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WASHINGTON, Jan 16 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – From his
office in downtown Washington, D.C., half a mile from the White House, architect Michael Wiencek can see something most
people cannot: vacancies.
“The 1970s building across the street, the four floors I see are all vacant,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“I’m looking at another building across the street which has been half-vacant since I’ve been in this office.”
While someone walking the streets of the capital would be hard-pressed to recognise it,
this region has in recent years experienced the highest commercial vacancy
rates in the country, according to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG), a non-profit.
And in those empty blocks, Wiencek sees something many do not: opportunity
– and a way to help alleviate Washington’s housing shortage.
A September report from MWCOG warned that by 2045 the region would need to build 100,000 more homes than are already planned.
Across the country, “no state has an adequate supply of affordable rental housing for the lowest income renters,”
according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a
non-profit.
Over the past dozen years, Wiencek and his firm
have been involved in numerous projects in and around Washington to convert empty office space to housing, particularly for low-income residents.
The economics can be surprisingly feasible, Wiencek said – in part because flat
complexes have become so expensive to buy, but also because tearing down and constructing a new, large
building is cost-prohibitive.
Converting disused office space also brings residents back to what are often run-down parts of
the city, he said.
Fifteen years ago such conversions were a new
idea. Today there are more of them, though “not nearly as much as there could be”.
VACANT ‘SURPLUS’
Wiencek has noticed significant interest in conversions
from developers across the country.
Policymakers are also paying attention: since October, an official task force in Washington has looked at how the city can encourage developers to convert vacant office space, with the
explicit intention of addressing the lack of
low-income housing.
Its recommendations are expected early this year.
Washington is something of a bubble because it is a “federal town”, said David Whitehead, a housing activist with Greater
Greater Washington (GGWash)- a non-profit advocating for walkable urban communities, and a member of the task force.
Commercial real estate owners have for decades been able to charge high rents to government
entities, contractors and non-profits seeking high-class office space downtown, he said.
Yet recent years have seen major changes in the demand for office space, fuelled by the rise of remote working and coworking, and
because the federal government has decreased in size.
“The need for office space is shrinking,” a planner with MWCOG warned in 2017.
But, said Whitehead, many commercial real estate owners had yet to accept this new reality.
Meantime, city tax penalties for vacant commercial space remain low and hard to impose.
That goes to explain why Washington has a large surplus of office space, Whitehead said – roughly equivalent
to two Pentagons, or at least 13 million square feet.
Meanwhile, an official count last year found there were nearly 7,000 homeless people in the city.
Most were living in emergency shelters. Nearly half that number were families.
“We have this sitting surplus of office vacancy and draining of affordable housing, so why can’t we figure that out?” he said, although he admitted the task force faced big
challenges.
“It’s not an easy thing to convert vacant commercial space to housing in general, and beyond that, we’re now also talking about converting and subsidizing,” he said.
‘BIG BOX’ CONVERSIONS
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration,
a government agency, the country had about 88 billion square feet of commercial floorspace in 2016.
It expects that number will reach about 123 billion square feet by 2050.
According to real estate consultancy CBRE, the national commercial vacancy rate currently stands at about 13 percent.
Which is why, even as Washington assesses its vacant office space, other states are looking at theirs – including fast-emptying commercial spaces such as groceries
and “big box” stores that have been hit by the rise of the
internet economy.
A pilot project in Florida is looking to convert a former St.
Petersburg grocery store – which sat vacant for four years – into housing and a venue where
low-income entrepreneurs could start a retail business.
Commercial property owners across Florida are finding it increasingly difficult to keep retailers in “large format” stores,
the project’s organisers said. That is particularly acute in low-income communities.
“The idea came through thinking about places I pass by quite a bit that stood vacant,” said Ashon Nesbitt of the Florida Housing Coalition (FHC), a non-profit.
“In a lot of low-income communities there are these resources of buildings. Instead of looking at them as liabilities, we need to see them as resources that need to be redeployed in a different way,” he said.
In addition to a “severe lack” of affordable rental housing,
Nesbitt said, Florida has experienced widespread closures of
retail and grocery stores.
With a grant from the national mortgage-backer Fannie Mae, the FHC is drafting a blueprint that could be
used by local governments, developers, housing finance
authorities and others across the country for
similar conversion projects, said the FHC’s Ben Toro-Spears.
Few models exist in the United States for this type of project, he said, which meant
the concept of adapting the building for a different use was
new for its owner – a national property owner.
Toro-Spears said the firm was keenly awaiting the proposal.
And, he added, the rising number of vacant commercial spaces – on which owners must still pay taxes, utility
bills and other expenses – meant there was potential to scale up the project nationwide.
“These are really large organisations, and if we can demonstrate early on that this can be successful, I think they’ll adopt it pretty quickly,” Toro-Spears said.
Already the two have been inundated with interest from across the state,
including from cities and civic groups.
“They continue to ask what’s going on: ‘We have a site. Can you look at this site?'” said
Nesbitt.
“It’s definitely something that caught folks’ attention, and people want to see similar things happen in their communities.” (Reporting by Carey L.
Biron; Editing by Robert Carmichael. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm
of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news,
climate change, women’s and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking and
property rights. Visit website for more stories.)
Payouts from Spark Driver program can be unpredictable, drivers say
*
Spark Driver crucial for boosting e-commerce and Walmart Plus subscriptions
*
Walmart enhances security features for Spark Driver app after data breach
By Siddharth Cavale
NEW YORK, Nov 8 (Reuters) – Walmart will pay independent
delivery drivers new financial incentives to pick up online orders at its
U.S. stores and deliver them to shoppers during the holiday season, the retailer told Reuters.
The move is part of Walmart’s strategy for boosting sales to upper-income households and competing with e-commerce rival
Amazon.com, which is selling more everyday essentials to shoppers
that it delivers in a day or two.
Josh Havens, spokesperson for the world’s biggest retailer,
said the company would offer delivery incentives and more earning opportunities to existing drivers.
He declined to provide details.
U.S.-based Walmart relies on a loosely organized network of thousands of freelance drivers who download
a Walmart-designed app, Spark Driver, to their cellphones.
“Spark Driver is very important to Walmart … because it helps grow e-commerce sales and Walmart Plus subscriptions,” said Arun Sundaram, senior vice president at CFRA Research, referring to its membership program.
Walmart’s global e-commerce business surpassed
$100 billion in sales in 2023, and Chief Financial Officer
John David Rainey said in June he expects its U.S. e-commerce business
to turn a first profit in the next year or two. Walmart is focused on improving its e-commerce margins by delivering more goods to shoppers’ homes directly from its stores using Spark
Driver, he said previously.
VARYING PAY
Spark Driver pay varies according to order size and distance.
If an online shopper requests delivery to an apartment, or of heavy items such as furniture,
drivers earn more, according to Walmart.
Gridwise, a data-analytics company that helps drivers
track their earnings, reports that from October 2023 to September 2024, Spark Drivers earned a gross average of
$21.90 per hour and $12.26 per trip.
Joseph Wilson of Bloomington, Indiana, a Spark Driver since 2022,
said payouts can be unpredictable, however.
“There doesn’t seem to be any logic behind how they estimate driver payouts before tips,” he said.
“I can receive an order for seven items for $20 (pay) or an order of 50-plus items for $7. It’s really frustrating.”
To broaden its delivery service’s appeal to shoppers, Walmart slashed the annual fee for its
Walmart Plus membership, by 50% ahead of the holiday season. Walmart Plus members receive unlimited free same-day deliveries from stores on orders over $35.
The retailer is offering U.S. shoppers a one-year
membership for $49 through Dec. 2. Walmart Plus is on track to reach 32 million members by year-end from 29.2 million in 2023, research firm
Emarketer estimates.
Amazon is also taking aim at Walmart with a $99.99-a-year add-on fast grocery
delivery service for Amazon Prime members.
Amazon Prime membership costs $139 per year. The e-commerce giant has 180 million U.S.
Prime members, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.
Quick store-to-home deliveries have helped Walmart boost its market share as more upper-income households subscribe to Walmart Plus, the company said in February, without providing details.
With more subscribers, Walmart can potentially earn more advertising revenue from consumer products and food companies pitching their brands on Walmart.com, Sundaram said.
Walmart sells ads to its suppliers through its highly profitable Walmart
Connect retail media business that generated about $3 billion in 2023.
Spark Driver suffered a data breach in February, according
to Walmart, where hackers stole personal data from Spark Driver accounts,
including Social Security numbers. Two drivers who spoke to Reuters
said scammers used this data to create profiles and impersonate drivers.
Walmart spokesperson Havens said the retailer has
simplified incentives ahead of the holidays and improved
safety features, such as stricter password requirements and selfies
to log in. Walmart is also piloting physical ID checks at some stores.
Walmart executives will provide their holiday-season outlook with
third-quarter results on Nov. 19.
(Reporting by Siddharth Cavale in New York; Editing by Rod Nickel)
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By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jan 16 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – From his
office in downtown Washington, D.C., half a mile from the White House, architect Michael Wiencek can see something most
people cannot: vacancies.
“The 1970s building across the street, the four floors I see are all vacant,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“I’m looking at another building across the street which has been half-vacant since I’ve been in this office.”
While someone walking the streets of the capital would be hard-pressed to recognise it,
this region has in recent years experienced the highest commercial vacancy
rates in the country, according to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG), a non-profit.
And in those empty blocks, Wiencek sees something many do not: opportunity
– and a way to help alleviate Washington’s housing shortage.
A September report from MWCOG warned that by 2045 the region would need to build 100,000 more homes than are already planned.
Across the country, “no state has an adequate supply of affordable rental housing for the lowest income renters,”
according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a
non-profit.
Over the past dozen years, Wiencek and his firm
have been involved in numerous projects in and around Washington to convert empty office space to housing, particularly for low-income residents.
The economics can be surprisingly feasible, Wiencek said – in part because flat
complexes have become so expensive to buy, but also because tearing down and constructing a new, large
building is cost-prohibitive.
Converting disused office space also brings residents back to what are often run-down parts of
the city, he said.
Fifteen years ago such conversions were a new
idea. Today there are more of them, though “not nearly as much as there could be”.
VACANT ‘SURPLUS’
Wiencek has noticed significant interest in conversions
from developers across the country.
Policymakers are also paying attention: since October, an official task force in Washington has looked at how the city can encourage developers to convert vacant office space, with the
explicit intention of addressing the lack of
low-income housing.
Its recommendations are expected early this year.
Washington is something of a bubble because it is a “federal town”, said David Whitehead, a housing activist with Greater
Greater Washington (GGWash)- a non-profit advocating for walkable urban communities, and a member of the task force.
Commercial real estate owners have for decades been able to charge high rents to government
entities, contractors and non-profits seeking high-class office space downtown, he said.
Yet recent years have seen major changes in the demand for office space, fuelled by the rise of remote working and coworking, and
because the federal government has decreased in size.
“The need for office space is shrinking,” a planner with MWCOG warned in 2017.
But, said Whitehead, many commercial real estate owners had yet to accept this new reality.
Meantime, city tax penalties for vacant commercial space remain low and hard to impose.
That goes to explain why Washington has a large surplus of office space, Whitehead said – roughly equivalent
to two Pentagons, or at least 13 million square feet.
Meanwhile, an official count last year found there were nearly 7,000 homeless people in the city.
Most were living in emergency shelters. Nearly half that number were families.
“We have this sitting surplus of office vacancy and draining of affordable housing, so why can’t we figure that out?” he said, although he admitted the task force faced big
challenges.
“It’s not an easy thing to convert vacant commercial space to housing in general, and beyond that, we’re now also talking about converting and subsidizing,” he said.
‘BIG BOX’ CONVERSIONS
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration,
a government agency, the country had about 88 billion square feet of commercial floorspace in 2016.
It expects that number will reach about 123 billion square feet by 2050.
According to real estate consultancy CBRE, the national commercial vacancy rate currently stands at about 13 percent.
Which is why, even as Washington assesses its vacant office space, other states are looking at theirs – including fast-emptying commercial spaces such as groceries
and “big box” stores that have been hit by the rise of the
internet economy.
A pilot project in Florida is looking to convert a former St.
Petersburg grocery store – which sat vacant for four years – into housing and a venue where
low-income entrepreneurs could start a retail business.
Commercial property owners across Florida are finding it increasingly difficult to keep retailers in “large format” stores,
the project’s organisers said. That is particularly acute in low-income communities.
“The idea came through thinking about places I pass by quite a bit that stood vacant,” said Ashon Nesbitt of the Florida Housing Coalition (FHC), a non-profit.
“In a lot of low-income communities there are these resources of buildings. Instead of looking at them as liabilities, we need to see them as resources that need to be redeployed in a different way,” he said.
In addition to a “severe lack” of affordable rental housing,
Nesbitt said, Florida has experienced widespread closures of
retail and grocery stores.
With a grant from the national mortgage-backer Fannie Mae, the FHC is drafting a blueprint that could be
used by local governments, developers, housing finance
authorities and others across the country for
similar conversion projects, said the FHC’s Ben Toro-Spears.
Few models exist in the United States for this type of project, he said, which meant
the concept of adapting the building for a different use was
new for its owner – a national property owner.
Toro-Spears said the firm was keenly awaiting the proposal.
And, he added, the rising number of vacant commercial spaces – on which owners must still pay taxes, utility
bills and other expenses – meant there was potential to scale up the project nationwide.
“These are really large organisations, and if we can demonstrate early on that this can be successful, I think they’ll adopt it pretty quickly,” Toro-Spears said.
Already the two have been inundated with interest from across the state,
including from cities and civic groups.
“They continue to ask what’s going on: ‘We have a site. Can you look at this site?'” said
Nesbitt.
“It’s definitely something that caught folks’ attention, and people want to see similar things happen in their communities.” (Reporting by Carey L.
Biron; Editing by Robert Carmichael. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm
of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news,
climate change, women’s and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking and
property rights. Visit website for more stories.)
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Payouts from Spark Driver program can be unpredictable, drivers say
*
Spark Driver crucial for boosting e-commerce and Walmart Plus subscriptions
*
Walmart enhances security features for Spark Driver app after data breach
By Siddharth Cavale
NEW YORK, Nov 8 (Reuters) – Walmart will pay independent
delivery drivers new financial incentives to pick up online orders at its
U.S. stores and deliver them to shoppers during the holiday season, the retailer told Reuters.
The move is part of Walmart’s strategy for boosting sales to upper-income households and competing with e-commerce rival
Amazon.com, which is selling more everyday essentials to shoppers
that it delivers in a day or two.
Josh Havens, spokesperson for the world’s biggest retailer,
said the company would offer delivery incentives and more earning opportunities to existing drivers.
He declined to provide details.
U.S.-based Walmart relies on a loosely organized network of thousands of freelance drivers who download
a Walmart-designed app, Spark Driver, to their cellphones.
“Spark Driver is very important to Walmart … because it helps grow e-commerce sales and Walmart Plus subscriptions,” said Arun Sundaram, senior vice president at CFRA Research, referring to its membership program.
Walmart’s global e-commerce business surpassed
$100 billion in sales in 2023, and Chief Financial Officer
John David Rainey said in June he expects its U.S. e-commerce business
to turn a first profit in the next year or two. Walmart is focused on improving its e-commerce margins by delivering more goods to shoppers’ homes directly from its stores using Spark
Driver, he said previously.
VARYING PAY
Spark Driver pay varies according to order size and distance.
If an online shopper requests delivery to an apartment, or of heavy items such as furniture,
drivers earn more, according to Walmart.
Gridwise, a data-analytics company that helps drivers
track their earnings, reports that from October 2023 to September 2024, Spark Drivers earned a gross average of
$21.90 per hour and $12.26 per trip.
Joseph Wilson of Bloomington, Indiana, a Spark Driver since 2022,
said payouts can be unpredictable, however.
“There doesn’t seem to be any logic behind how they estimate driver payouts before tips,” he said.
“I can receive an order for seven items for $20 (pay) or an order of 50-plus items for $7. It’s really frustrating.”
To broaden its delivery service’s appeal to shoppers, Walmart slashed the annual fee for its
Walmart Plus membership, by 50% ahead of the holiday season. Walmart Plus members receive unlimited free same-day deliveries from stores on orders over $35.
The retailer is offering U.S. shoppers a one-year
membership for $49 through Dec. 2. Walmart Plus is on track to reach 32 million members by year-end from 29.2 million in 2023, research firm
Emarketer estimates.
Amazon is also taking aim at Walmart with a $99.99-a-year add-on fast grocery
delivery service for Amazon Prime members.
Amazon Prime membership costs $139 per year. The e-commerce giant has 180 million U.S.
Prime members, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.
Quick store-to-home deliveries have helped Walmart boost its market share as more upper-income households subscribe to Walmart Plus, the company said in February, without providing details.
With more subscribers, Walmart can potentially earn more advertising revenue from consumer products and food companies pitching their brands on Walmart.com, Sundaram said.
Walmart sells ads to its suppliers through its highly profitable Walmart
Connect retail media business that generated about $3 billion in 2023.
Spark Driver suffered a data breach in February, according
to Walmart, where hackers stole personal data from Spark Driver accounts,
including Social Security numbers. Two drivers who spoke to Reuters
said scammers used this data to create profiles and impersonate drivers.
Walmart spokesperson Havens said the retailer has
simplified incentives ahead of the holidays and improved
safety features, such as stricter password requirements and selfies
to log in. Walmart is also piloting physical ID checks at some stores.
Walmart executives will provide their holiday-season outlook with
third-quarter results on Nov. 19.
(Reporting by Siddharth Cavale in New York; Editing by Rod Nickel)