Reside Act NOW

America doesn't have enough homes that people can afford, and Reside Act NOW exists to help close that gap. One of the most overlooked places to find new homes is the empty office and commercial space sitting in the middle of our cities.

Turning those buildings into housing is slow and uncertain today. A city has to work out which buildings could realistically convert, what rules and financing stand in the way, and how to be ready when federal money opens up, usually with little staff time to spare. We want to make that process smoother. We help local housing offices find their strongest candidates, understand what converting them would take, and prepare to compete for federal conversion grants under the RESIDE Act.

The starting point is a free, public screening of every tall commercial building downtown, built from the city's own open data and published at https://resideact.org. From there we build out each city with local volunteers, filling in what the data can't tell us, and help its housing office get ready to apply. Everything we publish is open for anyone to check, copy or argue with.

The problem

Downtown office buildings are emptying out while the same cities run short of housing. Converting one into the other sounds obvious, and mostly it doesn't happen. Some buildings simply can't work: their floors are too deep for every bedroom to get a window, or the numbers never close. But even where a conversion could work, the path is slow. A city has to figure out which buildings are worth pursuing, sort out zoning and code questions, line up financing, and do it all with a housing office that is already stretched thin. Good candidates sit empty for years because nobody has the time to work through them.

What we do

We help cities make that process smoother, from the first question (which buildings could actually work?) to a federal grant application.

It starts with a free, public screening. Our open engine reads a city's own building data (footprints, heights, zoning, property records) and estimates, for every tall commercial building downtown, how much of each floor could get daylight, how many homes it could hold, what conversion might cost and how big the financing gap could be. We publish the results building by building at https://resideact.org.

The map is only the first step. Local volunteers then fill in what public data can't tell us: which buildings are actually vacant, which local rules apply, and where our numbers are wrong. We turn that into something a housing office can use, a shortlist of realistic candidates with the open questions for each, so the city is ready when federal money becomes available.

Everything is public and checkable: the data sources, the assumptions, the code and the results, under a Creative Commons license. Where we can't know something, we say so.

Why now

The RESIDE Act (Section 210 of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, Public Law 119-101) created a HUD pilot of $1M to $10M grants for turning vacant, abandoned commercial buildings into attainable housing. Two things stand between that law and any actual homes. The pilot only runs if Congress appropriates money for it, and nothing has been appropriated yet. And the grants go to state and local governments, many of which don't know the program exists and won't have buildings identified when HUD's funding notice lands on a short deadline.

We work on both: the evidence that makes the case for funding the pilot, and the local readiness that decides where the money can actually go.

Where we are

Downtown San Jose (99 buildings), Greater Downtown Denver (310) and Center City Philadelphia (103) have a first pass published. All three are works in progress. The geometry is solid, but whether a given building is genuinely vacant and abandoned under the law turns on code enforcement and court records that no city publishes as map data. Filling that in, city by city, is what our volunteers do, along with starting the cities nobody has screened yet.

How we work

We're volunteer-run, remote-first and organized city by city. A chapter is a handful of local people (planners, architects, law and planning students, retired city staff, anyone who knows the downtown) working toward two things: a city page accurate enough that a local planner would stand behind it, and a housing office ready to apply for the money.

Who we're looking for

Chapters get built out of ordinary local knowledge, so the most useful skill is usually just knowing a downtown and being willing to look things up. Specifically:

• Architects, planners and real estate or housing finance people, to check our numbers against how buildings and deals actually work, and to tell us where the model is wrong
• Law and planning students, and law school clinics, to work out when a building counts as vacant and abandoned under a given state's rules, which is the question our data can't answer
• Data, GIS and Python people, to find a new city's open building data, check whether it holds up, and bring it into the engine
• Retired city planners and housing officials, to open the door at a local housing office, where a familiar voice does more than a cold email ever will
• Students and campus groups, to adopt a city as a team, with the published page as the result
• Writers, photographers and anyone who explains things well, because a building nobody can picture is a building nobody fights for
• People with no relevant background at all, because most of our records research is careful searching and careful note-taking, and we'll teach it

We'd rather have someone dependable for three hours a week than someone brilliant for one burst. Most roles are remote; the ones that aren't only need you to walk around your own downtown.

Who we're not

We're an independent volunteer effort. We're not affiliated with HUD, Congress or any city government, we don't represent property owners or developers, and appearing in our data doesn't mean a building is eligible, for sale, or that its owner wants anything to do with a conversion.

Everything we've published: https://resideact.org