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Three millennials buy abandoned high school, convert it into 31-unit housing
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this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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Yea, this isn't as simple as it appears.
A building like that would have all sorts of remediation challenges, just from sitting vacant for 10 years. I'm surprised it could be remediated without major costs - that's often a big challenge in reusing/repurposing old buildings.
It's not like 3 random dudes bought a building and refurbed it, these guys have the background (and financing), to the tune of 3.3 mil to rehab the place. Just getting it to meet code for a multi-tenant dwelling (instead of a school which is how it was originally zoned), is quite an accomplishment, and could've been enough to stall such a project. I'm impressed - I can only imagine all the potential showstoppers that could've popped up anytime along the way.
To your point about the rental costs, surely their financer(s) had to look at their plans and determine whether it could generate the income necessary to repay the loan.
It would be interesting to see their project plans and get a sense of everything this kind of project encompasses.
One of my dreams is an NGO or government agency that builds high density housing and rents it at cost. Then uses the income and donations to scale the process up until it's a major player in the housing market.
Alas, I do not have access to millions of dollars in funding.
I've heard other psych nurses say that it would be nice to have a pseudo / super low acuity psych hospital / jail superlite where all the people who have been so chronically institutionalized that they can't function in society can just check themselves into and chill semi-indefinitely instead of clogging up psych hospitals with vague suicidality complaints (some of them are probably legit, but most of them are realistically mild enough that they just need a $100 a month room with a bed, a locker, and one of those japanese style single-piece sink / toilet / shower stall units, and a cafeteria on the ground floor). Offer them ways out, job training, etc, but if they're really just so fucked by the system that they just wanna do nothing and maybe occasionally go to the common area and do a word search while watching sitcom reruns just kinda... let them live their best life as they see it...? It'd probably actually be cheaper than constantly ripping them between different institutions and paying for nursing care, COs, etc. You'd probably still need a small amount of supervision but you'd need a much lower ratio of workers who don't need as much training.
Yeah. Yeah that would actually be really nice and it would save a ton of money. Most people in that situation do want to get functional and live on their own though too, so I would expand it to include nearby housing that's more expensive, more independent, but also in walking distance so they can come back and hang out or get more help when they need to.