I haven't been down in the  lower 48 in quite a while, but last time I was in Springfield there were several abandoned strip malls around town.  Right near where my mom lived there was an abandoned food superstore that could have easily been converted to a dozen or more apartments of 1 or 2 bedrooms.  It was right across the street from another food superstore, which was why it went out of biz.  Kroger vs Safeway, and Kroger won.

Here in Anchorage we have the Northfield Mall which has been abandoned for a decade, while at the same time every year the city struggles to find shelters for the homeless.  The rental market is so tight I have been on 2 waiting lists for affordable housing for over a year.

I don't know what the reason is the Seattle market is different, perhaps there it's because they are able to completely raze the mall and put up profitable market rate housing instead of affordable housing units.  There's enough rich people around  they're not only short of affordable housing, they're short of land to build more new Condos for the young IT programmers or boomers selling their McMansions to the Chinese to downsize as they retire.

RE