‘Zombie Offices’ Spell Trouble for Some Banks - The New York Times

1984@lemmy.today to Technology@lemmy.world – 491 points –
‘Zombie Offices’ Spell Trouble for Some Banks
nytimes.com

This is the real reason for companies wanting people back to the office.

All this talk about collaboration and team spirit is just the publicly given reason for wanting people back to the office.

The real reason is that now the owners of the buildings are losing money.

Cry me a river.

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If they can't afford to lose money, they should stop being poor.

They should stop buying avocado toast and make their coffee at home!

It’s really not that hard.

They should sell the buildings...

So, I've thought about it and we have a housing shortage and an excess of offices. Seems like a solid solution. Takes a lot of work to make an office into a home, but it's more profitable than leaving them empty.

But no, that would help people, and the cruelty is the point.

Yep, Ive been saying this for years now as well.

We have giant mostly empty office buildings which could be converted into mostly apartments, with even make shift permitted commercial zones for basically street vendor / convention booth style shops every 10 floors.

Instead it apparently makes more sense to not do this because it makes more sense to keep them empty, heated and lit 24/7, as basically a way to prop up the retail property market.

Capitalism is a farce, and it has already doomed us all: we have now breached the 1.5 C warming barrier, even more rapidly than most of the worst case scenarios predicted. Permafrost in Siberia and Northern Canada is already thawing and releasing methane.

Enjoy the collapse of human civilization in your own lifetime as people and governments continue to squabble and combat each other over scarcer and scarcer resources as our entire way of life becomes too expensive to maintain.

Converting offices is expensive and complicated. Zoning laws also makes it even harder.

It's a solid solution only if someone ponies up the money to pay for the incredible effort it takes to convert an office building into residences. Waving your hands in the air and telling someone else to pay for it is not a good argument.

Are you watching me? How did you know I was waving my hands in the air?