This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

Last spring, the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams held a press conference at a construction site in lower Manhattan.

Thank you, thank you so much.

He was there to promote a major pillar in his housing plan.

We must be a city of yes.

We have to think differently and we have to lean into how do we have a

different approach to housing. Adams was wearing a hard hat and a windbreaker

that said Mayor Eric Adams on it and he wasn't speaking at any

regular old construction site. That's producer Chris Barube. Mayor Adams was

giving his speech in a former office tower.

A few years ago, this building was filled with cubicles and polymer desks and copy machines

and most importantly, thousands of white-collar workers. But during the pandemic, the workers stopped

coming in and this 24-story building sat largely empty. So today the

building is being renovated and by next summer it's going to be filled with over 500 new apartments.

Right now in Manhattan, 18% of office space is vacant.

At the same time, the city of New York has a major housing problem

with more than 100,000 people using the municipal shelter system. So Eric Adams

and city officials are talking a lot about taking those empty offices and filling and to convert office builders like the one we just tore into housing for New Yorkers.

It makes it clear what we can do with more of our vacant office buildings.

You know, we're talking about millions of square feet of office space.

The Adams administration actually launched a task force to look into this idea on a big scale.

Leading the task force is Dan Gerodnick.

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