Not just zoning, the average office building needs thorough work for that to happen. Washrooms are centralized and one per floor in an average office building for example, for it to have a bathroom for every apartment, it needs extensive piping.
It can definitely be done though, I live in such a building myself.
The piping also needs to be oversized for apartment areas compared to offices.
Local company made this mistake, raised an apartment building on sewage piping designed for offices. At peak hours in the evening and morning the sewage ended up backflowing into the apartments at the lower levels.
I’m sure there are special cases where residents would need bathroom access directly from their apartment, but are there any good reasons for private bathrooms, other than convenience?
To me, one of the most interesting things about converting non-residential building to residential is the potential for different ways of living. A shared bathroom and kitchen with offices surrounding a communal area could lead to a more communal lifestyle for residents.
If you want to charge market rents you’d need to provide private bathrooms. Any apartment without a private bathroom is what we’d call a bedsit in the UK and it could be worth half the rent.
We’re talking about converting unused office space into affordable housing, though. Charging half the rent would qualify it as affordable housing and is still better than no income from an unused building.
Zoning makes that difficult. We need to lobby to even allow for that even though it seems so obvious
Not just zoning, the average office building needs thorough work for that to happen. Washrooms are centralized and one per floor in an average office building for example, for it to have a bathroom for every apartment, it needs extensive piping.
It can definitely be done though, I live in such a building myself.
The piping also needs to be oversized for apartment areas compared to offices.
Local company made this mistake, raised an apartment building on sewage piping designed for offices. At peak hours in the evening and morning the sewage ended up backflowing into the apartments at the lower levels.
So just like in an office, life is less shitty on the top.
I’m sure there are special cases where residents would need bathroom access directly from their apartment, but are there any good reasons for private bathrooms, other than convenience?
To me, one of the most interesting things about converting non-residential building to residential is the potential for different ways of living. A shared bathroom and kitchen with offices surrounding a communal area could lead to a more communal lifestyle for residents.
If you want to charge market rents you’d need to provide private bathrooms. Any apartment without a private bathroom is what we’d call a bedsit in the UK and it could be worth half the rent.
We’re talking about converting unused office space into affordable housing, though. Charging half the rent would qualify it as affordable housing and is still better than no income from an unused building.
Maybe for college dorms, hostels or halfway houses.
Yea it could definitely work for those but I don’t think it’s limited to those.
Would have to be cheap as hell rent to put up with that.
Difficult as long as we don’t want to do it, the second we do, it’s a man made obstacle that can be fixed in a moment.