The Biden administration is sending 40 billion to corporate landlords to convert unused office space to residential apts.
The purpose is important. No argument there. Thanks to Amazon’s destruction of retail, we need less office space. Moving residences back into downtown is a good trend. Many developers are already doing it without any gov’t help.
The use of gov’t funds for this purpose is an obvious bailout, perfectly parallel to TARP in 2009. Corporate landlords ran wild with the free money flow of QE, and now they’re stuck with many speculative buildings that were unjustified by existing and obvious trends. The government is paying them for STUPID decisions.
Nonbark: I’m not seeing any comments on this from the people who would normally comment on such things. Wolf Richter has been discussing the trend, and detailing the difficulty of conversion, for a long time. The various fake “populist” influencers, who would normally catch and bash bailouts, aren’t noticing it.
Polistra's Mill 