Ok, so here is what we appear to actually be talking about.

It& #39;s an expansion of the office-to-resi, planning free housing conversions to more commercial buildings, especially empty shops.

Permitted development rights for office to resi (introduced in 2013) has resulted in a new generation of housing like this, which is often used for housing homeless families https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-47720887">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e...

So you can see why he went for "lol, newts" rather than "sleep in a former warehouse or abandoned department store if you get made homeless"

This was the finding of an RICS study into office to resi from 2018:

I& #39;d also raise substantial concern about this passage. Lots of brownfield sites would count as & #39;demolish and rebuilding& #39; a redundant site. You would lose an enormous amount of affordable housing from urban developments with this.