Commercial buildings may not be suitable for conversion to residential property, but will that stop the government from spending thin air money on such projects?
No, it will not.
What will stop such projects is a conspicuous failure of the first one, followed by pressing demands for higher priority activities with better and safer grifting opportunities for the sponsors.
The other factor is that we are starting to see major violent criminal activities from immigrant gangs which will personally threaten our current rulers and their families. They are about to discover that they cannot control the illegal immigrants they have worked so hard to bring into this country as compliant replacements for the native population.
The "newcomers" are not all going to be compliant slaves.
For a young single man who is an illegal immigrant, membership in an organized criminal gang pays a whole lot better than waiting around for a welfare deposit on an EBT card. And with perhaps ten million young men (16-45) in this category, a certain percentage will take up with the gangs. The absolute number will be quite large.
It won't matter as long as these men confine their predations to working class or middle-class natives. But the burglaries and home invasions are already starting to hit the upscale gated communities. As this continues, it will change a great number of priorities for the politicians. The rulers who buy and sell the politicians will see to that.
What will stop office-to-residential conversion projects is a decision by our rulers to spend that money instead on high-end security measures for the gated communities in which they live. They will also spend money to move the illegals "somewhere else". Like that small town where you thought you could move to escape the problems of the big city.
After all, what good is a multi-million dollar grifting deal from a conversion project if the sponsors can get killed in a home invasion from an immigrant criminal gang. Especially when the project is filled with gang members taking a cut from the deal who want a bigger cut than sponsors want to pay.
Maybe they can start another big war far away and draft the illegals to go away and fight in it. They can promise them "a pathway to citizenship". Whatever the rulers do to protect themselves will be too expensive and too important to waste available funds on virtue signaling projects like an office-to-residential conversion.
There just won't be very many of them for a combination of reasons, the least of which is that they are impractical.