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I can tell you that when we were moving from SF to Seattle this past year, we were getting _crushed_ on any house that was sitting on an upzoned lot. Seattle's

I can tell you that when we were moving from SF to Seattle this past year, we were getting _crushed_ on any house that was sitting on an upzoned lot. Seattle's done a decent job of upzoning parts of neighborhoods around transit corridors, and we were looking at houses on those lots because I believe in the upside as you do. Well, so do others, and they have _cash_ to buy it - we did not! We're now in a SFH in a mostly SFH neighborhood, but a block or so from an upzoned area that has townhouses and some apartments. The only issue that I have with this so far is that newer construction denser housing is not required to have parking for some reason, but people living in them do have cars. I'm hoping that larger projects start to require parking because transit here just isn't good enough to not have a car. I don't care if people park in front of my house or anything - we're all neighbors - but at some point we're going to run out of street parking. And a lot of people think that's a fake concern, and all I can say to that is, they've never visited Philadelphia.

xxpor 5y ago
The way to solve the parking problem is to price street parking, not to require new buildings to build parking while the existing houses get off scott free. It's the exact same supply and demand argument: limited supply so how do you reduce demand to the supply that exists? Increase prices.
- ghaff 5y ago
  I expect residential parking is pretty price-insensitive. Maybe more households would forgo owning a marginal second car. But if a households needs a car, they need a car. And if that means paying $100+/month that's just something they're going to have to eat.
  - ihaveajob 5y ago
    With parking requirements, families who don't have/need/want a car still have to pay the extra price for a built-in feature they don't need. When we bought our first home, it was a condo in SoMa without car parking. We loved it because we didn't want or need a car, and we couldn't have comfortably afforded a place with parking included. Especially in metropolitan environments, minimum parking requirements are the near the core among the reasons many things don't work well (public service, street safety, runaway home prices...)
    - ghaff 5y ago
      The parent was making a different point though which was that increasing the price of parking would decrease the demand. And while that is true almost by definition, mostly you'll just transfer money from all the people who want/need cars to someone or someones else. Most adults aren't going to forego a car because parking is too expensive. (Of course, they may decide just to live someplace else where parking is cheaper/free.)
      - ihaveajob 5y ago
        There's definitely a core set of drivers who can't give up their cars, for whom any price increase will just be swallowed. However there's a big swath of gray cases at the boundary. For example, when we moved to San Francisco, we kept our car and parked on the street. After two parking tickets within the first month (because we forgot the weekly sweep schedule), we decided it didn't make sense to keep the car. We sold it, and started using Caltrain/Muni/biking for most of our trips, with a few Zipcar rentals peppered in. Without those parking tickets, we would definitely have kept our car because there would be no downside.
        ghaff 5y ago
        There is a gray area. I know a couple who live in SF who don't have a car. (They actually have a parking space but they sublet it.) They take muni some although my observation when I visit is that they use a lot of Zipcars, regular rentals, deliveries, and Ubers. One of the things that's probably true as well is that many people adjust their lifestyle to what's convenient. If you need to rent a car to go somewhere on the weekend, you probably tend to favor other activities.
  - xxpor 5y ago
    If everyone just swallows it, the price is still too low.
ghaff 5y ago
People complain about parking requirements but, in most US cities (and indeed in a great deal of the world) most households have cars. If I lived in Seattle, even if I didn't need one day to day for work/errands/etc., I'd certainly own one for going out to the mountains and so forth on the weekends.
- davidw 5y ago
  So let the market work. If people don't have a car, they're doing the environment a favor for all of us and clogging the roads less. It's only fair that they should get a discount: not forcing them to pay for automobile storage they're not using!
  - mrep 5y ago
    Isn't that the case already pretty much everywhere land is scarce? When I lived in Seattle, parking was an extra $300 a month on top of rent but I didn't have to pay that when I didn't have a car.
    - davidw 5y ago
      The norm in post-WWII North America is to mandate specific quantities of parking per land use type. Some places get really detailed about this. Here's a map of places that have eliminated parking mandates in some way: https://parkingreform.org/resources/mandates-map/ https://parkingreform.org/resources/mandates-map/
      - mrep 5y ago
        Yes I know. I'm responding to the "not forcing them to pay for automobile storage they're not using". This website says it costs 25-50k to build an underground parking spot [0] which when they can charge $3,600 per year it is totally profitable to build them without any subsidy by the renters not driving. [0]: https://www.dbsg.com/blog/surface-parking-vs-underground-parking/#:~:text=The%20average%20cost%20per%20parking,tied%20into%20the%20structural%20system https://www.dbsg.com/blog/surface-parking-vs-underground-par....
Seattle3503 5y ago
> The only issue that I have with this so far is that newer construction denser housing is not required to have parking for some reason, but people living in them do have cars. I'm hoping that larger projects start to require parking because transit here just isn't good enough to not have a car. Mandatory parking minimums make constructing new housing more difficult, raising the cost of housing. The city is making the tradeoff that affordable housing is more important than free parking. As density increases it will hit a point where you need to pay for parking. I live in Belltown and own a parking spot. Ultimately I think this is the right direction to go, the city shouldn't have to pay to store your car.
- ihaveajob 5y ago
  I envy the Tokyo system, where you're required to show you have your own parking spot in order to be able to purchase a car. No wonder their public transit is world class.
- SmellTheGlove 5y ago
  > Mandatory parking minimums make constructing new housing more difficult, raising the cost of housing. The city is making the tradeoff that affordable housing is more important than free parking. As density increases it will hit a point where you need to pay for parking. I live in Belltown and own a parking spot. Ultimately I think this is the right direction to go, the city shouldn't have to pay to store your car. I get it, but Seattle public transportation isn't good enough to just tell people they shouldn't have a car. I have a driveway and a garage, so the problem is solved for me, and in theory means someone could put their car in front of my house on the street. But if they're putting 6 townhouses on a lot, that won't scale, and maybe they should instead build 4 and parking. > the city shouldn't have to pay to store your car. I agree, but that's pretty much what forcing people to park on the street is. I do get that mandating parking raises the cost of housing, which is also counterproductive. But if you drive through Ballard, street parking is pretty tight - I'm not saying people are going to start parking in the median on 8th and 15th, but I'm not sure how much more they can build w/o parking before it starts to look like S. Broad St in Philly!
  - 5y ago
notJim 5y ago
> The only issue that I have with this so far is that newer construction denser housing is not required to have parking for some reason The reason is that parking requirements massively add to the costs of building new apartments. It works out that everyone in the building has to pay extra, regardless of whether they actually use the parking. Parking minimums also mean that some projects just will never work economically. > at some point we're going to run out of street parking Sounds fine! The city doesn't need to provide free car storage to everyone.
- frumper 5y ago
  The poster didn't say he wanted the city to provide free car storage. Parking on the street is being put on people because the city isn't putting in the realistic requirement that makes developers deal with the fact that people actually do have cars, especially in LA
  - milkytron 5y ago
    Having car infrastructure paid for by the users is a much more fiscally responsible way to account for the cost of that infrastructure. If the option of building parking was left up to the developer, they would have to weigh whether the income from parking spaces would be greater than the income for residences. At a certain point, people will try to go from a 2 car household to 1 to save money, or go carless. The city shouldn't mandate how many people should have available parking, it makes more sense for the market to decide and allow people to have some flexibility if they so desire. Making a requirement will just incentivize more people to drive and the costs will be baked in whether they do have a car or not, so they might as well get a car.
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
I live in Ballard, and bought a town home with a parking spot because I couldn't see the alternative working out (even though, in theory, our transit isn't that bad, living next to the D-line). I mean, there were some nice places that lacked spots, but until my kid is 10 or so years old, we need a car even if we only drive it occasionally. I don't get why Seattle doesn't introduce permit street parking in our neighborhood though. It just seems like there are way too many cars vying for on street parking. And that's in places that aren't being overrun by RVs and vans.
deepakhj 5y ago
The only way to reduce the dependency on cars is to build units w/o parking and then raise money to improve transit.

xxpor 5y ago

The way to solve the parking problem is to price street parking, not to require new buildings to build parking while the existing houses get off scott free. It's the exact same supply and demand argument: limited supply so how do you reduce demand to the supply that exists? Increase prices.

ghaff 5y ago
I expect residential parking is pretty price-insensitive. Maybe more households would forgo owning a marginal second car. But if a households needs a car, they need a car. And if that means paying $100+/month that's just something they're going to have to eat.
- ihaveajob 5y ago
  With parking requirements, families who don't have/need/want a car still have to pay the extra price for a built-in feature they don't need. When we bought our first home, it was a condo in SoMa without car parking. We loved it because we didn't want or need a car, and we couldn't have comfortably afforded a place with parking included. Especially in metropolitan environments, minimum parking requirements are the near the core among the reasons many things don't work well (public service, street safety, runaway home prices...)
  - ghaff 5y ago
    The parent was making a different point though which was that increasing the price of parking would decrease the demand. And while that is true almost by definition, mostly you'll just transfer money from all the people who want/need cars to someone or someones else. Most adults aren't going to forego a car because parking is too expensive. (Of course, they may decide just to live someplace else where parking is cheaper/free.)
    - ihaveajob 5y ago
      There's definitely a core set of drivers who can't give up their cars, for whom any price increase will just be swallowed. However there's a big swath of gray cases at the boundary. For example, when we moved to San Francisco, we kept our car and parked on the street. After two parking tickets within the first month (because we forgot the weekly sweep schedule), we decided it didn't make sense to keep the car. We sold it, and started using Caltrain/Muni/biking for most of our trips, with a few Zipcar rentals peppered in. Without those parking tickets, we would definitely have kept our car because there would be no downside.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        There is a gray area. I know a couple who live in SF who don't have a car. (They actually have a parking space but they sublet it.) They take muni some although my observation when I visit is that they use a lot of Zipcars, regular rentals, deliveries, and Ubers. One of the things that's probably true as well is that many people adjust their lifestyle to what's convenient. If you need to rent a car to go somewhere on the weekend, you probably tend to favor other activities.
- xxpor 5y ago
  If everyone just swallows it, the price is still too low.

ghaff 5y ago

People complain about parking requirements but, in most US cities (and indeed in a great deal of the world) most households have cars. If I lived in Seattle, even if I didn't need one day to day for work/errands/etc., I'd certainly own one for going out to the mountains and so forth on the weekends.

davidw 5y ago
So let the market work. If people don't have a car, they're doing the environment a favor for all of us and clogging the roads less. It's only fair that they should get a discount: not forcing them to pay for automobile storage they're not using!
- mrep 5y ago
  Isn't that the case already pretty much everywhere land is scarce? When I lived in Seattle, parking was an extra $300 a month on top of rent but I didn't have to pay that when I didn't have a car.
  - davidw 5y ago
    The norm in post-WWII North America is to mandate specific quantities of parking per land use type. Some places get really detailed about this. Here's a map of places that have eliminated parking mandates in some way: https://parkingreform.org/resources/mandates-map/ https://parkingreform.org/resources/mandates-map/
    - mrep 5y ago
      Yes I know. I'm responding to the "not forcing them to pay for automobile storage they're not using". This website says it costs 25-50k to build an underground parking spot [0] which when they can charge $3,600 per year it is totally profitable to build them without any subsidy by the renters not driving. [0]: https://www.dbsg.com/blog/surface-parking-vs-underground-parking/#:~:text=The%20average%20cost%20per%20parking,tied%20into%20the%20structural%20system https://www.dbsg.com/blog/surface-parking-vs-underground-par....

Seattle3503 5y ago

> The only issue that I have with this so far is that newer construction denser housing is not required to have parking for some reason, but people living in them do have cars. I'm hoping that larger projects start to require parking because transit here just isn't good enough to not have a car. Mandatory parking minimums make constructing new housing more difficult, raising the cost of housing. The city is making the tradeoff that affordable housing is more important than free parking. As density increases it will hit a point where you need to pay for parking. I live in Belltown and own a parking spot. Ultimately I think this is the right direction to go, the city shouldn't have to pay to store your car.

ihaveajob 5y ago
I envy the Tokyo system, where you're required to show you have your own parking spot in order to be able to purchase a car. No wonder their public transit is world class.
SmellTheGlove 5y ago
> Mandatory parking minimums make constructing new housing more difficult, raising the cost of housing. The city is making the tradeoff that affordable housing is more important than free parking. As density increases it will hit a point where you need to pay for parking. I live in Belltown and own a parking spot. Ultimately I think this is the right direction to go, the city shouldn't have to pay to store your car. I get it, but Seattle public transportation isn't good enough to just tell people they shouldn't have a car. I have a driveway and a garage, so the problem is solved for me, and in theory means someone could put their car in front of my house on the street. But if they're putting 6 townhouses on a lot, that won't scale, and maybe they should instead build 4 and parking. > the city shouldn't have to pay to store your car. I agree, but that's pretty much what forcing people to park on the street is. I do get that mandating parking raises the cost of housing, which is also counterproductive. But if you drive through Ballard, street parking is pretty tight - I'm not saying people are going to start parking in the median on 8th and 15th, but I'm not sure how much more they can build w/o parking before it starts to look like S. Broad St in Philly!
- 5y ago

notJim 5y ago

> The only issue that I have with this so far is that newer construction denser housing is not required to have parking for some reason The reason is that parking requirements massively add to the costs of building new apartments. It works out that everyone in the building has to pay extra, regardless of whether they actually use the parking. Parking minimums also mean that some projects just will never work economically. > at some point we're going to run out of street parking Sounds fine! The city doesn't need to provide free car storage to everyone.

frumper 5y ago
The poster didn't say he wanted the city to provide free car storage. Parking on the street is being put on people because the city isn't putting in the realistic requirement that makes developers deal with the fact that people actually do have cars, especially in LA
- milkytron 5y ago
  Having car infrastructure paid for by the users is a much more fiscally responsible way to account for the cost of that infrastructure. If the option of building parking was left up to the developer, they would have to weigh whether the income from parking spaces would be greater than the income for residences. At a certain point, people will try to go from a 2 car household to 1 to save money, or go carless. The city shouldn't mandate how many people should have available parking, it makes more sense for the market to decide and allow people to have some flexibility if they so desire. Making a requirement will just incentivize more people to drive and the costs will be baked in whether they do have a car or not, so they might as well get a car.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

I live in Ballard, and bought a town home with a parking spot because I couldn't see the alternative working out (even though, in theory, our transit isn't that bad, living next to the D-line). I mean, there were some nice places that lacked spots, but until my kid is 10 or so years old, we need a car even if we only drive it occasionally. I don't get why Seattle doesn't introduce permit street parking in our neighborhood though. It just seems like there are way too many cars vying for on street parking. And that's in places that aren't being overrun by RVs and vans.

deepakhj 5y ago

The only way to reduce the dependency on cars is to build units w/o parking and then raise money to improve transit.