Seattle took relatively minor steps that have had a huge impact on building more housing:
- eliminate parking requirements. Developers are still allowed to build as much parking as they want, but they are no longer required to. The impact on existing residents can be blunted by making the street parking timed and zoned unless you have an exemption permit, which is granted to all existing residents and doesn’t expire, but decreased over time to new ones.
- mandate separating parking from rent. Renters only pay for parking if they use it. In practice, people will debate if having a car is worth it every time they change a lease.
- employers over 100 employees are required to have commute management plans, and are incentivized/required to achieve lower single-person car commutes. Notably, how they do it doesn’t really matter, but it can help mitigate a large portion of car dependency which is the suburbanization of jobs into areas only accessible by car.
The last one I actually think is the most important, and it’s also the easiest because it doesn’t impact residents and if anything mitigates the most common complaints about new jobs.
Seattle took relatively minor steps that have had a huge impact on building more housing:
- eliminate parking requirements. Developers are still allowed to build as much parking as they want, but they are no longer required to. The impact on existing residents can be blunted by making the street parking timed and zoned unless you have an exemption permit, which is granted to all existing residents and doesn’t expire, but decreased over time to new ones.
- mandate separating parking from rent. Renters only pay for parking if they use it. In practice, people will debate if having a car is worth it every time they change a lease.
- employers over 100 employees are required to have commute management plans, and are incentivized/required to achieve lower single-person car commutes. Notably, how they do it doesn’t really matter, but it can help mitigate a large portion of car dependency which is the suburbanization of jobs into areas only accessible by car.
The last one I actually think is the most important, and it’s also the easiest because it doesn’t impact residents and if anything mitigates the most common complaints about new jobs.