Class is (never) dismissed

Would you go back to high school—for good? Haunting the halls of your adolescence is now a legit housing option, as vacant schools across the country are being converted into residential apartments.

Quick vocab lesson: “Adaptive reuse”—the practice of giving underused buildings a second life as something we actually need, like apartments—has hit a record high, with 180,585 units currently in the works, per RentCafe. Hotels make up 37% of all makeovers, followed by offices (24%), factories (20%), and schools (8%).

Schools may be the smallest category on the adaptive-reuse honor roll, but they’re also the fastest-growing for good reason: Public school enrollment has been declining as more families choose private or charter, leaving these gorgeous, historic buildings out of a job. This is how the 1924 Timber School in Conejo Valley, CA (last filled with students in 2015) became “boarded up and vacant for years,” says Dave Kurian at MBK Rental Living. After acquiring the property in 2023, MBK turned the site into the Sanctuary at Thousand Oaks, a 218-apartment complex with some classrooms as co-working spaces and the old cafeteria revamped as a grab-and-go cafe.

Schools are shoo-ins for residential conversions because they exist in just about every town in America. Beyond that geographical edge, they come architecturally blessed with light-filled rooms, ample parking, and a football field’s worth of outdoor space. By contrast, office buildings fail every test as conversion candidates: They’re crammed in downtown cores, and their sprawling, windowless floor plans cry out for full overhauls just to be livable. It’s no surprise that a wave of recent office-to-residence projects hit structural problems and got shut down entirely. Still, America’s dire need for more housing means that adaptive reuse isn’t dropping out anytime soon; plus tax breaks are enticing developers to carve out apartments everywhere from power plants to prisons.

But these incentives come with strings attached—like preserving many of the original building’s historic touches. The Sanctuary at Thousand Oaks took great pains to salvage and restore the school’s Spanish roof tiles, stucco, and cupola. The Residences at Wells School in Southbridge, MA (a junior high converted into 62 apartments in 2022) even kept a few chalkboards and lockers.

So what’s it like living in a school? One Wells School resident—who attended junior high there—admitted to some not-so-fond memories of getting smacked in the face during dodgeball in gym class. Now, she hosts community potlucks in the building.

Take-home lesson: Just about any old building can earn some extra credit as a home, which is why we’re giving the adaptive reuse trend an A+.