Metro Phoenix has been dealing with a housing shortage for several years, and many residents are finding that available housing options — either new or existing — are not affordable.
Alex Horowitz, director of the Housing Policy Initiative at Pew Charitable Trusts, has a potential answer for at least some of those would-be renters: converting empty office space into micro-apartments in co-living spaces.
It’s a little different than the standard idea of turning vacant offices into apartments, which is an expensive and difficult process. Horowitz said in this case, the units would be smaller, more affordable and cheaper to build. That’s due, in large part, to the ability of developers to better use the existing bones of the building, rather than needing to adapt one use to a different one…