Downtown Houston has been lucky to profit from a change during the last couple of a long time. Stunning inexperienced areas, luxurious high-rises and inns, eating places, and up to date arts and leisure amenities are house to spectacular artwork installations, farmers markets, main nationwide and worldwide skilled sporting occasions, and all the pieces in between. On the flip facet of this, Houston’s central enterprise district has seen a steep decline in business occupancy, struggling to bounce again to pre-Covid ranges.
Houston just isn’t alone in experiencing this example. Nationwide, business vacancies have gotten more and more noteworthy because the gulf between residential rental charges and stagnant wages widens. Low-income earners, of us making between $20,000 and $30,000 yearly (sometimes minimal wage staff, college students and seniors residing on Social Safety), have been becoming a member of the ranks of the unhoused at an alarming charge as a result of shortage of reasonably priced housing. Armchair economists and the like have been arguing for years that cities ought to repurpose these untapped sources into a possibility to create dignified reasonably priced housing that might maintain these in danger off the streets and near public transit choices.
Pew Charitable Belief, together with worldwide architectural agency Gensler, not too long ago launched their findings from a examine on the topic — with Houston being considered one of two markets studied. The “Versatile Co-Residing Housing Feasibility Examine” discovered that changing Houston’s empty workplace buildings to communities of micro-apartments is, effectively, possible!
“Within the present local weather of excessive building prices, rates of interest, constructing bills, and rising rents, this challenge seems on the typical office-to-residential conversion differently by leveraging the present constructing infrastructure to scale back prices on a per unit foundation,” Brooks Howell, principal architect at Gensler, tells CultureMap. “The result’s a brand new housing typology, a co-living idea, that may present reasonably priced housing to the massive and rising variety of decrease revenue single-person households in an city context.”
The numbers
HUD reported that in 2024 homelessness was at an all-time excessive of 770,000 individuals, up a staggering 18 % from the prior 12 months. Houston is on the low finish of the nationwide common, with a reported 3,270 homeless individuals (4/10,000 Houstonians). CoStar knowledge exhibits that Houston’s central enterprise district comprises 88 workplace buildings of over 50,000 sq. toes, 19 of which present reported emptiness charges of over 30 %. As of November 2024, the median lease in Houston for an house was $1,297. The proposed rental charge for a furnished micro-apartment in a transformed workplace constructing in downtown Houston is $700 — all inclusive, with zero move-in prices, for the reason that models are absolutely furnished.
“The U.S. has a housing scarcity of 4-7 million properties, which has pushed rents to an all-time excessive and made it laborious to avoid wasting to purchase a house,” Alex Horowitz, a challenge director for Pew Charitable Belief and a co-author of the examine, provides. “Houston has one of many highest workplace emptiness charges within the U.S., however workplace layouts usually do not work effectively for house conversions and carry excessive prices. This examine finds that changing places of work to dorm-style housing is cost-effective and may allow low rents — about $700 per 30 days to reside downtown. That would make an actual distinction for folks scuffling with excessive housing prices whereas revitalizing downtown.”
Co-living defined
Co-living is hardly a brand new idea. “Single room occupancy” dwellings, or SROs, had been extraordinarily widespread up till about 1950. It’s price noting that throughout the top of its reputation, homelessness was uncommon. The co-living mannequin permits for a non-public furnished house, whereas bogs, kitchens, and laundry are shared amenities — very similar to a university dormitory. With 40 % of renters being single occupants, this mannequin promotes socialization and neighborhood, one thing that has been trending downward for the reason that pandemic.
Wesley LaBlanc, principal analytics director for Gensler Chicago, provides that this elevated dorm state of affairs is a “Leaping off level for various fashions,” noting that there are six variations from the one within the examine. LeBlanc encourages folks to “Suppose past the traditional. A complete world of housing options come out of this.”
Particular person rooms share facilities equivalent to bigger residing rooms, bogs, and kitchens.Courtesy of Gensler
What to anticipate in a typical transformed constructing
The Pew/Gensler report proposes a prototypical constructing commonplace of 24 flooring, 19 of that are residential, with 60 micro-apartments per ground, or 1,140 residential models per constructing. Every ground will provide six shared kitchen areas, 5 bigger shared residing areas, two smaller shared residing areas tucked into inside hallways, two central bathe areas with 5 non-public bathe rooms every — 2 bathe rooms will embrace bogs and sinks, plus two extra rest room rooms with 4 bogs and two sinks. The overall involves 10 showers, 12 bogs, and 14 sinks per ground. Two laundry rooms, every with three washers and dryers are additionally obtainable per ground.
The excessive value of changing workplace buildings into fully-plumbed, particular person studio residences might be value prohibitive, main a realistic Howell to ask: “What if we didn’t demo all the pieces?” The utilization of current centralized plumbing on every ground saves a mean of 25-35 % in building prices that might come up from working new plumbing to every unit.
The bottom ground would encompass a predominant foyer, administration workplace, and 10,000 sq. toes of retail house. Flooring two via ground are reserved for parking, whereas the fifth ground would provide 10,000 sq. toes of Class B workplace house in addition to facilities just like the gymnasium.
Whereas subsidies can be required for the conversion, the identical won’t be true as soon as the event is out of the development part. The co-living mannequin is projected to value round one-third of the price of changing an workplace constructing to particular person studio residences or establishing new reasonably priced housing.
An illustration of what a bed room would appear to be.Courtesy of Gensler
Micro-apartments particulars
Every particular person unit is designed to be 151 sq. toes, roughly the scale of a modest lodge room. Furnishings embrace one extra-long twin mattress (bedding included), a desk, chair, nightstand, standard-depth half-sized fridge, storage shelf, and cupboard. Items could have solid-core wood doorways and applicable sound insulation — all for a tidy $700 per 30 days.
Pricing has been a key think about figuring out this configuration for reasonably priced, city housing. “Reducing the price of housing to manageable ranges permits residents to spend extra on the opposite monetary wants of their lives, which has broad implications for high quality of life and effectively being,” LeBlanc explains.
