Deregulate Parking, Says Obama Administration

Great to see the Obama administration come out in favor of housing for people over storage for cars:

“Parking requirements generally impose an undue burden on housing development, particularly for transit-oriented or affordable housing,” the paper states. “When transit-oriented developments are intended to help reduce automobile dependence, parking requirements can undermine that goal by inducing new residents to drive, thereby counteracting city goals for increased use of public transit, walking and biking.”

The anti-parking stance came from a “Housing Development Toolkit,” a broadside against zoning. The report says zoning “reduced the ability of many housing markets to respond to growing demand,” making affordable housing hard to find in high-price areas.

Nixing off-street parking is not the paper’s only recommendation. It also advocates taxing vacant land, making it easier to get permits and making cities more dense.

This is the opposite of a big government mandate - it's the Obama White House urging communities to get rid of local regulations that restrict new housing and smart growth.

Pleasing NIMBYs Means Less Affordable Housing

Construction isn't even finished yet, but already Arlington, VA has seen 3,600 people apply for 122 new units of affordable housing, according to a Washington Post report by Patricia Sullivan.

But there's one thing the article doesn't say: Arlington shrank the size of the affordable housing complex to please neighbors:

In preparation for its proposal, [Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing] staff met with many stakeholders in the Arlington Mill community to hear concerns and ideas. From these meetings, it reduced the number of units to address concerns of the Park Glen community that the complex was too large for the space, adjacent  to the Park Glen condos; and some of the concerns about the density of the project with resulting traffic and crowd-control issues.

From an APAH presentation on the project:

Responds to community issues and County goals: The building height was lowered and the unit count was reduced from 192 (256 bedrooms) units to 122 (245 bedrooms) units.

Note that this building is only about four stories. I've literally heard some people who live on Columbia Pike say allowing a building like this to be eight stories would turn Columbia Pike into lower Manhattan.

Artificially limiting the amount of housing a developer can build comes with real-life consequences. By limiting height, restricting the number of units, or in the case of suburbs, mandating each unit be built on a certain lot size, you're telling a certain number of people they're not allowed to live there and will have to look elsewhere for housing.

When at least 3,600 people are in such urgent need of affordable housing, every unit counts. As Slate's Matt Yglesias has detailed, limits on building size in urban cores have devastating effects.

Fortunately, the tide is slowly turning in favor of allowing taller buildings and denser developments in urban centers. Boston Mayor Tom Menino's newly-unveiled affordable housing plan does just that.

Like Affordable Housing? Oppose Parking Minimums

Even within the city limits of Boston, one of America's great walkable cities & home to one of the country's most-used transit systems, developers are required to build a minimum of half a space for each unit of housing up to a ridiculous 1.5 parking spaces per unit of housing, whether the residents want them or not. It adds to the cost of housing and adds an incentive to drive - if you're forced to pay for a parking spot, you feel like you should keep a car there (or at least a large, rectangular box).

But some mavericky developers are boldly refusing to build things their customers don't want to pay for:

One of those developers is Dave Mullens with the Urban Development Group. He opened the Irvington Garden in a close-in Northeast Portland neighborhood last year. It’s 50 units with no parking places.

“The cost of parking would make building this type of project on this location unaffordable,” Mullens says.

Mullens calls the difference “tremendous.”

“Parking a site is the difference between a $750 apartment and a $1,200 apartment. Or, the difference between apartments and condos,” he says. Mullens says the current market is friendlier for affordable rental apartments than for condominiums. He says the Irvington Garden filled within weeks of opening, and has remained that way. He says the majority of renters don’t have cars – though some do, and park on the street.

And when some renters DO park on the street? Duncan Black flagged the worst horror stories single-family-home-owning neighbors have had to offer:

“The personal anecdotes I’ve heard have to do with elderly relatives coming to visit, or driving into the neighborhood, and having to park a block or two away, and/or fears about that.”

Parking a block or two away??