Aired on November 25, 2020, Bill English talks with Carmen LeBerge at Faith Radio about what we’ll eat on Thanksgiving.
But we also talk about how to re-purpose empty commercial space and the eviction crisis America is facing.
Here are my show notes:
Talking points:
What to do with empty commercial space?
- Churches
- Community centers
- Residential facilities for aging population
- Condos
- Affordable housing – estimate – need 7.2M new affording housing units
- Distribution and warehouse
Challenges:
- Takes years to repurpose large buildings – need significant assessments of use and costs to retro fit
- Local governments will need to rethink zoning laws and zoning categories – this will take time
- Infrastructure – water, sewage, power and so forth may need to be redone – this will take time and public investment
- Will the economy maintain stability?
- Will the customers “be there” in 2-5 years?
- As work places shift, bandwidth infrastructure will need to be re-architected
Estimate: Federal gov’t has 45,000 underused or underutilized buildings plus abundant surplus land. Fed gov’t owns or manages 1/3 of all land in the US
Evictions:
CDC’s moratorium really has been ineffective in keeping people in their residences. Right now, thousands are losing their homes.
Aspen Institute of Financial Security: between 30M – 40M could face eviction in the coming months if they don’t get help
Low Income Housing Update: est. $100B in emergency rental assistance is needed
Minnesota: $30M in MN’s housing and rental assistance fund. 21,000 applications requesting a combined $51.9M have been received.
Iowa: 54 organizations have signed a joint letter to Governor Kim Reynolds asking for 480M more in emergency funding for those facing evictions
New Haven, CT – $800K of rental assistance money has not been distributed after eight weeks of approving the distribution of the funds.
Generally 20% – 25% of all Americans have no or only slight confidence in their ability to make next month’s rent payment
This affects us all. Either we help these people up front, or they get evicted. They will still need public assistance after eviction, but their residences will remain empty. There isn’t enough demand to re-rent or sell those residences again. Landlords will lack revenue to pay their commercial mortgages. Banks will be forced to foreclose and their good loans to bad loans ratios will get outside of where the regulators want them, so their ability to make new loans will be diminished as the scrutinize more closing loan applicants. If it becomes severe enough, the Federal Reserve will need to backstop these banks, along with their insurance programs. So, in the end, we all pay for it anyways – It’s lower cost to help these folks out up front.