Owners of even the cheapest fleabag motels know they must keep track of how many rooms they have & whether they are empty or full.

But today, the year’s busiest shopping day, most retail areas won’t be tracking how many parking spots they have & whether they are empty or full.🧵 This helps explain why so many cities have ill-advised parking policies that frustrate customers, damage economies, waste taxpayer dollars, worsen traffic jams, and, all too often, end with motorists brawling over parking spots.

Let me suggest a few solutions. /2

My thanks to @EskSF for his tireless reporting on @sfdbi’s corruption, @FBISanFrancisco for raiding the dept & helping force out its corrupt boss, & to @Scott_Wiener for passing #SB828.

Thanks to all this, SF is finally implementing digital permitting! /1
missionlocal.org/2023/05/sf-pla… Why did it take an @FBISanFrancisco raid to finally implement digital permitting in #SanFrancisco? /2

For centuries, Americans built compact, walkable, neighborhoods. They provide affordable shelter & let us meet many daily needs without getting in a car. They're a great American tradition

Today, we took a big step toward making that tradition legal again
qz.com/2052284/califo… Here’s a traditional fourplex at 203 Bryant St, #PaloAlto. It’s on a 5000 sf lot. That’s 35 homes per net residential acre. At that level of compactness, people walk a lot more & drive a lot less.

This is the kind of traditional American housing that #SB9 will make legal again.

Imposing minimum parking mandates on commercial land uses near transit makes housing scarce and expensive.

If you have difficulty envisioning why, try adding homes near this #Milpitas light rail station. See all this underused asphalt? It’s all required by law. Here's what a #Milpitas light right station area looks like on the ground.

To get here, take the #VTA light rail line to the Alder stop. Then, trudge north through a sea of parking.

“After eliminating parking requirements, monthly rent in the average #Minneapolis studio apartment fell from $1,200 to less than $1,000.” #AB1401
nhregister.com/opinion/articl… “As the leader of one of the state’s largest parking authorities, Park #NewHaven, I’ve come to learn a lot about parking. Our business model rests on the notion that parking is better when shared & the cost of parking should be borne by people who want to drive.”

A good policy.

Thanks to California’s new accessory dwelling unit (#ADU) laws, homeowners can help solve our housing shortage. It’s legal now.

But wait, there's more! In cities like #Pasadena, these same laws are making it easier and cheaper to build an addition.😃🧵
pasadenanow.com/main/council-c… Under #Pasadena’s current code, “any addition to an existing residence…of over 150 square feet triggers a requirement to provide two covered spaces within a garage or carport.”

Left: addition legal!
Right: no asphalt, no addition...😢

My mom & dad bought their first house in #PaloAlto for about $16,000. At the time, it cost about 5 cents per hour to park downtown. Today, that same house would cost ~$3 million & it’s free to park downtown.

We have completely solved our affordable housing problem–for our cars🧵 In 2019, surveyors counted 313 homeless people in #PaloAlto, up 99% from 2013. They found no homeless cars.

cityofpaloalto.org/files/assets/p…

1/11 “A few years ago, @LauraFriedman43 toured an affordable housing project in #Glendale, the city of 200,000 she represents in the California State Assembly. What caught her eye was the garage: a cavernous, subterranean space, virtually empty.”

slate.com/business/2021/… 2/11 “To comply with local parking requirements—two spaces for every studio or one-bedroom apartment, and rising from there—the builders had been forced to pour millions of dollars of concrete and reduce their number of new apartments..."

Never think about managing curb parking without thinking about how your approach will affect housing supply, home prices & rents.

We gained majority political support for converting 4 acres of parking into 357 homes at the S. #Hayward #BART Station in no small part by…

#YIMBY …agreeing to provide existing nearby residents with free residential parking permits, so they had no fear of the curb parking in front of their homes becoming overcrowded.

photo courtesy of:
jerocorp.com/cadence-apartm…

When cities manage curb parking properly, curb parking shortages will disappear & minimum parking regulations can be removed, even in cities where no public transit exists.

If your planners don’t believe me, ask them to critique this presentation.

#YIMBY
railvolution.org/wp-content/upl… Corollary: When cities fail to manage curb parking properly, no amount of public transit will prevent curb parking shortages.

Do you doubt that? Try visiting #SF’s #UnionSquare, which has the best transit service of any place west of Chicago, after 6 PM when the meters turn off.