EDIT: this comparison is much less clean than I thought it was: the
Union Sq building has 19
garage spaces reserved for affordable units. Combining these with
the permits, it’s 29% of parking-eligible units having a car instead
of 8%.
One of the major reasons existing residents often oppose
adding more housing is that as more people move in it gets harder to
find on-street parking. What if we added a new category of
unit that didn’t come with any rights to street parking?
My city (Somerville MA) included
this in our 2019 zoning overhaul, but it does have some
exceptions:
This policy exempts residents that may be ‘choice limited’, including:
Persons with disabilities
Occupants of affordable dwelling units
Residents with extenuating circumstances
While this is a compassionate approach, it means we haven’t fully
disconnected housing construction from parking demand. For example,
there’s a proposal
to build a 500-unit parking-ineligible building in Davis Sq (which
would no
longer be the end of the
Burren). It’s 25% affordable units, and opponents argue that if
each has a driver this would be 125 additional cars competing for
street parking. But would we really get that many?
A few years ago we got a similar parking-ineligible building in Union
Sq, also a short walk from a subway station:
This is 450 units, of which 20% (90) are affordable.
Ashish Shrestha submitted a records request to the city, and learned that
only
seven units have parking permits.
While the Davis project is a little bigger, this would suggest
something in the range of 10 permits, much less than feared.
This makes sense: if you’re in Union or Davis, with good public
transit and bike options, living without a car is pretty practical.
It also saves you a lot of money, especially for folks living
in affordable units.
How Many Parking Permits?
Link post
EDIT: this comparison is much less clean than I thought it was: the Union Sq building has 19 garage spaces reserved for affordable units. Combining these with the permits, it’s 29% of parking-eligible units having a car instead of 8%.
In 2017 I wrote:
My city (Somerville MA) included this in our 2019 zoning overhaul, but it does have some exceptions:
While this is a compassionate approach, it means we haven’t fully disconnected housing construction from parking demand. For example, there’s a proposal to build a 500-unit parking-ineligible building in Davis Sq (which would no longer be the end of the Burren). It’s 25% affordable units, and opponents argue that if each has a driver this would be 125 additional cars competing for street parking. But would we really get that many?
A few years ago we got a similar parking-ineligible building in Union Sq, also a short walk from a subway station:
This is 450 units, of which 20% (90) are affordable. Ashish Shrestha submitted a records request to the city, and learned that only seven units have parking permits.
While the Davis project is a little bigger, this would suggest something in the range of 10 permits, much less than feared.
This makes sense: if you’re in Union or Davis, with good public transit and bike options, living without a car is pretty practical. It also saves you a lot of money, especially for folks living in affordable units.
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