[nradov]

In most of America there is abundant free parking on private property including homes, stores, and workplaces. That is hardly a subsidy. I understand the argument that dense cities shouldn't have so much free public street parking but there are only a handful of neighborhoods where that even matters.

[seanmcdirmid]

The "free parking" isn't really free, you just have land that is really cheap devoted to it. And where it isn't...well, American housing prices and rents are increased to pay for them. Street parking matters in almost every neighborhood in Seattle now...since parking on its own is expensive, and you will also have to pay for a few busted windows on your car for the pleasure of free street parking.

The highways are heavily subsidized by general funds these days since raising the gas tax outside of a few states isn't very popular.

I'm American but in the other countries I lived in (Switzerland and China) and the many countries I've visited, private car ownership is always a luxury, not a cheap necessety attainable by everyone.

[bigstrat2003]

> The "free parking" isn't really free, you just have land that is really cheap devoted to it.

When I can park my car in my driveway at no marginal cost to myself, most people (including me) would call that free.

[seanmcdirmid]

If you have a driveway. I had to look around hard for a house with a car port that wasn't just a slot in a crowded alley, heck, I saw some beautiful houses that had no effective parking at all (maybe they had sunk garages built in 1920 that were not usable by modern cars).

[fc417fc802]

> And where it isn't...well, American housing prices and rents are increased to pay for them.

The driver of housing cost in US cities is lack of supply. Parking spaces are a drop in the bucket versus what is missing. The root cause is zoning laws; particularly the height restrictions as they currently stand.

[seanmcdirmid]

> Parking spaces are a drop in the bucket versus what is missing.

https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/seattle-parking-spot-sells-...

That was 2022, $56k is probably about 10% of a one or two bedroom condo price.

> The root cause is zoning laws; particularly the height restrictions as they currently stand.

Tokyo is, as I understand it, the libertarian ideal for a city that doesn't let zoning get in the way of a good time, and parking space prices are still expensive there:

> Monthly rental rates for spots in the 23 Wards range from ¥30,000 to over ¥80,000, which reflects high underlying property value.

That's $200 to $500 a month.

[fc417fc802]

I think there's a misunderstanding. I'm not claiming that parking space if charged at the market rate for an unimproved cement room in a high rise is particularly cheap. You can only fit so many cars within the footprint of a typical condo after all.

I'm claiming that removing parking (ie converting the raw sq footage over to living space) would not meaningfully impact housing prices. The existence of parking, free or otherwise, is not a significant contributor to the housing shortage. The issue is one of scale. That's what my "drop in the bucket" comment is referring to.

You specifically said "American housing prices and rents are increased to pay for them". That is technically correct but in context it is blatantly wrong. The price increase as it stands is approximately zero.

The error is failing to differentiate between cost due to construction and maintenance versus cost due to land value. The latter is linked to total supply and thus height restrictions. The former is not the primary component in HCoL cities. You can easily verify this by checking the cost to purchase an apartment building in say San Francisco versus a small town in the midwest. (I refer to the cost to purchase the entire building there, not the cost to rent a single unit.)

[seanmcdirmid]

Parking garages in HCOLs are expensive, they definitely aren’t free. You can’t build a new multi family without planning for one or two levels of garage underneath. But you are correct that sub-basements, at least in the USA, wouldn’t have been used for living space anyways.

[fc417fc802]

Right, I specifically called out that I agree with you on that. They aren't cheap. But then most places around here charge $50 or even $150 per month per parking space so it's not like the spots are being given away either.

> you are correct that sub-basements, at least in the USA, wouldn’t have been used for living space anyways.

That isn't what I said. I claimed that the amount of space dedicated to parking, if converted to housing, would not meaningfully reduce the housing shortage. It's a simple numbers game. The shortage is far larger than all of the current parking combined. We badly need to build much farther upwards but it is not permitted to anywhere near the extent necessary.

Another way of looking at it is to ask, if every unit of housing in a major city added additional square footage equal to a single car, would that make or break the market? Even at the scale of the entire market it would still be well under 10%, probably under 5%. The typical apartment in the US is definitely larger than a 5x2 grid of parking spaces. Meanwhile most HCoL cities could do with double the housing inventory at absolute minimum. Probably substantially more.

This is the same problem with reducing setbacks. Unscrupulous developers keep lobbying for that (and often getting it). We don't need to reduce buffer space. A few extra feet around the perimeter of a lot is nothing compared to doubling (or 3x, or 5x, or ...) the height.

We are suffocating under our own political dysfunction.

[dmitrygr]

> American housing prices and rents are increased to pay for them.

Which means people were willing to pay to have a place to park. WAI