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AwkwardSpread t1_itpwy5b wrote

What’s a parking minimum? Is that where garages always charge for a minimum number of minutes?

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RealBurhanAzeem OP t1_itpymsm wrote

Ah sorry! 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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Candid- t1_itrubz1 wrote

Wouldn’t that mean that for new developments (that no longer have parking spots) approximately 1/3 of new owners/tenants would have a car that doesn’t have any allocated parking any more, making the parking issues of the other residents even more difficult?

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repo_code t1_itsertx wrote

Developers are still allowed to build parking. They are not required to.

In most of America, it's illegal to build a building without parking and market it to people without cars. That will now be legal in Cambridge.

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fps81 t1_ituqbsv wrote

Hilarious watching progressives use free market capitalism as the answer to a question about what will happen when a government protection is lifted.

Parking is stigmatized. Developers will not build affordable parking for those who need or want it, now that they don’t have to. They will charge $1000/month for the handful of garage spaces in a building and everyone else will have to fight for on street parking.

Yes, people living a certain lifestyle can make it in Cambridge without a car. But for those who can’t afford to Uber everywhere or for those who enjoy driving or the outdoors, the free market is not going to help them.

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ik1nky t1_itva8us wrote

Car free households are overwhelmingly lower income. The higher your income, the more likely you are to own more cars and drive them more.

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fps81 t1_itvdrds wrote

I think you'd be really hard pressed to find a working class person who can live and work car free. Public transit only goes to really high end businesses that can afford the expensive boston/cambridge office space, and doesn't run at all for people doing shift work. People who work at building sites, do in-home work (cleaning, trades, etc.), or who work in warehouses will need a car.

Traveling outside the city without a car is also basically impossible, so you have to live your life inside Boston and Cambridge, or pay thousands of dollars in rental fees to use a rental car when you want to leave.

The people I know who are car free in Cambridge are overwhelmingly high income and spend a lot more on transportation than I do.

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Candid- t1_itt2sxd wrote

There are very good reasons why it is illegal almost everywhere else. It isn’t to protect developers, it is to protect citizens from destructively selfish developer practices. I am not sure why we think we are smarter than everywhere else by making legal what they have all learned, painfully, should stay illegal.

This feels very shady. Real estate developers and landlords in Cambridge got a windfall today and I don’t think it will turn into lower housing prices or fewer cars. I do think a few connected developers will get a few more millions of dollars from properties they couldn’t develop before.

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holycow958 t1_ittg362 wrote

Parking requirements were created throughout the US as a form of racial segregation after the supreme court outlawed racially based restrictive covenants. Everything else is not smarter for keeping them.

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Candid- t1_ittkz8w wrote

I think you could argue they are a form of wealth segregation. I disagree and I think it is more of an attempt to maintain current community ratios for existing residence/voters rather than cater to a group of hypothetical non-residents or vocal want-to-be residents … but I can see an argument for it being deliberate wealth segregation.

You don’t have to play the race card every time. Not everything is about race.

Really, though, I think those regulations are all about preventing predatory developer practices that negatively affect current residents in ways that will last for decades after the developers have taken their profits and moved on.

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_itujyjf wrote

Given that these parking minimums add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of each unit built in the city, how could you possibly argue that it is anything but wealth segregation?

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Candid- t1_itwo3tl wrote

Adding residential property without parking, to a city where 2/3rds of the households have vehicles, is about disrupting the lifestyle and convenience of the majority of the residents in the city, wealthy or not.

Owning a car is not about wealth. It is about lifestyle needs and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that low income people are more likely to require a car than wealthy people.

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_ity34qz wrote

Then the conclusion is that the lifestyle and convenience provided by the city for the past 60 years, based largely on a population that was 30% smaller than it is today, is not sustainable and must change, and is changing, as the city grows.

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Candid- t1_itz8baa wrote

Agreed. This is an interesting step 1. Now further steps need of be taken to ensure this doesn’t result in a ton of new high prices development without actually solving the real problems.

When Boston passed a similar law, the made it only apply to low income housing. I would have liked that better since it drove the right focus.

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Canahedo t1_itvenz7 wrote

>You don’t have to play the race card every time. Not everything is about race.

You're correct that not everything is about race, but this is America, a lot of things really are about race.

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RevolutionaryGlass0 t1_itwuuei wrote

Plenty of nice places in other countries don't have parking minimums and the citizens aren't asking for more "protection from selfish developers", at least when it comes to parking.

They're unnecessary and waste space that could instead be used to combat the housing crisis, or could be a shop, or literally anything else.

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Candid- t1_itwyid9 wrote

There are three recommended steps to solve this problem:

Remove off-street parking requirements. Developers and businesses can then decide how many parking spaces to provide for their customers. Charge the right prices for on-street parking. The right prices are the lowest prices that will leave one or two open spaces on each block, so there will be no parking shortages. Spend the parking revenue to improve public services on the metered streets. If everybody sees their meter money at work, the new public services can make demand-based prices for on-street parking politically popular.

Claiming success after just the first one is potentially problematic…

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RevolutionaryGlass0 t1_itwywmb wrote

I agree with that, removing parking is just the first step, it's important the council then uses the extra money and space wisely.

>Claiming success after just the first one is potentially problematic…

But when it comes to this, the US has had problems with urban planning in most places for decades, Cambridge is the first in the state to remove parking minimums. It's understandable people are celebrating progress.

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fun_guy02142 t1_itsnj39 wrote

You don’t need a car in Cambridge but if you choose to have one you can park on the street for $25/year or rent a private spot for $150/mo.

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Candid- t1_itt4nle wrote

Have you tried to park on the street in Cambridge recently? Time-value-of-money, you’ll spend more than $150/month trying to find street parking for your car.

Having a car isn’t a function of location. It is a function of life. If you have a job that requires you work from different locations every day, if you have kids, if you are old… People won’t stop needing cars.

This will make Cambridge more congested, harder to find parking, and drive out all but a few very targeted demographics.

Honestly, it feels like a few wealthy developers were able to fast-sell a young, single male to do something self-serving without thinking of the long-term repercussions.

I own in Cambridge (lives here 10 years) and I work in Boston. While I take the T to work every day, I have a car and parking, for which I am grateful, because I also have kids who have sports activities, trips to the zoo or the science museums, or just to the Fells for a day hike. We eat at local restaurants that we can walk to but we will also drive to places in the city that aren’t on the red or green lines.

I would think that Cambridge would want to encourage families like mine to want to put down roots in the city. This change does the opposite. I understand that all laws aren’t supposed to benefit one group or another but I don’t see how the only ones who benefit from this really are the real estate developers that can now flip a property that was previously not workable and then walk away from the problem they created.

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TheFoun t1_ittt9qa wrote

Nobody is forcing you to live somewhere without parking, and not everyone wants to own a car.

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Candid- t1_ituewlr wrote

Nobody is forcing you to spend what it costs to live in Cambridge, and nobody should be making it easier for you to live here just because you yell the loudest.

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_ituipcr wrote

Weird because last time I checked this law was passed by an elected city council with a near unanimous vote.

I’m sorry you think building more homes for folks who don’t want cars or parking is so evil. I disagree.

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Candid- t1_itwqu39 wrote

I wish you wouldn’t jump to such extremes. It makes people infer something that I am not saying. It isn’t evil, it just has an externality that no one is talking about, it benefits wealthy developers, and isn’t guaranteed to drive the intended results.

Existing landlords won’t drop rent because of this, new landlords will continue to charge market rates, and new owners will still have cars without a new place to park them.

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_ity49rv wrote

People aren’t dumb. Most people sell their car when they to move to NYC. You keep assuming that only people who own cars will move here but that is factually untrue.

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Candid- t1_itz83y0 wrote

Factually, 2/3 of households in Cambridge own cars. There is nothing to indicate that the people who move into these houses won’t follow a similar ratio. Even if only 1/3 have cars, it still means more cars than we currently have on the streets. In no scenario does this result in fewer cars in Cambridge.

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TheFoun t1_itufbhc wrote

true! if you don't want to live somewhere, don't, exactly as I said before

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Candid- t1_itwr8pt wrote

Well, technically I spent a lot of money to live somewhere based on what it had to offer. No one is forcing me to live here, true, but someone did just “take” a piece of the value I thought I was purchasing.

I’m not saying this was an evil thing, I’m just saying I have a right to be frustrated by the change since the beneficiaries of this aren’t residents like me - they are property developers, landlords, and current non-residents.

Edit: spelling

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TheFoun t1_ityae03 wrote

I see your point, but it's very likely that businesses you may want to visit will still have enough parking, even if there isn't a legal minimum.

For housing without parking, that probably doesn't really affect you, but it may help make some housing cheaper, which isn't bad.

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Candid- t1_itz79jf wrote

I think a lot of the new housing will bring people who actually do have cars and they will just depend on the streets to park them. That will put pressure on everyone already here because of the free parking that Cambridge offers anyone considered a resident.

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crawling-alreadygirl t1_ituj5iq wrote

> have a car and parking, for which I am grateful, because I also have kids who have sports activities, trips to the zoo or the science museums, or just to the Fells for a day hike.

If you had better infrastructure, you wouldn't need a car for those activities.

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Candid- t1_itwptua wrote

I completely agree.

Cart before horse, taking away parking requirements before fixing infrastructure.

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crawling-alreadygirl t1_itx399y wrote

Taking away parking requirements frees up space for other infrastructure improvements and allows for denser, more walkable new construction.

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Ok_Durian8772 t1_itt97e0 wrote

"You don't need a car in Cambridge" Just a dumb sentence.

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_itujjqf wrote

People who sign these leases will know there is no parking. Some people will choose not to move here because of that. Other (on average less rich people) will be happy to take those homes.

There isn’t enough space in this city for everyone to own a car. Charge market rate for parking and give subsidies to those with real need (elderly, disabled)

The city gives away these spots for free.

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Candid- t1_itwodhs wrote

I agree with your suggestion. They should have done that with this change together. By itself this change is bad because it makes the problem of Cambridge giving away parking even worse.

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ArvinaDystopia t1_itvp9bp wrote

Yes. The companies have lower costs, the government has to build the parkings. More profits for companies, at the expense of taxpayers' money.

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