Office towers have lost nearly 20 million square feet of leases in the first quarter of 2023, according to real estate brokerage JLL. A record 962 million square feet of office space is now vacant in the United States—20.2% of the country’s entire stock.
In the absence of workers, social problems are proliferating, making downtown spaces even less appealing. Petty crime in New York is up 29% since 2019. Homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area has surged by more than a third in four years. Last July, Starbucks closed 16 stores around the country, including six in Seattle, two in Portland, Oregon, and one at D.C.’s Union Station, citing safety issues including drug use.
All of this is wreaking havoc on America’s urban centers. The pain is being felt most acutely in six cities: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston and Washington, D.C., which have lost an estimated $171 billion in office real estate value since 2019. Here’s how they’re faring and what their mayors are doing about it.