REAL ESTATE
Denver City Council Member Paul Kashmann reports the Schlessman YMCA, 3901 E Yale Ave, has proposed completely redeveloping their 6 acre campus into a mixed use site including a new YMCA, a separate building devoted to complimentary wellness businesses, restaurants, perhaps a boutique grocer and mid- to high-rise residential uses.
https://www.denverymca.org/university-hills-redevelopment
AFFORDABLE HOUSING
The Role of Microhousing in Ending Chronic Homelessness
The Pallet design is informed by the lived experiences of its staff, 80 percent of whom have experienced homelessness or other conditions requiring temporary housing. The product aims to deliver an affordable, quick-build solution while offering privacy, security, and dignity for residents. Made with aluminum framing, fiberglass reinforced plastic, and a foam insulating core, the units can be assembled in under an hour and at a much lower cost than traditional housing. To King, the biggest obstacle to ending chronic homelessness is a lack of investment in services. Although products like Pallet can provide a safe waypoint, the “magic of rehabilitation and opportunity,” King says, lies in service provision, particularly for mental health services.
https://www.planetizen.com/features/118520-role-microhousing-ending-chronic-homelessness
Dirty Dozen Meanest Cities in the US
NCH has studied many of these localities and has come up with a Dirty Dozen, based also on discussions with advocates and people experiencing homelessness from around the country. Each one of the Dirty Dozen cities are regularly harassing those who stay outside and have been engaging in sweeps for over a year. Each one of these cities has a severe lack of affordable housing, including long waiting lists for subsidized housing, while rents and evictions are both on the rise. Every one of these cities has an inability to house everyone requesting assistance, even in emergency congregate facilities.
https://nationalhomeless.org/dirty-dozen-meanest-cities/
City Council approves $2 million for the Denver Basic Income Project
Founded by Denver resident Mark Donovan, who provided the initial funding, Denver Basic Income Project is partnering with the University of Denver’s Center for Housing and Homelessness research. It’s part of a larger approach to homelessness that gives cash to people directly, who can then spend the money on whatever they need – no strings attached. Similar projects are in the works across the country, in Los Angeles, Oakland, Chicago and more.
https://denverite.com/2022/09/12/city-council-approves-2-million-for-the-denver-basic-income-project/
Impact of Denver’s Affordable Housing Policy Could Mirror That of Portland, Oregon
The city of Portland, Oregon, passed a similar affordable housing policy in 2017, and data released by the U.S. Census Bureau indicates Denver may be on the same path that Portland took following the announcement and subsequent implementation of its inclusionary zoning policy. Portland’s permitting activity surged to nearly 6,000 units in 2017 as developers rushed to get projects approved before the new law went into effect. However, following this initial surge, activity fell off at a swift pace. While there is evidence that Portland’s pipeline hit a bottom in 2020 and is beginning to recover, the total permitted unit figure last year was still 50% below the 2017 peak.
https://product.costar.com/home/news/shared/132987393
Study would look at feasibility of converting downtown Denver office buildings into housing
“Since the pandemic, the downtown has really suffered from vibrancy because a lot of people are now either working from home full time or they have a hybrid work environment,” Adaptive Reuse Senior Project Development Administrator Jenny Buddenborg said. She said if approved, the study would specifically look at the feasibility of reusing 10 to 15 high-rise office buildings downtown. There would also be an investigation of underperforming office buildings to determine their potential for residential conversions.
https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/downtown-denver-office-buildings-into-housing/73-8fb2b0ad-af74-4ad5-9670-39c4a7981fc2
MOBILITY
More rapid bus lines, fewer highway expansions: New plans for metro Denver set shift in project funding
Rewrites of Colorado’s statewide 10-year priority project plan and two Front Range regional transportation plans are nearing adoption in the next month. Especially in metro Denver, they shift big money from expanding pavement to other projects that make it easier, and safer, to travel on public transportation, on bike or on foot. The growing Front Range still would see some new lanes added on major freeways and arteries under the revised plans, but not as many as previously envisioned. Particularly notable is the axing of a future expansion of Interstate 25 through central Denver, the state’s busiest stretch of highway, supplanted by smaller safety-focused projects.
https://www.denverpost.com/2022/09/10/cdot-metro-denver-transportation-plans-greenhouse-gases/
America’s E-Bike Revolution Is in Trouble
“Portraying e-bikes as a simple, obvious, and inevitable evolution of transportation (or even of bicycling) doesn’t fully explain these strange contraptions…. Strapping a motor to a bike turns out to alter more than just speed and exertion. It produces a chameleon that takes on, under various conditions, both the best and worst features of a variety of transportation technologies. The result is less an evolution of a two-wheeled machine than a pastiche of the many things such a device represents. It’s a monster made from bicycles and motorbikes.”
https://www.treehugger.com/america-ebike-revolution-is-in-trouble-6591205
How can smart mobility bridge the first/last mile gap? Empirical evidence on public attitudes from Australia
The quantitative analysis disclosed that regardless of location, overcoming private vehicle use, user aversion to multimodality, and reluctance to share rides with strangers’ presence significant barriers to some smart mobility options. Furthermore, respondents in inner ring areas of cities have more positive views towards public transport, the environment, and smart phones, while the middle/outer ring residents on the contrary have more positive views towards private vehicles.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0966692322001752
REAL ESTATE AND MOBIILITY
JPMorgan CEO tells business leaders remote work isn’t sustainable (paywall)
JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon, an outspoken advocate for bringing workers back to the office, told leaders in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on Thursday that “management by Hollywood Squares doesn’t work well.” While working remotely makes sense for some jobs, Dimon said, “you learn so much from people” when collaborating in the same room. He said to look at “who’s getting ahead, who’s getting the plum assignments?” It’s the person going into the office every day, Dimon argues.
https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2022/09/30/jpmorgan-ceo-bashes-remote-work-culture.html
Remote Work Drove Over 60% of House-Price Surge, Fed Study Finds
“The transition to remote work because of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a key driver of the recent surge in housing prices,” economists Augustus Kmetz and John Mondragon, of the San Francisco Fed, and Johannes Wieland of the University of California, San Diego, wrote in a note published Monday. House prices rose 24% in the two years ended November 2021, the authors wrote. More than 60% of that increase is attributable to the rise in work from home during the pandemic — a trend that has persisted, with 30% of work still being done from home as of last month. “This suggests that the fundamentals of housing demand have changed, such that the persistence of remote work is likely to affect the future path of real estate prices and inflation,” the economists wrote.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-26/remote-work-drove-over-60-of-house-price-surge-fed-study-finds
California Becomes First State To Broadly End Parking Mandates as Proposals Spread Nationally
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation last week to eliminate the mandates for housing and commercial developments near public transportation as the number of cities taking such a step expands around the United States. Under the new law, scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, California cities no longer can impose minimum parking requirements on new developments within a half-mile of public transit, leaving developers to weigh the costs of adding parking to a project. Some 20 cities across the country have taken similar steps with abolishing parking mandates, and more could be coming.
https://product.costar.com/home/news/shared/1225624756
At Car Lots, the Best Deal May Be the Real Estate
The idea of finding new uses for car lots has existed for decades, but the transformation of Martin Cadillac illustrates how trends in real estate and the auto industry are rapidly converging. The rising cost of land in downtown areas and a premium on walkable commercial districts have recently made urban car lots tempting targets for developers. And with the move toward online car shopping, dealerships no longer need large sales spaces.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/27/business/auto-dealerships-real-estate.html
Working From Home Is Not an Urban Escape Hatch
These numbers are from the 2021 edition of the American Community Survey, a sort of mini-census that the US Census Bureau sends out to 3.5 million households each year. They come in response to the multiple-choice question, asked of household members who were already reported to have performed paid work the previous week: “How did this person usually get to work LAST WEEK?” “Car, truck or van” remained the box checked most frequently, with an estimated 75.6% of US workers getting to their jobs that way in 2021. But the percentage working from home, which had been rising slowly for years, jumped to 17.9% in 2021 from 5.7% before the pandemic in 2019. In some places, as should already be apparent from the above chart, it jumped much more than that.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/working-from-home-is-not-anurban-escape-hatch/2022/10/05/e54e51a0-44a1-11ed-be17-89cbe6b8c0a5_story.html
Remote Work, Economic Shifts Push Tech Giants To Deepen Cuts in Real Estate Portfolios
Global giants, including Facebook parent company Meta and home-sharing platform Airbnb, are making deeper cuts to once-vast real estate portfolios by shutting down office locations, subleasing unwanted space, terminating prelease agreements and walking away from future investments as they and other businesses shift toward more flexible remote-work options and prepare for economic headwinds that analysts say might result in a recession. “When many companies decided they were going to go remote first, they needed a lot less office space than before,” said Colin Yasukochi, executive director of real estate brokerage CBRE’s Tech Insights Center. Tech companies have “been the most accommodating in terms of offering flexibility and not requiring their employees to come back for any number of days.”
https://product.costar.com/home/news/shared/1364473927
Should remote workers be paid less than those in the office? Experts weigh in. (paywall)
There is no silver bullet answer so far. Tech giants Meta Platforms Inc. (Nasdaq: META) and Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOGL), the parent companies of Facebook and Google respectively, have both opted to reduce pay for remote workers living in lower-cost areas. Airbnb Inc. (Nasdaq: ABNB) said earlier in 2022 that it would pay remote workers and in-office workers the same no matter where they were based. The debate comes as many workers consider remote work to be a valuable perk, which is probably why 45% of American workers would take a pay cut to get or keep remote work, according to a recent survey by GoodHire. That same survey found 73% of workers believed companies should pay in-office workers more.
https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2022/10/07/remote-work-pay-office-return-salary-busines.htm
