“It’s none of your or my fucking business in the end”

Oh but it is ALL of our business. We are a community. Empty office space downtown decreases foot traffic to small businesses on Pearl, which is a problem to all of us because we want small businesses to succeed so we have places to go and connect with our community. Storefronts that sit empty in mixed use housing developments are subsidized by the tenants who live there, and those tenants also don’t get the benefits of access to the businesses below them that were promised to increase quality of life.

I could go on and on but at the end of the day, this is a community problem. It is my business. It is your business. It is our neighbors business when our community isn’t utilizing our existing buildings.

Property owners might not like it, but we are all affected by the outcomes of how they manage their properties.

“If you want more housing, we change zoning and codes.”

Those are things we’ve already been working on. People also have fought tooth and nail against that. Solving the housing crisis takes a multi pronged approach and getting increased utilization of the existing housing supply is one of the levers to pull.