• ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠@midwest.social
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    7 months ago

    Except that they don’t have the necessary plumbing infrastructure to make that feasible. It’d be better and possibly cheaper to tear down entirely and build something actually designed for living.

    • Dippy@beehaw.org
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      7 months ago

      They would make easy retrofits into college campuses, or any kind of campus really.

    • Boomkop3@reddthat.com
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      7 months ago

      Still better than living in a tent under a bridge, like an embarrassing amount of the us population

      • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠@midwest.social
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        7 months ago

        Well, depends. If the tent camp is near services and transit, it can be better than a shelter that’s impossible to get food near.

        Maybe you’ve never been homeless, but I have.

        • pbjamm@beehaw.org
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          7 months ago

          Keep the food court and turn one of the anchor stores into one-stop services building.

          Never mind, luxury condos make more money…

        • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          7 months ago

          We must have had very different homeless experiences. I would have gladly taken a micro apartment over a tent any day. Any. Day. It could have been in the middle of a desert for all I care.

          A door that locks, a bathroom, a roof, and water easily accessible? Yeah, that is a million times better than the constant fear and animalistic mindset that comes with a lack of basic resources.

    • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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      7 months ago

      A lot of these projects seem to require at least a partial rebuild of the site. So, you might tear down an anchor store and remove parking to add in apartments. Then, the remaining commercial real estate becomes more valuable since it can also be supported by residents.

    • OsaErisXero@kbin.run
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      7 months ago

      This. There were 2 malls near me where they spent nearly 10 years total trying different designs on paper trying to find a way for it to be cheaper to retrofit into housing, or anything useful really, and eventually they just tore both down and built new smaller structures on the footprint.

    • pbjamm@beehaw.org
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      7 months ago

      And no windows in most of the storefronts. It is not impossible to convert them, but it is not particularly economical in most cases.