Canada needs more homes, and maybe fewer offices. Are conversions the answer?
Global News
Empty offices line downtown cores across Canada. With an urgent need for more affordable housing supply in Canadian cities, are office conversions the answer?
Two problems facing Canadian real estate seem, at first glance, like an obvious answer to one another.
The first is that there aren’t enough homes for everyone in Canada to live affordably; the second is that more offices than ever are sitting vacant or half-empty with remote and hybrid work styles keeping workers at home and away from deteriorating downtowns.
A lack of supply in one corner of the real estate market and too much in the other begs the question: why not convert empty offices into housing units, and kill two birds with one stone?
It’s an idea that’s already taking off in some Canadian cities — but one that developers say sounds a lot simpler in principle than it is in practice.
A building sitting at 706 7th St. SW. in Calgary perhaps encapsulates the potential of the model.
Once the headquarters of now-defunct Dome Petroleum, the 10-storey offices had been vacant for two years before the non-profit housing provider HomeSpace Society stepped in and took over the bones of the building.
“Before HomeSpace, this building was used for absolutely nothing. It was an empty office,” recalls HomeSpace CEO Bernadette Majdell in an interview with Global News.
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