100% in favor of communal living in the downtown towers. Leaving empty buildings on top of the best transportation infrastructure in the city is a crime against the environment. Same goes for tearing down SFH which can comfortably house 6-8 adults to…build 6 and 8-plex one-bedroom apartments. The excesses of the US construction industry are astounding.

I’d need to see some data suggesting that even a tiny fraction of the population would be wiling to live long-term in these communal living scenarios.

"Shared living space" is do-able.

Like lots of other people, I lived a big chunk of my life in college dorms.
Like many other people in my generation, I lived a big chunk of my life wearing green and living with Uncle Sam as my landlord.
Like lots of other people in my generation, I spent lots of my time along the way living in what was euphemistically called "a commune".

I've often offered these examples as ways to deal with "the homelessness crisis".
Homeless "shelters" organized like college dorms.
Homeless "shelters" organized like barracks.

You'd think I was the only person in America who ever experienced living in a "shared living space" ?

I’m not sure why it’s a zero sum equation (if a developer wants to take a crack at upscale dorms, more power to them). Ultimately we need to find a solution to a lot of buildings downtown that are unlikely to be filled as offices anytime in the foreseeable future (and I personally favor refactoring over demolition and rebuilding).

The word "supposedly" is doing some work there, Mr Mudede. Call it what it is, a broke city with a lot of rich people treating it like a theme park (see also: Londongrad).

Rather than wasting time on this exercise, work with SFD to eminent domain all the firetraps and abandoned/derelict buildings as well all the empty lots and put those out to development. Keep that land, lease it out like the UW's metropolitan tract or the various disused school sites SPS rents out to commercial developers. Seattle could be a wealthy city if it didn't persist in giving away its wealth. The old SPD HQ is still a hole in the ground because the developer doesn't have to pay that much to hold it: if it had been put under a lease based on a completed development, it would be working, not lying fallow across from city hall.

Some diners are paying big bucks for communal dining (Communion restaurant). Why not communal living? As @1 notes, the access to everything is very alluring.

Nobody is stopping developers from building communal living now. The problem is that everyone prefers their own bathroom. Literally everyone. What’s being advocated for here isn’t a cultural change, it’s diminished standard of living.
Let’s keep putting our resources for building housing into the kinds of housing desired by the citizenry. Building housing nobody wants doesn’t increase supply and doesn’t bring down prices

Everyone, please keep in mind, the "communal living" scenario was purely Charles' invention. He simply didn't make it all of the way to the end of the "not long" blog post he used as a source. It concludes:

"But office buildings that are due for a remodel or upgrade anyway could be great candidates for this type of reinvention. If the building systems – HVAC, plumbing, electrical – are due for replacement, the project becomes more cost effective. With demand for rental units outpacing growth in new supply, and many cities like San Francisco and Boston offering incentives to convert, there is potential here. For someone with a creative vision and a building in the right location, this could be a successful and innovative project."

The Stranger screams "housing crisis," to further its own failed ideology, not to house anyone. The Stranger's ideology includes destruction of Seattle's SFH neighborhoods, whose residents the Stranger's writers jealously loathe; demanding subsidized housing, which the Stranger's writers want for themselves; and degrading the definition of housing to include tiny houses, and other expensive non-solutions to homelessness. Creatively building actual new housing, in a neighborhood with a high walk score and extensive public transit, serves none of these goals. Therefore, they oppose it. (In addition, here Charles avails himself of the opportunity to slag on two of the Stranger's favorite hate-objects, Mayor Harrell and CM Woo.)

local curmudgeon dear, that old Public Safety Building has certainly (and quietly) changed hands over the last few years, hasn't it? I thought the city still owned it, but according to the county records, they sold it in December of 2019.

From there, it went to something called BOSA Development US llc, but somehow ended up in the Convention Center's name, and they sold it to King County in 2023, and then it went to the Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority (Sound Transit?), then it ended up with BOSA Development (California) and now it's owned by BOSA Development (Civic) as of May of this year.

Property taxes are about 800k/year.

Curiouser and Curiouser.....

It’s almost as if it was a mistake to tear down all the SRO hotels to build office buildings. 🙄

Mud Baby dear, we lost most of the SRO hotels because of the Ozark Hotel disaster. That understandably tightened the fire codes, but many landlords either couldn't afford the new requirements, or decided to close down rather than comply.

A great example of the law of unintended consequences.....

https://www.historylink.org/File/698