owners are demanding. There's a reason no new construction uses this model except for dedicated affordable housing (to the extent that's even built anymore). People simply do not want to live like that, and the market reflects that.
Yup, do this. "Young people who can't afford anything else" in New York are a population comparable with that of Atlanta [1].
> no way that you can seriously argue that doing this for newly-constructed skyscrapers would result in units that can be sold at the price that the building owners are demanding
The buildings' owners are screwed. Their leverage constrains them. The question is whether the structures have positive value. Retrofitting to current code leaves most with negative value, i.e. it's cheaper to abandon. The question I was answering is if it's possible to economically convert these to housing for somebody. Under current code, the answer is no.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/911456/new-york-populati... 20 to 24
[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
You can't just link to the age distribution and cite the number of "20-24 year olds in NYC" as evidence that there are half a million people in NYC who can't afford to live in anything other than an SRO.
There are very few "aesthetic requirements" that prevent an office building from being converted to residential. Most of issues with building code - including the window issue - are in fact motivated by safety concerns.
Office buildings are fireproofed in ways residential units are not. One can also replace windows with proximity to a fireproof stairwell without compromising safety.
I'm winging this. The point is there are places we can make tradeoffs. They're just not the kind Manhattan voters like.
You can't, really.
The way that emergency exits are laid out in office buildings is different from the way that they're laid out in residential buildings, and that's done because the safety needs of residential buildings are different from the typical safety needs of office buildings. It would be more expensive to build office buildings with those requirements from the get-go, so few dedicated office have them (particularly the larger skyscrapers that we're talking about).
You can either retrofit the core of the building (very expensive) or you can redesign the unit size and shape to conform to the existing building core (less expensive, but results in layouts that cannot be sold at the price the building owners require - the exact problem discussed in the article).
> The point is there are places we can make tradeoffs. They're just not the kind Manhattan voters like.
To make that claim, you'd have to point to actual tradeoffs that could be made without significantly compromising safety, and which aren't being done because "Manhattan voters" have rejected them.
And as someone who probably has a much better understanding of NYC commercial and residential building codes than the typical HN reader, I'm really only aware of one, and even that is only really being advocated for smaller and mid-size buildings, not the tall skyscrapers discussed in this article.
> I'm winging this.
Yes, I can see that.
You're acting like residential retrofits have never been done. They have. These are workable problems.
As others point out, the killer is plumbing. Not fire escape.
> only really being advocated for smaller and mid-size buildings, not the tall skyscrapers discussed in this article
Most of New York City's CRE tax revenue comes from mid-sized offices. Not from skyscrapers. Everything I'm suggesting is aimed at, and has been proposed for, those.
> I'm really only aware of one
There are many more. I'm winging the solutions. Not the capacity for them, which has been and is being studied by architects, engineers and psychologists.
I didn't say residential retrofitting can't be done. I said that they can't be done while still demanding the resale value (read: net profit) that the building owners are demanding.
> Most of New York City's CRE tax revenue comes from mid-sized offices. Not from skyscrapers.
This comment thread is on an article titled "NYC Skyscrapers Sit Vacant, Exposing Risk City Never Predicted". So we're talking about things that apply to skyscrapers.
> As others point out, the killer is plumbing. Not fire escape.
There are multiple issues. I addressed fire escape only because you brought it up, not because it's the only issue.
Again, this whole thread is in response to your claim that the limiting factor is "aesthetic requirements" in the building code that are not motivated by safety concerns. So far, you haven't pointed out any.
Yes, I have [1]. Communal water, toilets and showers.
No, because that's non-prohibitive under current building code. Contrary to popular misconception, it's permissible to have communal facilities; it's just not economically viable, in part because it's extremely undesirable to live in.
The issues is not “is it a workable problem”, everyone knows it is, that’s not in dispute.
The issue is “is the cost compared to the value recovered after the conversion such that, with the particular properties in the particular concrete situation that currently exists, it would be financially better for the owners to do a conversion or to abandon the property”.
You are trying to make a specific, concrete issue into a general, abstract one.
Supply and demand will fix this. Real estate speculators will eventually realize they've already lost the money they put into the building, then sell it at a loss (or at bankruptcy). Then, the residential conversions will happen, producing a supply of large, irregularly shaped manhattan condos that will certainly sell.
Capitalism does have its advantages.
The inherent land value is so astronomical and the cost of retrofitting is so high that, at virtually any price, most developers would decide it's more economical to raze the building and start over, designing a residential building from scratch with cookie-cutter units that can be sold for maximum profit.
Nobody says to ignore it. Just not to make specific expressions of it a red line.
Windows are a great example. New Yorkers get emotional about windows. Guess what: nobody is egressing from the 57th story of a burning building via the window. Yet go to a community board meeting and every numpty who Ctrl + F'd the fire code will pull up photos from 1911 to argue for windows an aircraft carrier can fit through.
You know what you can provide the residents of a building with tiny, tiny windows? A rooftop garden. Modern heating and fresh, filtered air. Potted plants in the hallways, community spaces, warmer lighting et cetera.
Just a nit-pick: older buildings with windows and load-bearing walls are actually better candidates for residential conversion than newer buildings with glass curtain walls and structural columns. [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office...]
Structurally, yes. Politically, community boards will claim they're hellscapes and then trot out studies on the health benefits of open air and sunlight and whatnot.
Plumbing is easy, pressurized pipes and pumps can deal with that just fine. The real challenge is air conditioning: showers create lots of humid, warm air - introduce that into your building's HVAC and you'll get issues with rust and mold - and cooking isn't much better, people generally don't want to smell the curry that someone at the other end of the building is cooking. Or they don't want to hear their neighbors having sex through the air vents.
It's also a question of what the trunk water/sewer line can handle. There's places in some cities where larger apartment buildings have to hold sewage in a tank and pump it out at night because the city pipes can't handle a normal load during normal hours.
The bigger problem is finding space for pipes. Many commercial buildings have specialized vertical tunnels for plumbing. The bathrooms in these buildings are usually adjacent to these tunnels, and there are no provisions for expanding plumbing to other areas of the floor in order to separate the floorspace into separate apartments with their own bathrooms.
The vertical tunnels are also designed to handle some number of main pipes based on N bathrooms per floor that you'd typically find in an office, with no room for expansion to handle N*10 bathroom capacity.
Pipes dimensioned for an office floor is surely enough for flats.
Although showers could mess up my 'theory'. But the sewer from those is easier to get flowing than toilettes I guess.
AIUI, plumbing is technically easy, but is still insanely expensive for conversions.
That said, it makes sense that HVAC would be a bigger problem.
Having asked the same question of developers, it's a combination of cost and code. Many office buildings are old, with tiny windows surrounded by load-bearing walls. They're also laid out with an office, not home, in mind. (Think: plumbing.) This combination means extensive renovation, retrofitting and–if you find a previously-unseen problem–rebuilding.
That said, it's New York City. My first two apartments were illegally subdivided and subletted, the first having no window. There are people who will happily take an apartment with a tiny (or non-existent) window in exchange for cheaper rent. We just need to update the code to remove aesthetic requirements while ensuring that doesn't mean skimping on safety.