Opinion | Why are cities so slow to turn empty offices into housing?

“Across America, once-busy downtowns are lifeless, studded with too many empty, outdated office towers,” the Editorial Board writes in its latest look at how to reanimate our cities. At the same time, urban housing is in terribly short supply. The solution seems obvious: take one and turn it into the other.

But that is barely happening — though roughly 20 percent of office space in major cities is sitting vacant, only about 2 percent is slated to be converted. As the board shows in this informative multimedia piece, there are good, practical reasons that it’s challenging to turn a big office block into places people would actually want to live.

So, what should be done? The board has some concrete suggestions for city governments that want to be ready to swoop in as commercial real estate prices fall. Maybe that conference room would make a nice quiet home study, after all.

Our resident futurist, Bina Venkataraman, reports from Bogotá, Colombia, on the usefulness of a “care block” — a program providing free day care, high school diploma prep, tech training, yoga classes, health care, legal aid and even centralized laundry services to caregivers, who are mostly women. Launched a few years ago under the city’s first female mayor, the program now includes 20 care blocks, all together funded at $800,000 a year, which have served more than 400,000 people.

Honestly, even to me as a parent with a good job in a much wealthier country, having access to all these things in one place sounds almost miraculous — and that’s Bina’s point. This model could benefit any city where people spend time caring for others — in other words, all of them.

What kind of protector do you need when you’re a religious minority pinpointed repeatedly over centuries as a sinister threat to the mainstream? (Shana tovah, everyone!) In Jewish folklore, the answer has been a golem — as author Adam Mansbach describes it in an op-ed, “a 10-foot-tall Jewish crisis monster” built of clay and animated briefly to defend its people when they’re under attack.

In these times when antisemitic assaults, insults and conspiracy theories have once again become a constant refrain in the United States, including from figures as prominent as former president Donald Trump and Elon Musk, we need a golem as much as ever. “The golem is necessary because no victory is permanent — and because when the reversal comes, it can be swift and deadly,” Mansbach writes. “History has seared this lesson into the Jewish people. But Americans cannot seem to remember it.”

• Greg Sargent looks at how an unelected school board in a rural Virginia county is making moves that echo its Jim Crow past.
• David Ignatius explores a legal clash over satellite frequencies between China and … you will literally never guess which country.
• Journalist Adam Davidson, of “Planet Money” fame, makes the case that the best medium in which to consume Trump’s trial in Georgia for allegedly conspiring to steal the election is audio. (I “watched” part of Trump Impeachment I on NPR, and he’s not wrong.)

It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.

Old offices are homes now

Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/compliments/complaints. See you tomorrow!