Effects Of Residential & Commercial Parking Shortages

Introduction

Housing affordability and parking availability are two of the most vexing problems in the nation's largest cities. In San Francisco, internationally known for its ambience, most working people find it almost impossible to find a house, condo, or apartment at an affordable price. Finding a parking space is nearly as difficult. Many houses are situated on narrow lots, and frequent curb cuts for their driveways reduce on-street parking. Cars circle the block looking for rare empty spaces. Residents say parking problems are a major bane of urban life. In many other urban centers as well-New York, Chicago, Boston, and Seattle-housing costs and parking availability are twin public-policy problems that become enormous when combined.

Although residents of Long Beach, NY rarely connect housing affordability with parking availability, the two problems are actually intimately linked, presenting planners with something of a conundrum. To ease parking shortages, cities write zoning ordinances and subdivision regulations requiring that new dwelling units provide off-street parking spaces. But parking spaces add significantly to the cost of building houses, requiring more land, more materials and more labor. This, of course, raises their sales prices or monthly rents. Todd Litman estimated that one parking space per unit increases the cost by 12.5% and that two spaces increases cost by 25% in comparison with no off-street parking. Donald Shoup, based on interviews with housing developers, has argued that the cost of providing parking also acts as a ratchet that increases housing prices by more than the direct cost of the parking spaces.

Because developers must bear the costs of parking and that raises the basic cost of the housing unit, they believe that the higher priced units are not as marketable unless they increase the number of luxury features included in the units. Thus, because parking places are required, more up-scale features are typically included in the unit and this causes their prices to rise even further. So it seems that reducing the parking problem also reduces housing affordability. If municipalities allowed new housing units to be built without parking spaces, housing prices would be lower but streets could eventually overflow with parked cars.

By requiring the provision of parking spaces as a condition of approval for new housing, urban zoning and subdivision regulations may be inviting more cars into the city. Planners often favor "transit oriented development" to increase public transit use and lessen residents' reliance on automobiles. It would seem logical to decrease the number of parking spaces in neighborhoods that have good transit access, as many in Long Beach, NY. Neighborhoods with fewer parking spaces and efficient transit service may attract families who avoid or limit car trips. But even neighborhoods with few car owners can suffer parking shortages. The double and triple parking common on residential streets occurs in densely populated communities where car ownership rates are comparatively low.

Literature review

Parking has been widely recognized to be an important transportation policy issue in the broad context of the transportation-land use ...