Who lives in those apartments without parking?

 I have written many times previously about Parking Angst in the Los Angeles region. 

But, I want to write a quick post about why we should permit new homes without parking. 

Why do we vacation in places without parking and then deny ourselves the pleasure of living in a car-light place in everyday life? People who live in places that look like this (photo from Livable Communities Initiative) do use cars and get deliveries in trucks. It's just that they park on an alley or a remote lot/garage and deliveries take place when foot traffic is low. 

I hear often from people that this won't work in LA because our area was built around cars. So let me tell you about two people I met who live in LA and don't own cars. 

Person #1 without a car: 

I met him several times while he dropped off or picked up his grandmother at League of Women Voters events. As I got to know them better, I learned that the grandmother is 100 years old and has no children nearby. He is her only relative nearby; he lives in an apartment 1/2 a mile away and rides a bike over to her house. 

He drives her car to take her on errands (they can do their grocery shopping together) and appointments. He rides a bike or takes the bus otherwise.  He lives on a major Metro LA bus line that runs every 10 minutes, which in planner speak is a High Quality Transit Area (HQTA). Click on the link for an interactive map of HQTAs in SoCal. 

A car parking spot in this area--close to jobs, transit, and the beach--is very expensive because of the high cost of land. You trade off building housing for people or housing for cars. The grandson chose to live without a car, saving the cost of car ownership and parking. It's a win for him, a win for her (because she has someone close to look after her), and for the community (he works in the arts, which has been struggling in high rent areas). 

Allowing cheaper housing without parking is clearly a win-win-win in this case. 

Person #2 without a car:

I only met her briefly in Koreatown, but she made quite an impression on me. I was walking from a meeting at Wilshire Center to the Metro B/D station at Vermont and Wilshire. She passed me slowly on her e-scooter while wearing scrubs and a backpack. I caught up to her as we waited to cross Vermont and Wilshire to reach the subway station. We chatted. Then she folded up her scooter and ran into the station, disappearing into the crowd.

She lived in an apartment in Koreatown where parking is a la carte. Her landlord wanted $300/mo (2019 prices) for a parking stall in a garage and she wondered how much she needed a car vs a nice apartment in a newer building.  

[Do the math on the $100,000 cost per stall for a multi-level parking garage, then double it for underground parking. $300/mo is not an unreasonable price to recoup the cost of building that parking.]

She was wearing scrubs so I assumed she worked in healthcare. She said that she was charged for parking at home and at work. In contrast, her workplace paid for transit passes. She added car payments, insurance, gas, parking, maintenance. She could save so much money, she could rent a car two weekends per month. 

She sold her car and bought her own e-scooter to get back and forth to the train station quickly. I asked her how often she rented a car. She said that, she met a boyfriend who has a car. They take weekend getaway trips in his car. On Sundays, they run their errands together and he drops her off at her house with her groceries. She budgeted for rental cars, but didn't need them. She saves the money instead.

She basically had a 2018 version of this heavy duty, but slower speed scooter, purchased from Best Buy on Black Friday. It cost about one month of parking and she thought it was an excellent value. 

Faster speed means heavier motor and more acceleration (could be dangerous if you are inexperienced or lose your balance). More range means heavier battery to haul on buses and trains. If you are just going (first and last mile) to transit, and can charge at home or at work, there is no reason to get a longer-range battery. Just buy an extra charger and leave it at work. 

She convinced me. I bought a similar e-scooter, just in time for Covid and staying at home for Zoom meetings. You can see a picture of my husband riding the e-scooter and me riding my first e-bike on this SBCCOG Story Map. 

Before you say, gotcha. 

I know that neither of these people live car-free because they rely on someone else with a car. Both of these people live in car-free households, but occasionally share a car with another household with a single car. That's 0.5 cars per household. Why does Redondo Beach require 2.25 parking spaces per studio apartment?

It is possible for some people to live car-light or car-free most of the time, even in LA. Why should we enact all these minimum parking rules to make housing more expensive or impossible to build? 

Wouldn't it be lovely if our children could stay near us in coastal California instead of moving to a Red state so that they could afford housing?