The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in an era of working from home across the nation, but office occupancy rates remain at all-time lows.
Now, new research from the University of New South Wales in Sydney suggests the vacancy rates in city offices could be vital to addressing the nation’s growing housing crisis.
With hybrid working arrangements now the norm across multiple industries, there has been a global push to convert empty offices into apartments to address housing shortages and revitalise the central business districts.
According to the most recent March 2023 homelessness census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, around 122,494 individuals in Australia were homeless in 2021.
This statistic does not account for young individuals who may have no choice but to reside with their parents due to circumstances beyond their control.
Meanwhile, in January 2023, the office vacancy rate across Australia was the highest it had been since the mid-1990s at 13.3 per cent — up by 0.4 per cent since July last year.
UNSW on Wednesday said by converting empty offices into apartments, Australia could not only reduces its level of homelessness but could also drastically reduce its carbon emissions, given the fact that buildings are responsible for 37 per cent of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions.
“We’ve got what I call an environmental contradiction: that we need to contribute to far fewer emissions, but we need to build far more homes,” UNSW School of Built Environment Associate Professor Philip Oldfield said.
“So there’s this shift towards thinking about when do we need to build, and how can we adaptively reuse existing assets? We need to be creative, and converting these under-utilised office blocks into apartments is one possible way.”
But what about balance?
Supporters argue that increasing housing in urban centres would also benefit the ’15-minute city model’, where many daily needs rely on a short walk or bike ride from home.
However, UNSW Professor Oldfield warned that many office buildings would be difficult to translate into healthy and quality accommodation.
“It’s all about balance. We’re obviously trying to make money and we’re trying to save carbon emissions,” Professor Oldfield said.
“We’re trying to reuse assets in a sustainable way, but we cannot do that to the detriment of people’s health and wellbeing.”
Office-to-apartment conversions would likely have to make use of generic open office spaces to house large-scale cubicle colonies, making adequate natural lighting and ventilation more difficult.
There is, however, the possibility for contractors to introduce light wells and atria into these buildings to increase their residential suitability and appeal.
“Some of this is down to developer ambition; the Sydney Quay Quarter Tower (QQT) building is an example of a radical ambitious retrofit, the likes of which we haven’t seen before,” Professor Oldfield said.
According to Professor Oldfield, the current proposed design plans circulating on social media for office conversions compromise on quality of life and raise questions about the kind of housing Australia considers liveable for present and future populations.
It comes as international interest in the subject intensifies, with many politicians in America calling for legal and regulatory reforms to increase conversion opportunities while Chicago offers up developer subsidiaries.
California has passed legislation to facilitate adaptive reuse, and in the UK, the government has eased zoning restrictions to encourage future uptake of office-to-apartment conversions.