Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has unveiled a program offering tax incentives that will encourage the conversion of downtown office buildings into residential housing.
According to an Associated Press report, the program will accept applications through June 2024 and projects will be required to begin construction by October 2025. Applicants will be encouraged to set aside the ground floors of their properties for either retail or other public uses.
The office vacancy across greater Boston reached 19.1% at the beginning of the year, according the JLL data, which is the highest level of vacancy in nearly two decades. Wu pointed to the city’s housing shortage as the reason for this endeavor, although she acknowledged that some office property owners would only participate as a last resort strategy.
“One building could potentially create hundreds of new housing units that could include a lot of affordable units,” Wu said in an interview. “If we got two or three buildings downtown with a couple hundred units each, that would be a significant step … To make the finances work — the tremendous costs to redo all the plumbing and all of that — the property value of the commercial building has to have sunk pretty low that they’re getting desperate.”
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