[Leon Della Bosca]

A recent property audit identified over 80 unoccupied and underused office buildings in Melbourne’s CBD that could be redeveloped to ease the housing crisis.

If even half of these buildings were converted, they could supply around 10,000 to 12,000 new homes. Additionally, repurposing these existing buildings would reduce upfront embodied carbon compared to demolishing and rebuilding from scratch.

The audit specifically identifies buildings with the potential for conversion, but it does not mean that these conversions will happen.

Developer Ross Pelligra believes that maintaining office space in the CBD is crucial for people’s work opportunities and that converting too many office spaces to residential could limit available workplaces.

One successful residential conversion was the redevelopment of a St Kilda Road office block into retirement and aged care buildings by Australian Unity. The cost of the redevelopment was actually lower than demolishing the building.

There is clearly value in repurposing older commercial buildings in the CBD. Could this address the worsening housing crisis and bring life back into ailing CBDs? Would you downsize to an inner city office-cum-residential building?

[Cosmo]

No I wouldn’t downsize from a regional to a central city location but I don’t think that’s the point. Many people especially those who work in the cities would willingly do so and if the concept was extended to all State capitals it could have quite a positive impact on housing supply.
In regional towns entire old style shopping malls are vacant as businesses have moved to larger shopping centres or to peripheral shopping estates.
State governments could do far more in releasing land as new regional hospitals, courthouses, police stations, fire stations and ambulance stations are built and the old sites left vacant. Many railway yards have been vastly reduced in size and overseas this land has been eagerly redeveloped but little has been done here. The opportunities are vast, dwarfing the imagination of governments.

[Willfish]

At least part of the solution is painfully obvious, but politicians wont have a bar of it, neither will the well healed lobby groups of the wealthy. We didnt have a housing crisis before Covid, immigration almost stopped for 2 years, no significant increase in population, and now we have a housing crisis – a shortage of houses. This could only occur because the wealthier people (25% of rental properties are owned by 1% of property owners, according to ATO), who couldnt travel or spend their money elsewhere, bought an extra house, for a 6 weeks of the year holiday house or Airbnb. These houses disappear from the rental and housing market, and now become a tax dodge for the wealthy (thru negative gearing) 40% of the houses in our street in popular coastal town are now Airbnb, or holiday houses. Prior to Covid 10 to 20% of houses were. The solution? Get rid of negative gearing, and increase rates or taxes on houses that are not permanently occupied. Let me know which political party has got the guts to tackle that one?

[Author]

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