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RealBurhanAzeem OP t1_itpw0pi wrote

Thank you all that came out in support! This was the first bill I wrote and introduced after inauguration and am so excited it got over the finish line.

Edit: Context - When you build an apartment in Cambridge you have to build a parking spot with it. The problem is 1/3 of households in Cambridge don't own a car and so that space goes unused and it adds about $100-$250 in rents!

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MyStackRunnethOver t1_itq5mk9 wrote

MVP right here ^

Keep it up, I’m expecting housing affordability within my lifetime ;p

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NotValid_123 t1_itr97sk wrote

I’ll move to Cambridge without a car if the housing is affordable. No reason to own a car if I can walk take public transit to everything I need.

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_ituiy1e wrote

Councilor — when is the city going to tackle zoning restrictions? Is there any good reason why the city can’t have 4-6 story multi families city wide?

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vimgod t1_itqmrbk wrote

You're an absolute fucking king

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Heebopeebo t1_itqb7ih wrote

Such a fan of yours!!!! Keep up the awesome work.

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1minuteman12 t1_ittcvpm wrote

It adds 100-$250 in “rent” via converting development costs to rental prices but I don’t see anything that prevents developers from just charging the same market rate rents and pocketing the saved expenses.

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Cav_vaC t1_itufor7 wrote

Well, ultimately supply and demand. Developers will use the saved space for more rental properties, all else being equal.

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_ituj4b6 wrote

Parking takes up a huge amount of space, and developers will often not even bother building a project (especially low-to-average quality housing) because the parking minimums cut into their margins too much

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Ill-Telephone-7926 t1_iu46ska wrote

Won't renters decide what they're willing to pay for a given listing? I imagine the market will tend to pay less for listings without parking, just as it does for ones without dishwashers, in-unit laundry, or nice views.

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1minuteman12 t1_iu4sipx wrote

I’m a pessimist so my only point is that I don’t think this particular policy will create enough additional housing for prices to meaningfully drop, but it’s certainly a nice step in the right direction. Right now the supply doesn’t even come close to meeting demand so it seems like there’s always someone willing to pay some stupid amount for a closet in Harvard Sq

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Ill-Telephone-7926 t1_iu57w9b wrote

Agreed; it's only one step forward.

As a policy, it'll probably seem relatively non-eventful in retrospect for all parties. Spaces/unit won't go to zero suddenly, even for new development. The existing housing stock won't change character. It'll be difficult to see the impact on overall rent inflation. Nobody will complain when 80% vacant parking lots under 100% deed-restricted buildings aren't built. Nor will people building ADUs or other infill projects complain about that one piece of red tape that they didn't have to comply with; plenty remain.

I do think it's a big deal politically. This and the bike safety ordinance reflect a Council acting assertively on a strong mandate from their electorate to rebuke post-war housing, transportation, and land use policies.

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theWora t1_itqdyt8 wrote

Idk who you are, but if you have the powered to, don't let develops take advantage of this and find loopholes that end up with housing/buildings far off from being affordable.

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ik1nky t1_itqfgdl wrote

There's no loophole with this. Developers will now be free to build or not build parking. That will lower development costs, but not make new development cheap. It's a good step towards more affordable construction(way more zoning relief is still needed) and just better overall urban design.

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FitzwilliamTDarcy t1_itr71zg wrote

>way more zoning relief is still needed

This. And, way more fixing public transportation. By and large, it stinks right now. And that may be kind.

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_itqmfju wrote

Mandated parking adds 50-60k to the price of each unit, 100-250 dollars in rent, and also restricts the supply of available housing due to how much space these lots take up.

The only possible outcome is a decrease in prices. Whether or not the impact is big is unknown

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1minuteman12 t1_ittcz7f wrote

Developers will charge the same market rate and pocket the saved costs

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_itufi1t wrote

That’s not how supply and demand work but ok

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1minuteman12 t1_itva7hx wrote

You’re assuming that removing parking mandates will increase housing supply enough to meet or exceed an ever increasing demand, which I think is a massive, massive assumption. You’re also assuming that building more would saturate the market such that buyers and renters will have enough leverage to send prices downward, another massive assumption. The most likely scenario is that roughly the same number of housing is developed, or a little more, but the prices are set at market rate and developers hold firm on pricing because they know eventually someone will pay it. Developers and real estate investors would rather and often do have places go unoccupied for months or even a year before they’ll lower prices. It’s naive to think otherwise.

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_itveqb0 wrote

I don’t know how to argue with someone who believes increasing housing supply isn’t a solution to a housing crisis. Every other town every where says the same thing you are saying, so no housing is being built anywhere.

Cambridge has a tremendous amount of opportunity for growth in terms of 4-6 story multi families being allowed City wide, but it is impossible to build that and mandate everyone home must have a parking spot.

Having a roof over someone’s head is more important than your right to store your car on public streets. If you don’t agree then we will never see eye to eye and this discussion is pointless, sorry.

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1minuteman12 t1_itvko8p wrote

I didn’t say it wasn’t a solution, you are arguing with a straw man. I said that the amount of increased housing development that this individual legislation will create is not going to be anywhere near enough to make a meaningful difference in housing affordability. It’s a step in the right direction but people in here are acting like this will cause rents to drop. It won’t.

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crazicus t1_iu4rauo wrote

For now yeah. But down the line when we can get more housing friendly policies passed (like the relaxing of zoning), the prices of the apartments aren’t going to pegged to a higher value just so the developers can meet costs. Like you said, a step in the right direction

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Cav_vaC t1_itugy4e wrote

They will charge what the market will pay, like always. If they want to charge the same and others offer lower, they will lose money for each month their unit goes unrented

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1minuteman12 t1_itvb6a0 wrote

The market has an endless supply of people willing and able to pay current rates. Developers and investors frequently hold firm on pricing and let places go unoccupied for long periods of time before lowering prices, which is only done as a last resort and rarely happens. There would need to be an enormous influx of housing to make a dent in a market where there are millions of people willing to pay out the ass to live in a closet in Cambridge.

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_itvgnlm wrote

Right, and decades of NIMBYism has led to the need of a “enormous influx” of housing.

The need for housing isn’t a very good argument against policies they make it easier to build housing. In fact… it is just confusing.

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1minuteman12 t1_itvkzrj wrote

I don’t know what you even mean to say. My point is that, although we need more housing, this policy is not going to create anywhere near enough new housing to have a perceptible effect on housing prices. It’s a step in the right direction for sure. We should be moving on from car dependent urban planning anyway.

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_itzdsi3 wrote

There are a large number of policies, including the one being discussed in this thread, that individually don’t move the needle much, but when combined will move the needle in the right direction. However, every single time one of these policies come up, the above argument is used to oppose such policies. “This won’t move the needle on housing, and it will inconvenience me, so I oppose it!” So the policies don’t get enacted, or get neutered, and then the needle never moves because nothing ever gets done.

There are millions of people and hundreds of thousands of homes in the greater boston metro area. Any developer trying to fix prices is just going to be undercut by another developer to make money. The market is too big for the type of collusion (at the scale of the whole region) you are describing.

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1minuteman12 t1_itzfxwc wrote

I’m not opposing the policy, it’s good policy and I support it. My commentary is aimed at the people in this sub who are like “this is it, housing will be cheap now!” If we want a systematic drop in rental and real estate prices we need radical change.

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Cav_vaC t1_itxn55k wrote

There's not an endless supply of people willing and able to pay current rates. That's just nonsense. There is a large supply, which is different. There are a lot of people making and buying wheat or oil in the world, but the price still goes down if supply increases.

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1minuteman12 t1_itxte8f wrote

The price of grain or oil doesn’t drop if the supply only increases marginally and that increase still doesn’t meet or exceed demand. That is especially true if grain and oil sellers decide that long term profits will be higher if they set a price based on the current market and hold or let spoil some of the product that doesn’t sell, while making fewer sales at a higher price point. People in here learned supply and demand in high school and just regurgitate that term as if it will cause some magic fix. There are literal studies and theories widely accepted in macroeconomic circles that argue capitalist society has moved beyond supply and demand based concepts for staple goods such as housing, food, etc.

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_itzddaw wrote

And yet, here we are living in a region with artificially constrained housing supply with incredibly high demand for that housing. Sounds like “high school economics” to me.

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1minuteman12 t1_itzfs3r wrote

No that’s late stage capitalism, which is significantly worse

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Cav_vaC t1_iu18vrv wrote

There are a ton of studies showing the also obvious truth that more market rate housing reduces rents (compared to what they would have otherwise been).

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theWora t1_itqmsyz wrote

The only possible outcome is not a decrease in prices. It may happen temporarily, but within 5 year span, they prices for the same Apts would go up.

Also, if nothing is done to control rent prices, everything will keep going up and we,ll end up with another NYC situation and plus.

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_itqnyje wrote

100 people want to live in a neighborhood but there are 20 homes. The wealth of these people follow a standard bell curve.

Who gets to live in the neighborhood?

The next year the city passes a policy that leads to the creation of 40 more homes.

What happens to the price of homes, again with a standard curve where everyone has a varying max budget

—-

It is worth noting that there if a regional housing crisis and increased demand for walkable neighborhoods. This example assumes demand is constant. The solution is not to prevent Cambridge from building more housing, but to encourage/force surrounding towns to build more housing.

The population has simply grown and we haven’t built homes to keep up

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HaddockBranzini-II t1_ituaihw wrote

Great, now do something about the people who shoot up daily in front of the Central Sq library. Any developers willing to pay you for that too?

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ArvinaDystopia t1_itvogg7 wrote

Congrats, a huge victory for gentrification!

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zeratul98 t1_itvq8w7 wrote

The general demographics are that car owners are the wealthier people in this area. Removing parking mandates allows for more housing, particularly housing that caters to people who don't own cars (who tend to be poorer)

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ArvinaDystopia t1_itvrrre wrote

That's a lie. Housing in cities is vastly more expensive than outside of them.

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_itze6yv wrote

Then there is demand for city life, while pretty much every town in the country that isn’t already a city has made it illegal to upzone/densify, leading to massively inflated prices in the few cities that are available to live in.

But then, the same people who make the point that you just made will turn around and throw a hissy fit when people propose relaxing zoning restrictions

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zeratul98 t1_itvs4ma wrote

That's true, and not at all a contradiction to anything i just said

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ArvinaDystopia t1_itvtqwg wrote

Guess who needs to park, dufus?

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zeratul98 t1_itvtvbl wrote

Tell me, who?

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ArvinaDystopia t1_itvus41 wrote

The people who can't afford to live in a city with median housing prices of 1M (I just checked) but still have to work there?

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_itzem9n wrote

You could take the T, but suburban NIMBYs have left it to rot because they prefer driving in their GMC suburbans and running over children on their way to work.

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zeratul98 t1_itvykpr wrote

That demographic leans more heavily towards public transportation users.

I also think that people who don't live in Cambridge probably don't care that much about whether the apartment buildings they don't live in have parking

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ArvinaDystopia t1_itwc0zz wrote

They care whether there are spots.

But you're one of those "let's make driving worse" sociopaths, so this is pointless.

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Emergency-Ad-7833 t1_itxkn72 wrote

We don't care about driving. This has nothing to do with "making driving worse" This is about making walking/biking/public transportation better. Car parking is the largest waste of space in our cities. It spreads the city out and makes other forms of transportation impossible. It also makes building housing more expensive.

You probably "believe in markets" or whatever so you should be happy about this change now the markets will decide how much parking exists instead random political regulations

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ArvinaDystopia t1_iu0b3ng wrote

He literally said:

> Pretty simple: discourage driving.

Trying fucking reading, next time.

> You probably "believe in markets"

That's your line, rightist.

Edit: oh, you're an /r/fuckcars troll. That explains everything.

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Emergency-Ad-7833 t1_iufx3uq wrote

So you are leftist that kisses the boots of the oil and gas industry? good luck with that. you may want to just move on

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ArvinaDystopia t1_iuhn7by wrote

Oh, look, a troll. Let's play "guess which sub he came from?".

Have fun kissing the boots of the wealthy.
"Please triple my commute, daddy Bezos!" "Please remove my flexibility and mobility!"
"You have deiicious boots, mr landlord! I never want to have my own place!"

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zeratul98 t1_itwe16m wrote

My favorite thing is when people like you make assertions with no explanation or evidence and then expect people to agree with you. And then when they inevitably don't, you insult them and pretend they're the unreasonable ones. A true masterpiece

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[deleted] t1_iu4rgk0 wrote

[deleted]

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ArvinaDystopia t1_iu4sskj wrote

Total number of spots? You don't have to use something directly to benefit from it.
Analogy time: there are 8 checkout lines at the supermarket. Two of those require the super special supermarket card to use, and you don't have it.
Someone decies to remove those lines. Don't you think you'll spend more time, despite the fact that you weren't using them, because the people that were using them are now in the other 6?

(also, they don't have to be inside)

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[deleted] t1_iu4tdfm wrote

[deleted]

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ArvinaDystopia t1_iu4ur3z wrote

Why do idiots always confuse homonyms? It's so easy not to.

Anyway, that's just displacing the issue.

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[deleted] t1_iu4v6es wrote

[deleted]

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ArvinaDystopia t1_iu4vfep wrote

> Why do idiots always end their sentences with a preposition?

They don't, that's actual English.

Edit: Well, the idiot realised he was wrong and bowed out.

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[deleted] t1_iu4rnfd wrote

[deleted]

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ArvinaDystopia t1_iu4sf2d wrote

[x] Doubt. But anyway, mark my words: housing prices will go up in the area in the next few years, not down.
Come back to this comment in 5 years.

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[deleted] t1_iu4sknw wrote

[deleted]

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ArvinaDystopia t1_iu4teby wrote

Ok, Brussels. Go.

You're going to need price references, so I'll give you a source:
Average house price in Brussels: 500k-800k €.
Average house price in Hastières: 100k €.

Now you do some maths to show me that a car makes up for the 400k to 700k € difference.

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[deleted] t1_iu4u5fd wrote

[deleted]

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ArvinaDystopia t1_iu4udy4 wrote

You said "name a city". If you're going to only accept one city, then use that one, no need to ask for a name.

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[deleted] t1_iu4upqu wrote

[deleted]

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ArvinaDystopia t1_iu4uw4y wrote

You're the one unable to stay on topic: you said commute from outside the city.

And it's faculties, not facilities. When you insult people's intelligence, try to have a basic grasp of your language.
You should be embarassed of making those mistakes and getting corrected by an ESL. I know you aren't, but you should be.

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[deleted] t1_iu4vfav wrote

[deleted]

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ArvinaDystopia t1_iu4vqsa wrote

> It’s a Reddit comment, not a dissertation.

That's the thing: it doesn't require effort for those of us who aren't morons.

> Not my fault you lack critical thinking skills and have to rely on memorization.

I don't rely on memorisation, and I clearly have better critical thinking skills than you.
I also keep my word, unlike you. Still waiting on those maths.

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