> think on average we can do better than literally hell

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.)

In the US they force people to live in the tents after demolishing the slums and call it progress.

Then they demolish the tents.