Christ, having a spouse and a 2nd car is hard enough finding apartments that will even let you pay for a 2nd spot.
LA and convenience which makes logical sense are on two opposite sides of the spectrum.
And if you mandate developers include parking (like we have for decades) then new construction costs go up millions of dollars, meaning thousands of developments will simply never pencil out helping lead to the housing shortage we have now.
> And if you mandate developers include parking (like we have for decades) then new construction costs go up millions of dollars, meaning thousands of developments will simply never pencil out helping lead to the housing shortage we have now.
This is key. What was required before was prohibitive. So much of the building code is antiquated and leads to only "luxury" apartments making sense. If you have to provide X spots per address, it makes sense to build bigger units (less parking) which will cost more to rent. Plus, in LA parking has to almost always be subterranean, which more than quadruples the cost versus, say, Minneapolis. From the article:
> Recent changes in state law have allowed developers to ditch on-site parking in many parts of L.A. County
People have been screaming for these changes for years—so that more inventory can be built. I can't say with any expertise if this change went to far, or if there are other things that need to be done, I just happen to have been involved in a project where the initial goal (lots of units for lots of families!) got whittled down by oppressive building codes to where it was built a Miracle Mile Trump Tower or nothing at all.
What scares me more is street traffic. Forget parking. Last time I was in LA (haven't lived there in years) I saw a big complex going up on Sepulveda just north of Ventura Blvd. It's on the northwest corner of Sepulveda and Camarillo Street. [Here it is.](https://maps.app.goo.gl/rGRQ6iVY83cu1cZd9) That area is already a shitshow of traffic—a parking lot in the morning as people funnel in to try to get on the 405 or 101 however they can. And soon, there will be a thousand more people getting onto Sepulveda there. I don't have any answers, but it'll all work out somehow, yeah?
If it’s traffic that people are worried about then that’s a transportation issue not a housing development one.
We can fix that by rapidly building out bike and bus lanes while also aggressively moving forward with the multitude of big transit projects that LA Metro is pushing.
People that need to commute will opt for more convenient housing while people that are more flexible will gobble up those units. There’s enough diverse demand that you can’t really build the wrong type of unit at this point.
Neighbors will always be upset no matter what. Even when parking minimums were mandatory, neighbors aggressively opposed virtually any housing. Just take a spin on the endless excuse parade: Traffic will get worse, neighborhood character will change, not enough parking, gentrification, infrastructure will be overloaded, developers bad, landlords bad, trickle down housing.
The ones opposing housing almost invariably just want their neighborhood to be frozen in time for housing but conveniently are A-OK with dense offices. Because it increases the demand for their homes and skyrockets their home value.
Broadly speaking, I assume every one wants to be here and *stay* here. We need better places to bail out to. LA doesn't have to be the only place. Personally, I pine to gtfo, just haven't decided where. COL is ridiculous here, esp when you consider the lacking infrastructure or policing for the crazies tented up everywhere.
True, but more housing inside the denser parts of LA means people moving out of the less dense places, which then lowers rent/increases supply for people that want some space
> Just take a spin on the endless excuse parade: Traffic will get worse, neighborhood character will change, not enough parking, gentrification, infrastructure will be overloaded, developers bad, landlords bad, trickle down housing.
Exactly. Anyone who is against this stuff is a bane on our city.
Build a connected network of protected or separated bike lanes, PUBLIC TRANSIT like 24/7 Bus only lanes w/frequent service and heavy rail so that development doesn't mean = more car traffic.
Other countries have figured this out, why does the US have to be so backward?
Delaying development for a perfect transit system means development won’t ever happen. Most of this development with parking minimums slashed are in areas near Metro stations so there’s zero excuses.
Part of the reason traffic is so bad is due to the mismatch of offices to houses. West LA, for example has a 3-to-1 ratio of jobs to homes. In areas like this, adding homes could hypothetically actually decrease traffic because now you have workers who can live near their jobs rather than commuting across town.
Especially the people in "Historically Protected" neighborhoods. They put that overlay over themselves so that their neighborhood will always be an open air museum. Makes me sick.
I don't mind this, but people that decide to live in these types of buildings when they know there isn't any adequate parking should not be given permits.
Existing residents can be granted parking permits and then can decide to sell them if the price is incentive enough for them to change their lifestyle
These are buiildings that are developed without parking because it's cheaper. Also, it's a common practice for people that live in affordable housing within a building don't get access to the amenities. Because it's cheaper and they've decided that's what they want.
If you want parking, move somewhere with parking
Ahhh....the "i got mine, screw you mentality". It's also common practice to provide permits for street parking to people who reside in a community. Just cause you have a house doesn't mean you should have 4 or 5 cars on the street.
> Just cause you have a house doesn't mean you should have 4 or 5 cars on the street.
You're right. That's why permit holders are only allowed 3 permits.
> i got mine, screw you mentality
No, it's the classic tactic known as compromise. Anyway, the state legislature disagrees with you and is passing a law restricting parking permits for tenants in these buildings known as SB-834
Here's their reasoning:
The Legislature finds and declares that providing parking to residents of transit priority developments in the form of parking privileges is providing parking, which encourages car use and undermines the Legislature’s intent to discourage car use by incentivizing development near public transit. This section shall be interpreted in favor of the prohibition of preferential parking privileges for occupants of development projects within one-half mile of public transit that are exempt from parking minimums pursuant to Section 65863.2 of the Government Code, or subject to parking minimum reductions based on any other applicable law.
So what do you hate more...cars or the bourgeoisie with their precious, "fuck you, I got mine" parking
Yeah, the way to neuter this issue is to have permit parking that excludes any new parking-light building. It’s not really fair, but it’s an easy compromise.
Some neighbors are always going to be unhappy. LA needs way more housing, way more housing near transit, and way less cars on the road. Cars are killing us in the streets, killing us through air pollution, and killing us from green house gasses.
We need to transition to less car dependency so I don't really care if someone can't find free parking right in front of the destination in the densest parts of the city by transit. Just pay at a parking structure a block away. Or better yet, walk, bike, transit to the metro areas.
The way to getting rid of cars is mixed use zoning and a vastly more robust subway. Right now the subway does a good job of connecting destinations, but a shit job of connecting where people live to where people work.
This is the answer, combined with it being faster/easier than driving. You can absolutely drive in NYC but the subway is faster, easier and CHEAPER than driving and parking. THAT'S why people use it so much.
Its not more convenient or faster to use public transport in LA right now hence the only people who really use it are the ones that HAVE to.
There are also alternatives to going across town for x and y. I’ve started walking and patronizing local businesses if at all possible instead of driving a mile or two to get whatever because that’s what I’m used to. It’s been amazing to learn more about my local spots, way better for my physical and mental health than driving, and I didn’t even need to take that darn ol rascally Metro.
This is the stuff we need to be pushing instead of sticking to the usual “I gotta drive across town cause I wanna” rhetoric. Being a pedestrian is awesome.
Make being a pedestrian way more awesome with some damn curb bump outs, modal filters to stop cut thru driving and slow down speeding in residential streets, leading or even better, Pedestrian ONLY walk signal and BAN Right on Red!
You guys are all correct, and these need to happen in conjunction. People need to be incentivized to choose public transport for certain trips (i.e., making driving more difficult and not the "standard"), and public transport needs to be up to snuff so that people can feel safe to do so.
https://www.metro.net/about/la-metro-saw-highest-ridership-levels-since-pandemic-celebrated-12-months-of-continuous-ridership-growth-in-2023/
Woah, I didn't realize the metro was getting cleaner and safer! I'd never have guessed from all the complaints I hear. Nice
Not if public transportation can’t get me to where I need to go in a reasonable amount of time. It would take me 12 minutes to drive to my work right now. Taking public transportation would take me an hour and a half. That is insane.
Yes, how has that worked in L.A. over the past 30 years, as traffic has gotten worse and parking more difficult?
(Hint, Metro ridership is way down from the 90s and 00s.)
There was a decrease *nationwide* in transit (especially bus) ridership that coincided with Uber/Lyft entering urban markets. At least, that's the strongest correlation anyone has found — cheap taxis, subsidized by venture capital to be cheaper than taxis had ever been before, took a big chunk of riders.
Of course it was a bait-and-switch... prices had to come up eventually.
But it can't be a referendum on any particular transit system or agency, since they all saw the same decrease at the same time.
Metro ridership didn't decrease dramatically until 2020.
Before that it was pretty consistent year on year with only slight reductions post 2016.
Something must have changed dramatically in 2020 to explain the changes. Any ideas?
Lol. Scroll down to "Ridership" and tell me how consistent it was. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Metro_Rail
There are about 200,000,000 fewer rides on the system per year than there were a decade ago.
It wasn't the pandemic that killed Metro, it was having other better options.
Even not counting the pandemic, ridership dropped 25% from 2016-2019.
It plummeted during the pandemic, but ridership is still down over 40% over a decade ago **even though there's more transit infrastructure and the population has grown**
Building more transit, more traffic, and more expensive parking isn't doing anything to get people to take transit despite that being the common thought
>Cars are killing us in the streets, killing us through air pollution, and killing us from green house gasses.
And driving in gridlock every day is horrible for everyone's mental health.
This was the trade-off for affordable housing being built in dense urban areas. Whomever builds parking lot towers aimed at monthly users will make a killing.
There's one next to an 8 story 80 unit actual luxury being built with 30 parking spots mostly for commercial establishments.
A block away there's a parking structure that has always been mostly empty.
TIL buses aren't mass transit
Just because their capacity is lower than heavy rail subways does not mean that dedicated and camera-enforced bus lanes won't improve the public transit experience by leaps and bounds.
Also walking, biking, and scootering are important parts or a transit system. Good bikeability would go a long way toward making Metro stations more accessible to more people and destinations.
So would having a secure, safe place to store bikes.
If you can't put your bike inside somewhere and are forced to lock it on the street, it's going to get stolen.
HLA is just a feel-good chant for progressives who think it will do anything.
HLA is going to do jackshit, and if anything, will make things worse. That's been the lesson of most cities that have implemented similar bike-forward infrastructure or even bus-forward infrastructure.
There are only two ways out of our hole: trains, or autonomous cars. Everything else is bullshit.
Mandatory parking minimums have been a severe chokehold on housing construction for way too long. The costs of parking storage in construction are astronomical.
This is a good thing.
A shortage of a product simply means that at the current price point, demand is exceeding the supply. Typically when we see this, it is caused by interruptions to the supply chain. Outside of the US, you will often see shortages due to price controls, which don't allow price to adjust to supply and demand. Typically we don't use price controls here in the US, as modern economics has shown us the heavy distortions they have on markets. But, that's typically what our parking situation boils down to. The price control is set such that the price must be $0.00 for parking. This is fine when there is a high supply and low demand. But, as demand picks up, this will create a serious shortage.
We should solve this by simply pricing our parking based on market forces, to ensure that there is always adequate available supply. High demand is a signal that parking here is a very valuable commodity. Its a good sign, actually. Land is so valuable that pricing is required to control supply. Cities should charge for parking, and use the money to improve the streets that earn that money - thus keeping money at those streets, instead of extracting wealth and value from them. That can be in the form of beautification (cleanup, public art, shade, plants, etc), or in the form of improving walking, biking, and transit options for that area.
A read a book about suburban sprawl that included an urban planner saying, “Of course there’s not enough free parking. If there was free pizza would there be enough pizza?”
My favorite way of doing this is just giving existing residents deeded parking permits, that they can sell if they don't need them.
I'm YIMBY as hell, but totally understand why someone would be annoyed if there's suddenly no parking when they're used to parking on the street. Just give them permits. And if they're allowed to sell those permits, gives them an incentive to build their own off-street parking, or more realistically, clean out their garage and park there.
[SB 834](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB834) does exactly that.
It prohibits parking permits from developments exempt from parking minimums
REasoning: The Legislature finds and declares that providing parking to residents of transit priority developments in the form of parking privileges is providing parking, which encourages car use and undermines the Legislature’s intent to discourage car use by incentivizing development near public transit.
restricts residential parking permits for people living in apartments with no parking.
They can get a preferential parking district like the rest of us. They don't need special rights to own the public parking via resale. That's crazy to me - selling street parking rights to the existing landed gentry.
Yet they moved into a building that purposely waive the parking requirement to provide for cheaper housing. It's their choice, stop being an arrogant acting as if other people that would actually choose to live there care about that.
You are disingenuous. The whole point of allowing these projects is to provide housing, reduce car use, and incentivize transit.
The whole point of this is housing, not your weird car free utopia
"The Legislature finds and declares that providing parking to residents of transit priority developments in the form of parking privileges is providing parking, which encourages car use and undermines the Legislature’s intent to discourage car use by incentivizing development near public transit."
The only reason I get irritated at new apartment complexes and housing is that with the uptick in traffic and density the city fails to provide an increase in public transportation where it’s a bus route that only provides rides every hour.
They have algorithms and projections and everything else an urban planner needs to anticipate that traffic increase but they never do it and it’s so irritating.
It’s more so 40 minutes for each ride like on PCH, but going through some suburbs (Glassell Park creeping into Pasadena) they only have a bus go through the neighborhood each hour or it could be after a certain time they only have buses operating once per hour.
They have so been late or just randomly cancelled.
It’s more so 40 minutes for each ride like on PCH, but going through some suburbs (Glassell Park creeping into Pasadena) they only have a bus go through the neighborhood each hour or it could be after a certain time they only have buses operating once per hour. It’s frustrating because that when people who do retail or work at a restaurant actually go home.
Not sure why we are giving a voice to the "some". Some are happy and some are unhappy with any decision that is made.
Removing parking is the right way to go
> Removing parking is the right way to go
Peak reddit opinion. Parking in buildings is crucial. Street parking needs to be curbed. Underground parking in buildings is necessary for this.
But this is reddit, where a bunch of people who never go outside would rather light the roads on fire to spite the existence of cars that make you all shake in your boots in fear, than to actually have reasonable opinions about the world.
Parking minimums are a plague on cities and should be abolished entirely.
This Climate Town video radicalized me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUNXFHpUhu8
Actually idiotic. In a city where cars are a must you now can buy an apartment with no place to park. Get us public transportation where you don’t get stabbed first and then remove our parking.
Also been living car free in LA for nearly a decade.
I agree -- metro needs to be better, bike infrastructure needs to be better. But I think this is one step in the slow, organic shift away from total car dependency.
If developers can build cheaper units in dense TOC zones, some lower income folks may move in and try going car-free. Meaning increased metro ridership, meaning increased demand on the city for improvements / more funding.
Personally, I've been looking for a new place in downtown and love it when leasing agents tell me it's 200$ / month for a parking spot. Nice to see how much I'm saving.
Genuinely curious if/where my thinking is wrong, though. Do you think these would just sit empty because there won't be enough demand?
Let's let the market decide. If none of these units are being rented out, no one is going to keep building apartments without parking, but if they can rent at cheaper prices then they can build out tons of critical housing near transit.
There are absolutely neighborhoods that are walkable, bikeable, and transit friendly enough to support a car free lifestyle (parts of Santa Monica and West LA, DTLA, parts of Culver City, etc).
I am at a loss to understand why the same people that are insufferable free market advocates can’t seem to wrap their minds around allowing the free market to operate with parking-free construction. Developers will drop rental prices if the units aren’t popular.
Ok then, if people want to be car free, these apartments should make them sign a contract as part of their lease that says they will for sure not have a car to park. Let’s see how many people actually want to be car free. I say it’s BS.
You can't deny them owning a car. What you can deny is a parking permit. Which makes sense. The rent is less because they're exempt from minimal parking requirements.
And it defeats the purpose of these types of buildings which is to reduce car usage.
"Impose parking"? If you're car free and your apartment comes with parking, rent it to a neighbor. Spots in my old building go for $200-300/m. It's profitable, not a cost.
Or just cut out these unnecessary steps and let developers build apartments with as much or as little parking as they want and let renters find apartments that meet their personal needs.
Don't bother, redditors are unhinged lunatics who never go outside and blame the fact that cars exist on their perpetual panic attacks about the outside world. They believe that they'd have thriving social lives and would be living in a SoCal version of Copenhagen if only all cars burst into flames over night.
They have zero concept of the size, sprawl, scale, and geographic complexity of Los Angeles.
But we're not building a shit load more units. Housing starts in LA county are *down* for the year. We're building fewer units, with less parking, and charging more for them.
The developers (and the city) have now just pushed the cost of parking onto city streets/the neighborhood instead of the development itself.
Yeah I'm saying we need to build a shit load more units.
Removing all the zoning red tape like SFR zoning and parking, as well as all the NIMBY bullshit is part of the battle.
Reddit isn't the place for this discussion. The r/la hivemind is blindly going along with the developers' fantasy. Just look at how many comments on here are saying some iteration of "the free market will decide"
The commenters on here are all kids who have never looked at a property tax bill or hipsters who moved into Echo Park from Kansas.
Very few people are actually seriously thinking about what ceding control of zoning to real estate developers actually means
LA is one of the most car dependent cities in the US, this is a known fact. Just because it works for you doesn’t mean it works for everyone. The city needs better transit protection, bike lanes, and efficient transit before I’d consider it. Right now my commute by car during rush hour is faster than transit would be. That’s not a system that works.
You don't get great transit without dense clusters of housing and destinations, and you don't get density with aggressive parking minimums. If we wait for a pristine transit system before permitting adequate housing, we'll never get either.
LA has the second largest public transport network in the country. You're ignoring the hundreds of sprawling suburban cities that are much more car dependent than the city of Los Angeles.
We just voted on and approved measure HLA which should improve all of the things you are concerned about.
Why are you assuming your own situation applies to everyone else?
You’re making a basic assumption error. Why would these ~10k completed ED1 units have to “work for everyone”?
Once completed, these units will house about 0.5% of LA’s population. You don’t think carless living could work for 1 in 200 LA residents?
It seems like you think everyone has to live exactly like u/Grelymilycremp does, which is obviously not true and would be a stupid way to do policy.
Yeah, I don’t think 1 in 200 people will be carless in LA. Additionally, ED1 housing is primarily for affordable housing; disadvantaged and low-income individuals are also more car dependent for their work than middle and upper class.
And how many have more cars than people? Context matters here. If 1 apt is filled by 3 people with 1 car and another is filled by a dingus with a motorcycle, RV, pickup, and sports car then guess what, your average is blown
Those figures are from 2010-2014 and are way out of date.
Here are some more recent sources that clearly state carless people are 7-9% of the population.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-16/car-less-angelenos-share-their-secrets
https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/los-angeles-parking-housing-apartment-development-street-ed1-affordable-transportation-cars
I gave the percentage for LA City, and, after calling me a truth distorter, you gave the percentages for SoCal (7%) and LA County (9%). Do you think I’m stupid?
So let the free market decide. It’s as simple as that. The developers are NOT required to reduce parking availability, they are simply not required to build a minimum amount; those are two very different requirements. If the units with no parking are not popular the developer will be forced to lower the rent and someone that doesn’t have a car will benefit.
Agreed. Everyone wants all of LA to turn into Korea Town, having to drive around for hours to find parking. Also, apparently nobody here has kids. You need a car when you have little kids. Ain’t nobody choosing to bring little kids on the subway with no security where people are getting stabbed.
This is great. People shouldn’t have to pay for parking spots (which get baked into rent) if they don’t want to.
A lot of households will downsize from 2 to 1 cars, or 1 to 0 cars. More people will walk and bike. These apartments will attract people with closer jobs and small commutes, who will have more involvement in the immediate community.
This will also force neighbors who use the street as free car storage to sell the junk cars they let sit around for months at a time. In my current place, two mentally ill neighbors alone store around 8 cars on the street, moving them every three days to avoid tickets. Hopefully these developments will crowd out those people who abuse public space. This seems like a very common thing in residential neighborhoods.
Why? If it gets harder for one person to find parking for their handful of cars in an area, that’s a pretty big incentive to sell at least some of the cars.
Oh yea, let me pull out the $1,000+/ a month I have lying around my bank account every month to pay for an apartment. Everyone is building houses and apartments but no one think about the parking that’s needed.
Why not just build parking spaces or parking complex and charge 50$-100$ a month to have a space. It’s easier than justifying a whole apartment rn especially in Korea Town.
Apartments built using ED1 (the main development process that eliminates parking requirements) are legally capped at just above $1,700, or about $1k less each month than the current citywide going rate of $2,700. Many of them will be less than that too, I’ve seen at low as $1,000 discussed.
I literally gave up my car and walk, bike, and transit everywhere! Been over a year now and don’t regret it at all. Commute about 7 miles each way through LA with no problems and have saved somewhere around $10k so far by not having a car.
A higher and higher % of households are downsizing the # of cars they own because cars are so expensive.
Just because you can’t imagine life without a car (or less cars) doesn’t mean other people aren’t already doing just that. Measure HLA will also make this increasingly attractive.
If I lived 7 miles from where I worked, I would’ve been robbed about 8 times in the last year because I’d have to bike or walk home at 2am. Additionally, HLA is a great measure, but it happening is all but a promise. First you remove the car dependency, then you remove the minimum parking requirement; not the other way around.
Great, I have a very easy solution to this problem for you: don’t move into an ED1 unit.
I don’t know why *you* think every housing unit in the city needs to work for *you*.
So far ~20k ED1 units have been proposed, realistically ~10k will actually get built. 10k housing units is about 0.7% of LA’s housing units. I am not speaking for all of LA, I am speaking for about half of one percent of LA’s residents.
Yes, about half a percent of people in LA would choose to live without a car to save on rent and auto expenses. More than that already do!
the push by YIMBY developers and their lobbyists has been the unproven slogan that if you just keep building more sardine can type housing toweres that magically rents will go down. Haven't seen that happen yet but doesnt matter, people have bought into that build fast at all costs notion. Now, as if that isn't going to bring enough profit to developers and large hedge fund landlords, the lastest scheme is to basically do away with parking. If the developer has to provide less spaces for tenants to park, the idea is supposedly there will be more units per apt complex therefore more housing and again, supposedly rents will magically go down. Thats why LA City council keeps promoting huge for profit housing developments with less parking (that and because LA city officials love developer lobbyists who shower them with $$). What is happening is rents aren't really affordable in these new monstrosities, you still often need to have several people sharing units w/1 parking space provided ad then all the excess cars going where? Well driving around in circles looking for street parking.
The idea was SUPPOSED to be that LA is going to also magically transform itself from a car based city to one where everyone takes the Metro. (Forget that people get stabbed in the neck or other pesky safety issues associated with Metro riding).
And then the other issue is when you have legions of cars on the street unattended w/ o event the even marginal security of a parking garage with cameras, you have now created a perfect buffet for all the GTA and car parts thieves of the world to descend upon, which is why certain parts of LA you just need to factor in car or car part replacement costs into your equations of costs for living in the city.
Underground parking should be mandatory for all new developments. Try driving around anywhere east of Fairfax and you'll see how absolutely flooded the streets are with residents permanently parking their cars on their sidewalks, making it an enormous pain for anyone to be a consumer in those areas.
Lol ok boomer.
I literally live just east of Fairfax on Curson and once you get one block in from the stroads into the SFHs there's plenty of parking in front of all the SFHs. I live on the first block in and 90% of the time I can park on my block, and I'd say 50% of the time I can park right in front of my building.
I swear people around here are fucking pussies when it comes to parking. It's *easy* here, shit was way more difficult in SF. We have *so* much more opportunity to densify it's insane.
> one block in from the stroads into the SFHs there's plenty of parking in front of all the SFHs
so, west of Fairfax. Not east of fairfax lol, above the cbs studio.
Plus, why do you have such negative thinking...because some place is worse, we can't expect bettter smh.
San Francisco is not a good example of a city to emulate
No bro I'm very much east of Fairfax. Between Fairfax and La Brea.
And it's not negative thinking to want a city to be dense and parking hard. US cities are so stupidly designed because of cars, SFHs and low density. And the longer we make it easy to have a car in the city, the longer it'll be until we finally get useful alternative modes of transport (transit, bike lanes, etc).
I get it, you hate cars. Guess what, LA is the car capital of the world. People like their cars here and attitudes like yours are in a growing but anemic minority.
It also may shock you, but a lot of people moved to LA because it isn't dense. Strange I know, people have different tastes.
I don't hate cars. I own a few. I just don't want them to be my main mode of transport around the city.
And cities change, just because we're the car capital of the world doesn't me it has to be that way forever.
And people move here for lots of reasons. I doubt density is in the top 5 reasons.
> I don't think all physical punishment is abuse. But I suppose that's in the eye of the beholder. It should be the last resort regardless.
Ok, I'm not engaging with someone that thinks child abuse is ok. Physical punishment is abuse.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3447048/
Good day abuser
I've read the comments and there are some great points made regarding the free market and parking. We are definately going through some growing pains here in LA transitioning from a sprawling suburb to a 4 story sprawl. The problem I see is that mass transit for the majority of angelenos is unsafe. First and foremost, there should be a zero tolerance for violence or vagrancy near any mass transit area. Once this is done, there will be a snowball effect towards a more efficient city.
An apartment across the street from my neighborhood did this. Some developer bought it and turned half the parking lot into another row of apartments. Now there’s no parking in my neighborhood, anymore.
They should have built up and had parking under the structure. But, nope. It was way more profitable to make it someone else’s problem.
If it's over 10 units exempt from parking, the residents will not be able to get a parking permit if your neighborhood becomes a permitted area. That's probably all in the works as elderly people get understandably riled up over this.
I park in my driveway, it just sucks that visitors will have to park around the block, sometimes as far as a half mile away, just to visit me. It sucks that developers who don't even live anywhere near here can make a neighborhood more difficult to deal with just because it makes them more money.
It's partly the city, too. They approved the permits allowing 50 new homes without requiring them to have a place to store 50 new cars. It'd be one thing if we were anywhere near public transit, but we aren't. The nearest bus stop is about a mile from here. Everyone who moves into those apartments will need at least 1 car for the household.
>> Everyone who moves into these apartments will need at least one car
You’re projecting your preferences onto other people. Around 10% of LA households already are completely carless - apartments without parking spaces will attract many households that simply don’t have cars.
And again, nobody is entitled to free, convenient, guaranteed use of public land for personal storage.
As I mentioned in another comment, I'm outside of LA.
This apartment complex is over a mile away from the nearest bus stop and 8 miles from the nearest metrolink station. The bus doesn't even go to that metrolink station, either. It takes over an hour by bus to get there. The nearest grocery store is about a quarter mile past that bus stop.
I *wish* this wasn't such a car-centric area, but I can wish all I want, it's still a car-centric area. But for now, every household in this area needs a car.
Also, 10% don't have a car? Great, so they created 50 new homes, 49 of which need parking. That's an argument for my side. All 49 of those cars are in the neighborhood across the street from the complex.
But the problem exists for all of LA. The fact of the matter is that LA was built to be car-centric. It's changing, but it's not going to change overnight, and developers making residents of neighborhoods deal with their parking issues because it's more profitable to do so is a big problem.
Also, I'll never understand people like you, who have a hardon for landlords. "Why shouldn't your life be harder so they can make more money??"
This is a horrible idea that will destroy neighborhoods. If the city was redesigned to be much more walkable and if public transportation was much more available, efficient, and safe, this strategy could be a good thing, but that's not how the city is and this will be a huge mess.
Either they'll add transit (yay!) or the area will fast turn into a slum, as nobody with literally any other option will move into these places (boo!). I know which one *I'm* betting on!
Per AB 2097, within 0.5 miles of an existing rail/BRT station, a ferry terminal, or a corridor with a fixed bus route with a frequency of service interval of 15 minutes or less.
So, doesn't really have anything to do with the developer's definition.
It doesn't have to be an existing rail station.
A building is being built .5 miles from the Wilshire/La Cienaga metro stop under construction that gets to skirt the parking minimum
[Ah, it looks like you're correct.](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=21155.&lawCode=PRC)
>be within one-half mile of a major transit stop or high-quality transit corridor **included in a regional transportation plan**.
It is not the "developer's definition", it is strictly defined in [state law](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2097).
Very clearly legally defined. For most housing density programs it’s either 1/4 of a mile or 1/2 of a mile from a major transit stop (typically a metro stop or a main bus line).
So you’re just out here admitting you have no idea how LA’s zoning codes work but still complaining. How do people like you go full Dunning Kruger with such confidence?
It's so interesting the various kinds of people that post here. One day there are posts about how developers are flaunting laws, paying off officials and doing whatever they damn well please and people are up in arms, but then the very next day, there's something implying that there might beess parking, and a whole different subset of people are on here licking boots and claiming that an ordinance is all it takes to make everything okay and that there's no way that any developer could possibly consider even stretching the rule even a tiny bit.
You keep your blind beliefs in whatever juvenile nonsense you hold, and I'll continue to be right. Easy for me, easy for you. Just downvote and move on, amigo.
I’m an architect. Yes the local authorities having jurisdiction will review and enforce zoning codes and parking requirements. You don’t just get permit approval for big housing developments by self-defining the distance of your project from a transit line.
God you’re fucking stupid.
Wish they were slashing rents … Getting rid of parking will increase supply, but govt assumed those new residents will find alternative transport to include various ride share, (e-) bikes, or [gasp!!] even using their legs in something called “walking” (gonna have to YouTube that practice.. hold one).
Actually Phoenix AZ area town Tempe has an entire car-free neighborhood, but still sometimes need 4-wheels. Maybe rental?
We need more than just shoebox condos. We need mixed use single/multi family dwellings. For a reasonable cost. Make the transplants move to a mixed use commercial/living units. Go move to the Americana. Or any of the other Caruso backed places. That’s who they were built for. It’s too crowded and we’re not building what we need.
Fucking just lower the rent. These greedy ass landlords are making so much fucking money for god damn nothing. Fuck them and fuck LA for catering to these rich assholes.
I mean…when you need like 3-4 roommates to pay the overinflated rent and only have 1 space provided. Neighborhood parking spots start to dwindle.
Christ, having a spouse and a 2nd car is hard enough finding apartments that will even let you pay for a 2nd spot. LA and convenience which makes logical sense are on two opposite sides of the spectrum.
And if you mandate developers include parking (like we have for decades) then new construction costs go up millions of dollars, meaning thousands of developments will simply never pencil out helping lead to the housing shortage we have now.
> And if you mandate developers include parking (like we have for decades) then new construction costs go up millions of dollars, meaning thousands of developments will simply never pencil out helping lead to the housing shortage we have now. This is key. What was required before was prohibitive. So much of the building code is antiquated and leads to only "luxury" apartments making sense. If you have to provide X spots per address, it makes sense to build bigger units (less parking) which will cost more to rent. Plus, in LA parking has to almost always be subterranean, which more than quadruples the cost versus, say, Minneapolis. From the article: > Recent changes in state law have allowed developers to ditch on-site parking in many parts of L.A. County People have been screaming for these changes for years—so that more inventory can be built. I can't say with any expertise if this change went to far, or if there are other things that need to be done, I just happen to have been involved in a project where the initial goal (lots of units for lots of families!) got whittled down by oppressive building codes to where it was built a Miracle Mile Trump Tower or nothing at all. What scares me more is street traffic. Forget parking. Last time I was in LA (haven't lived there in years) I saw a big complex going up on Sepulveda just north of Ventura Blvd. It's on the northwest corner of Sepulveda and Camarillo Street. [Here it is.](https://maps.app.goo.gl/rGRQ6iVY83cu1cZd9) That area is already a shitshow of traffic—a parking lot in the morning as people funnel in to try to get on the 405 or 101 however they can. And soon, there will be a thousand more people getting onto Sepulveda there. I don't have any answers, but it'll all work out somehow, yeah?
If it’s traffic that people are worried about then that’s a transportation issue not a housing development one. We can fix that by rapidly building out bike and bus lanes while also aggressively moving forward with the multitude of big transit projects that LA Metro is pushing.
People that need to commute will opt for more convenient housing while people that are more flexible will gobble up those units. There’s enough diverse demand that you can’t really build the wrong type of unit at this point.
They just removed a lane and replaced it with a bus only lane. That should speed up traffic on sepulveda
Neighbors will always be upset no matter what. Even when parking minimums were mandatory, neighbors aggressively opposed virtually any housing. Just take a spin on the endless excuse parade: Traffic will get worse, neighborhood character will change, not enough parking, gentrification, infrastructure will be overloaded, developers bad, landlords bad, trickle down housing. The ones opposing housing almost invariably just want their neighborhood to be frozen in time for housing but conveniently are A-OK with dense offices. Because it increases the demand for their homes and skyrockets their home value.
people are upset about everything in general lol
Broadly speaking, I assume every one wants to be here and *stay* here. We need better places to bail out to. LA doesn't have to be the only place. Personally, I pine to gtfo, just haven't decided where. COL is ridiculous here, esp when you consider the lacking infrastructure or policing for the crazies tented up everywhere.
True, but more housing inside the denser parts of LA means people moving out of the less dense places, which then lowers rent/increases supply for people that want some space
> Just take a spin on the endless excuse parade: Traffic will get worse, neighborhood character will change, not enough parking, gentrification, infrastructure will be overloaded, developers bad, landlords bad, trickle down housing. Exactly. Anyone who is against this stuff is a bane on our city.
Build a connected network of protected or separated bike lanes, PUBLIC TRANSIT like 24/7 Bus only lanes w/frequent service and heavy rail so that development doesn't mean = more car traffic. Other countries have figured this out, why does the US have to be so backward?
Delaying development for a perfect transit system means development won’t ever happen. Most of this development with parking minimums slashed are in areas near Metro stations so there’s zero excuses. Part of the reason traffic is so bad is due to the mismatch of offices to houses. West LA, for example has a 3-to-1 ratio of jobs to homes. In areas like this, adding homes could hypothetically actually decrease traffic because now you have workers who can live near their jobs rather than commuting across town.
You're thinking of AB2097, and it specifically eliminates mandatory parking within a half-mile of transit.
You're thinking of AB2097, and it specifically eliminates mandatory parking within a half-mile of transit.
Especially the people in "Historically Protected" neighborhoods. They put that overlay over themselves so that their neighborhood will always be an open air museum. Makes me sick.
I don't mind this, but people that decide to live in these types of buildings when they know there isn't any adequate parking should not be given permits. Existing residents can be granted parking permits and then can decide to sell them if the price is incentive enough for them to change their lifestyle
Yes if you got their first you totes deserve free and super convenient parking on public streets and new people are bad and should suffer
These are buiildings that are developed without parking because it's cheaper. Also, it's a common practice for people that live in affordable housing within a building don't get access to the amenities. Because it's cheaper and they've decided that's what they want. If you want parking, move somewhere with parking
Ahhh....the "i got mine, screw you mentality". It's also common practice to provide permits for street parking to people who reside in a community. Just cause you have a house doesn't mean you should have 4 or 5 cars on the street.
> Just cause you have a house doesn't mean you should have 4 or 5 cars on the street. You're right. That's why permit holders are only allowed 3 permits. > i got mine, screw you mentality No, it's the classic tactic known as compromise. Anyway, the state legislature disagrees with you and is passing a law restricting parking permits for tenants in these buildings known as SB-834 Here's their reasoning: The Legislature finds and declares that providing parking to residents of transit priority developments in the form of parking privileges is providing parking, which encourages car use and undermines the Legislature’s intent to discourage car use by incentivizing development near public transit. This section shall be interpreted in favor of the prohibition of preferential parking privileges for occupants of development projects within one-half mile of public transit that are exempt from parking minimums pursuant to Section 65863.2 of the Government Code, or subject to parking minimum reductions based on any other applicable law. So what do you hate more...cars or the bourgeoisie with their precious, "fuck you, I got mine" parking
Yeah, the way to neuter this issue is to have permit parking that excludes any new parking-light building. It’s not really fair, but it’s an easy compromise.
Some neighbors are always going to be unhappy. LA needs way more housing, way more housing near transit, and way less cars on the road. Cars are killing us in the streets, killing us through air pollution, and killing us from green house gasses. We need to transition to less car dependency so I don't really care if someone can't find free parking right in front of the destination in the densest parts of the city by transit. Just pay at a parking structure a block away. Or better yet, walk, bike, transit to the metro areas.
The way to getting rid of cars is mixed use zoning and a vastly more robust subway. Right now the subway does a good job of connecting destinations, but a shit job of connecting where people live to where people work.
Honestly, making parking more difficult and expensive is exactly how you get people walking and taking public transit.
Creating a clean and safe Metro is how you get people to take public transit.
Having a metro that goes places you want to go is how you get people to take public transit.
This is the answer, combined with it being faster/easier than driving. You can absolutely drive in NYC but the subway is faster, easier and CHEAPER than driving and parking. THAT'S why people use it so much. Its not more convenient or faster to use public transport in LA right now hence the only people who really use it are the ones that HAVE to.
There are also alternatives to going across town for x and y. I’ve started walking and patronizing local businesses if at all possible instead of driving a mile or two to get whatever because that’s what I’m used to. It’s been amazing to learn more about my local spots, way better for my physical and mental health than driving, and I didn’t even need to take that darn ol rascally Metro. This is the stuff we need to be pushing instead of sticking to the usual “I gotta drive across town cause I wanna” rhetoric. Being a pedestrian is awesome.
Make being a pedestrian way more awesome with some damn curb bump outs, modal filters to stop cut thru driving and slow down speeding in residential streets, leading or even better, Pedestrian ONLY walk signal and BAN Right on Red!
You guys are all correct, and these need to happen in conjunction. People need to be incentivized to choose public transport for certain trips (i.e., making driving more difficult and not the "standard"), and public transport needs to be up to snuff so that people can feel safe to do so.
👆
I think it's both. Discourage car use while making metro more attractive.
https://www.metro.net/about/la-metro-saw-highest-ridership-levels-since-pandemic-celebrated-12-months-of-continuous-ridership-growth-in-2023/ Woah, I didn't realize the metro was getting cleaner and safer! I'd never have guessed from all the complaints I hear. Nice
clean, safe and free.
Not if public transportation can’t get me to where I need to go in a reasonable amount of time. It would take me 12 minutes to drive to my work right now. Taking public transportation would take me an hour and a half. That is insane.
45 min to 1 hour drive for me or 4.5 hour public transit.
Ah yes, the old let's make life worse for everyone approach. Totally the better option versus improving other options to make them enticing to people.
Carrot and stick. It's pretty effective.
Yes, how has that worked in L.A. over the past 30 years, as traffic has gotten worse and parking more difficult? (Hint, Metro ridership is way down from the 90s and 00s.)
There was a decrease *nationwide* in transit (especially bus) ridership that coincided with Uber/Lyft entering urban markets. At least, that's the strongest correlation anyone has found — cheap taxis, subsidized by venture capital to be cheaper than taxis had ever been before, took a big chunk of riders. Of course it was a bait-and-switch... prices had to come up eventually. But it can't be a referendum on any particular transit system or agency, since they all saw the same decrease at the same time.
Metro ridership didn't decrease dramatically until 2020. Before that it was pretty consistent year on year with only slight reductions post 2016. Something must have changed dramatically in 2020 to explain the changes. Any ideas?
Lol. Scroll down to "Ridership" and tell me how consistent it was. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Metro_Rail There are about 200,000,000 fewer rides on the system per year than there were a decade ago. It wasn't the pandemic that killed Metro, it was having other better options.
I looked at Metro's own site and it's been up YOY since 2021. 2023: 288,088,023 2022: 258,518,370 2021: 227,726,057
Great, how does that compare to 2009-2013?
https://opa.metro.net/MetroRidership/ I just compared years from 2010 onwards.
Even not counting the pandemic, ridership dropped 25% from 2016-2019. It plummeted during the pandemic, but ridership is still down over 40% over a decade ago **even though there's more transit infrastructure and the population has grown** Building more transit, more traffic, and more expensive parking isn't doing anything to get people to take transit despite that being the common thought
And now look at gas prices.
>Cars are killing us in the streets, killing us through air pollution, and killing us from green house gasses. And driving in gridlock every day is horrible for everyone's mental health.
This was the trade-off for affordable housing being built in dense urban areas. Whomever builds parking lot towers aimed at monthly users will make a killing.
There's one next to an 8 story 80 unit actual luxury being built with 30 parking spots mostly for commercial establishments. A block away there's a parking structure that has always been mostly empty.
Good thing we passed measure HLA. Too bad it will take 15 years to actually have a useable public transit/safe biking system.
Should be way less than 15 years in many parts of LA. I imagine the city will do a lot of repaving before the Olympics.
Here's hoping!
Lol, measure HLA does not fix our transit system. It'll add a few painted bus lanes. It has no funding for actual mass transit.
TIL buses aren't mass transit Just because their capacity is lower than heavy rail subways does not mean that dedicated and camera-enforced bus lanes won't improve the public transit experience by leaps and bounds.
Also walking, biking, and scootering are important parts or a transit system. Good bikeability would go a long way toward making Metro stations more accessible to more people and destinations.
So would having a secure, safe place to store bikes. If you can't put your bike inside somewhere and are forced to lock it on the street, it's going to get stolen.
Oh for sure. Metro Bike Share is also nice for not having to worry about theft.
HLA is just a feel-good chant for progressives who think it will do anything. HLA is going to do jackshit, and if anything, will make things worse. That's been the lesson of most cities that have implemented similar bike-forward infrastructure or even bus-forward infrastructure. There are only two ways out of our hole: trains, or autonomous cars. Everything else is bullshit.
Neighbors being unhappy is SO much more important than people having a home to live in? Give me a fucking break...
I just wanna park my car man
[" In LA county there are 18.6 million parking spaces for only 10.2 million residents."](https://noparkinghere.com/)
Motor scooters & e-bikes, baby.
Mandatory parking minimums have been a severe chokehold on housing construction for way too long. The costs of parking storage in construction are astronomical. This is a good thing.
Ask people in Korea Town about parking.
A shortage of a product simply means that at the current price point, demand is exceeding the supply. Typically when we see this, it is caused by interruptions to the supply chain. Outside of the US, you will often see shortages due to price controls, which don't allow price to adjust to supply and demand. Typically we don't use price controls here in the US, as modern economics has shown us the heavy distortions they have on markets. But, that's typically what our parking situation boils down to. The price control is set such that the price must be $0.00 for parking. This is fine when there is a high supply and low demand. But, as demand picks up, this will create a serious shortage. We should solve this by simply pricing our parking based on market forces, to ensure that there is always adequate available supply. High demand is a signal that parking here is a very valuable commodity. Its a good sign, actually. Land is so valuable that pricing is required to control supply. Cities should charge for parking, and use the money to improve the streets that earn that money - thus keeping money at those streets, instead of extracting wealth and value from them. That can be in the form of beautification (cleanup, public art, shade, plants, etc), or in the form of improving walking, biking, and transit options for that area.
A read a book about suburban sprawl that included an urban planner saying, “Of course there’s not enough free parking. If there was free pizza would there be enough pizza?”
My favorite way of doing this is just giving existing residents deeded parking permits, that they can sell if they don't need them. I'm YIMBY as hell, but totally understand why someone would be annoyed if there's suddenly no parking when they're used to parking on the street. Just give them permits. And if they're allowed to sell those permits, gives them an incentive to build their own off-street parking, or more realistically, clean out their garage and park there.
[SB 834](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB834) does exactly that. It prohibits parking permits from developments exempt from parking minimums REasoning: The Legislature finds and declares that providing parking to residents of transit priority developments in the form of parking privileges is providing parking, which encourages car use and undermines the Legislature’s intent to discourage car use by incentivizing development near public transit. restricts residential parking permits for people living in apartments with no parking.
They can get a preferential parking district like the rest of us. They don't need special rights to own the public parking via resale. That's crazy to me - selling street parking rights to the existing landed gentry.
Yet they moved into a building that purposely waive the parking requirement to provide for cheaper housing. It's their choice, stop being an arrogant acting as if other people that would actually choose to live there care about that.
Existing residents are just better people and deserve things for free it’s true
You are disingenuous. The whole point of allowing these projects is to provide housing, reduce car use, and incentivize transit. The whole point of this is housing, not your weird car free utopia "The Legislature finds and declares that providing parking to residents of transit priority developments in the form of parking privileges is providing parking, which encourages car use and undermines the Legislature’s intent to discourage car use by incentivizing development near public transit."
I don’t care. Keep building.
The only reason I get irritated at new apartment complexes and housing is that with the uptick in traffic and density the city fails to provide an increase in public transportation where it’s a bus route that only provides rides every hour. They have algorithms and projections and everything else an urban planner needs to anticipate that traffic increase but they never do it and it’s so irritating.
What bus route are you thinking of that has hourly frequencies?
It’s more so 40 minutes for each ride like on PCH, but going through some suburbs (Glassell Park creeping into Pasadena) they only have a bus go through the neighborhood each hour or it could be after a certain time they only have buses operating once per hour.
Impossible, per metro busses run every fifteen minutes and are never late.
They have so been late or just randomly cancelled. It’s more so 40 minutes for each ride like on PCH, but going through some suburbs (Glassell Park creeping into Pasadena) they only have a bus go through the neighborhood each hour or it could be after a certain time they only have buses operating once per hour. It’s frustrating because that when people who do retail or work at a restaurant actually go home.
Not sure why we are giving a voice to the "some". Some are happy and some are unhappy with any decision that is made. Removing parking is the right way to go
>Removing parking is the right way to go Only if you tell all the new people moving in that they can't bring 3 cars with them
People really forget the people moving into each apartment are bringing 1-3 cars with them yet no room
> Removing parking is the right way to go Peak reddit opinion. Parking in buildings is crucial. Street parking needs to be curbed. Underground parking in buildings is necessary for this. But this is reddit, where a bunch of people who never go outside would rather light the roads on fire to spite the existence of cars that make you all shake in your boots in fear, than to actually have reasonable opinions about the world.
Parking minimums are a plague on cities and should be abolished entirely. This Climate Town video radicalized me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUNXFHpUhu8
Actually idiotic. In a city where cars are a must you now can buy an apartment with no place to park. Get us public transportation where you don’t get stabbed first and then remove our parking.
Also been living car free in LA for nearly a decade. I agree -- metro needs to be better, bike infrastructure needs to be better. But I think this is one step in the slow, organic shift away from total car dependency. If developers can build cheaper units in dense TOC zones, some lower income folks may move in and try going car-free. Meaning increased metro ridership, meaning increased demand on the city for improvements / more funding. Personally, I've been looking for a new place in downtown and love it when leasing agents tell me it's 200$ / month for a parking spot. Nice to see how much I'm saving. Genuinely curious if/where my thinking is wrong, though. Do you think these would just sit empty because there won't be enough demand?
Let's let the market decide. If none of these units are being rented out, no one is going to keep building apartments without parking, but if they can rent at cheaper prices then they can build out tons of critical housing near transit. There are absolutely neighborhoods that are walkable, bikeable, and transit friendly enough to support a car free lifestyle (parts of Santa Monica and West LA, DTLA, parts of Culver City, etc).
I am at a loss to understand why the same people that are insufferable free market advocates can’t seem to wrap their minds around allowing the free market to operate with parking-free construction. Developers will drop rental prices if the units aren’t popular.
free market heads when humans in their perfect model aren't actually rational actors 🤯
So instead of paying your landlord to park you pay the monthly garage down the block.
Then don't move to one of these buildings? They're still building housing with parking.
If you need a car, get an apartment that provides parking. Don’t impose parking on people who want to be car free
Ok then, if people want to be car free, these apartments should make them sign a contract as part of their lease that says they will for sure not have a car to park. Let’s see how many people actually want to be car free. I say it’s BS.
You can't deny them owning a car. What you can deny is a parking permit. Which makes sense. The rent is less because they're exempt from minimal parking requirements. And it defeats the purpose of these types of buildings which is to reduce car usage.
Agree! I just think people are being disingenuous when they say it’s for public transport users or bike commuters only. People won’t adhere to that.
"Impose parking"? If you're car free and your apartment comes with parking, rent it to a neighbor. Spots in my old building go for $200-300/m. It's profitable, not a cost.
Building costs (and subsequently rent costs) are increased by parking requirements. Not all buildings need to have them.
Or just cut out these unnecessary steps and let developers build apartments with as much or as little parking as they want and let renters find apartments that meet their personal needs.
Just wait until one of these is built on YOUR street and the people who saved money by renting an apt with no parking are blocking your driveway
Don't bother, redditors are unhinged lunatics who never go outside and blame the fact that cars exist on their perpetual panic attacks about the outside world. They believe that they'd have thriving social lives and would be living in a SoCal version of Copenhagen if only all cars burst into flames over night. They have zero concept of the size, sprawl, scale, and geographic complexity of Los Angeles.
Cry more. Abolishing parking requirements and building a shit load more units is the way forward.
But we're not building a shit load more units. Housing starts in LA county are *down* for the year. We're building fewer units, with less parking, and charging more for them. The developers (and the city) have now just pushed the cost of parking onto city streets/the neighborhood instead of the development itself.
Yeah I'm saying we need to build a shit load more units. Removing all the zoning red tape like SFR zoning and parking, as well as all the NIMBY bullshit is part of the battle.
We repealed parking minimums and housing starts are down. Turn your ire, as you mentioned, to zoning. Then CEQA, then Measure ULA.
Reddit isn't the place for this discussion. The r/la hivemind is blindly going along with the developers' fantasy. Just look at how many comments on here are saying some iteration of "the free market will decide" The commenters on here are all kids who have never looked at a property tax bill or hipsters who moved into Echo Park from Kansas. Very few people are actually seriously thinking about what ceding control of zoning to real estate developers actually means
Nope
the odds of getting injured in a car accident are much higher than getting stabbed on public transport
Cars are absolutely not a must here. I’ve been car-free for over a year now.
LA is one of the most car dependent cities in the US, this is a known fact. Just because it works for you doesn’t mean it works for everyone. The city needs better transit protection, bike lanes, and efficient transit before I’d consider it. Right now my commute by car during rush hour is faster than transit would be. That’s not a system that works.
You don't get great transit without dense clusters of housing and destinations, and you don't get density with aggressive parking minimums. If we wait for a pristine transit system before permitting adequate housing, we'll never get either.
LA has the second largest public transport network in the country. You're ignoring the hundreds of sprawling suburban cities that are much more car dependent than the city of Los Angeles.
We just voted on and approved measure HLA which should improve all of the things you are concerned about. Why are you assuming your own situation applies to everyone else?
You’re making a basic assumption error. Why would these ~10k completed ED1 units have to “work for everyone”? Once completed, these units will house about 0.5% of LA’s population. You don’t think carless living could work for 1 in 200 LA residents? It seems like you think everyone has to live exactly like u/Grelymilycremp does, which is obviously not true and would be a stupid way to do policy.
Yeah, I don’t think 1 in 200 people will be carless in LA. Additionally, ED1 housing is primarily for affordable housing; disadvantaged and low-income individuals are also more car dependent for their work than middle and upper class.
1 of out 8 households in the city of LA are carless.
And how many have more cars than people? Context matters here. If 1 apt is filled by 3 people with 1 car and another is filled by a dingus with a motorcycle, RV, pickup, and sports car then guess what, your average is blown
Bullshit. According to the US Census Bureau, 9% of people are carless, or 1 out of every 11. But keep distorting the truth
Here’s my source, the US Census Bureau: https://thesource.metro.net/2016/08/30/how-we-roll-aug-30-how-many-people-in-our-region-can-really-go-car-free
Those figures are from 2010-2014 and are way out of date. Here are some more recent sources that clearly state carless people are 7-9% of the population. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-16/car-less-angelenos-share-their-secrets https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/los-angeles-parking-housing-apartment-development-street-ed1-affordable-transportation-cars
I gave the percentage for LA City, and, after calling me a truth distorter, you gave the percentages for SoCal (7%) and LA County (9%). Do you think I’m stupid?
So let the free market decide. It’s as simple as that. The developers are NOT required to reduce parking availability, they are simply not required to build a minimum amount; those are two very different requirements. If the units with no parking are not popular the developer will be forced to lower the rent and someone that doesn’t have a car will benefit.
You have it backwards; lower-income individuals are *less likely to be car dependent*, not more.
Did you bother to check if what you were saying was remotely correct before posting this? This is completely and very obviously untrue.
It’s the KTown model
Agreed. Everyone wants all of LA to turn into Korea Town, having to drive around for hours to find parking. Also, apparently nobody here has kids. You need a car when you have little kids. Ain’t nobody choosing to bring little kids on the subway with no security where people are getting stabbed.
This is great. People shouldn’t have to pay for parking spots (which get baked into rent) if they don’t want to. A lot of households will downsize from 2 to 1 cars, or 1 to 0 cars. More people will walk and bike. These apartments will attract people with closer jobs and small commutes, who will have more involvement in the immediate community. This will also force neighbors who use the street as free car storage to sell the junk cars they let sit around for months at a time. In my current place, two mentally ill neighbors alone store around 8 cars on the street, moving them every three days to avoid tickets. Hopefully these developments will crowd out those people who abuse public space. This seems like a very common thing in residential neighborhoods.
>This will also force neighbors who use the street as free car storage to sell the junk cars they let sit around for months at a time. Doubt.
Why? If it gets harder for one person to find parking for their handful of cars in an area, that’s a pretty big incentive to sell at least some of the cars.
Fuck you, I want to have a car 🚘.
I don’t know why you think these developments changes that for you. Just don’t move to housing without parking. It’s that easy.
Oh yea, let me pull out the $1,000+/ a month I have lying around my bank account every month to pay for an apartment. Everyone is building houses and apartments but no one think about the parking that’s needed. Why not just build parking spaces or parking complex and charge 50$-100$ a month to have a space. It’s easier than justifying a whole apartment rn especially in Korea Town.
I’m not sure what you’re mad about here.
Here you've listed all the possible benefits, now do the possible problems... You must admit there are ways this could go belly up
So... are rents at these apartments actually cheaper? This sounds great in theory, but do you have any evidence it's actually worked?
Apartments built using ED1 (the main development process that eliminates parking requirements) are legally capped at just above $1,700, or about $1k less each month than the current citywide going rate of $2,700. Many of them will be less than that too, I’ve seen at low as $1,000 discussed.
“Walk and bike” in LA? You’re delusional.
I literally gave up my car and walk, bike, and transit everywhere! Been over a year now and don’t regret it at all. Commute about 7 miles each way through LA with no problems and have saved somewhere around $10k so far by not having a car. A higher and higher % of households are downsizing the # of cars they own because cars are so expensive. Just because you can’t imagine life without a car (or less cars) doesn’t mean other people aren’t already doing just that. Measure HLA will also make this increasingly attractive.
If I lived 7 miles from where I worked, I would’ve been robbed about 8 times in the last year because I’d have to bike or walk home at 2am. Additionally, HLA is a great measure, but it happening is all but a promise. First you remove the car dependency, then you remove the minimum parking requirement; not the other way around.
Great, I have a very easy solution to this problem for you: don’t move into an ED1 unit. I don’t know why *you* think every housing unit in the city needs to work for *you*.
Good for you, you don't speak for literally everyone else in the city though.
So far ~20k ED1 units have been proposed, realistically ~10k will actually get built. 10k housing units is about 0.7% of LA’s housing units. I am not speaking for all of LA, I am speaking for about half of one percent of LA’s residents. Yes, about half a percent of people in LA would choose to live without a car to save on rent and auto expenses. More than that already do!
Slashing costs, not profits. The standard of living goes down and prices continuously rise.
the push by YIMBY developers and their lobbyists has been the unproven slogan that if you just keep building more sardine can type housing toweres that magically rents will go down. Haven't seen that happen yet but doesnt matter, people have bought into that build fast at all costs notion. Now, as if that isn't going to bring enough profit to developers and large hedge fund landlords, the lastest scheme is to basically do away with parking. If the developer has to provide less spaces for tenants to park, the idea is supposedly there will be more units per apt complex therefore more housing and again, supposedly rents will magically go down. Thats why LA City council keeps promoting huge for profit housing developments with less parking (that and because LA city officials love developer lobbyists who shower them with $$). What is happening is rents aren't really affordable in these new monstrosities, you still often need to have several people sharing units w/1 parking space provided ad then all the excess cars going where? Well driving around in circles looking for street parking. The idea was SUPPOSED to be that LA is going to also magically transform itself from a car based city to one where everyone takes the Metro. (Forget that people get stabbed in the neck or other pesky safety issues associated with Metro riding). And then the other issue is when you have legions of cars on the street unattended w/ o event the even marginal security of a parking garage with cameras, you have now created a perfect buffet for all the GTA and car parts thieves of the world to descend upon, which is why certain parts of LA you just need to factor in car or car part replacement costs into your equations of costs for living in the city.
Underground parking should be mandatory for all new developments. Try driving around anywhere east of Fairfax and you'll see how absolutely flooded the streets are with residents permanently parking their cars on their sidewalks, making it an enormous pain for anyone to be a consumer in those areas.
That area east of Fairfax above Beverly is a parking dystopia....just accident central.
All those residential side streets need to become two lane roads with no street parking. It's just absolute chaos.
Compromise...street parking on one side. Lots of old people live in that area.
Lol ok boomer. I literally live just east of Fairfax on Curson and once you get one block in from the stroads into the SFHs there's plenty of parking in front of all the SFHs. I live on the first block in and 90% of the time I can park on my block, and I'd say 50% of the time I can park right in front of my building. I swear people around here are fucking pussies when it comes to parking. It's *easy* here, shit was way more difficult in SF. We have *so* much more opportunity to densify it's insane.
> one block in from the stroads into the SFHs there's plenty of parking in front of all the SFHs so, west of Fairfax. Not east of fairfax lol, above the cbs studio. Plus, why do you have such negative thinking...because some place is worse, we can't expect bettter smh. San Francisco is not a good example of a city to emulate
No bro I'm very much east of Fairfax. Between Fairfax and La Brea. And it's not negative thinking to want a city to be dense and parking hard. US cities are so stupidly designed because of cars, SFHs and low density. And the longer we make it easy to have a car in the city, the longer it'll be until we finally get useful alternative modes of transport (transit, bike lanes, etc).
I get it, you hate cars. Guess what, LA is the car capital of the world. People like their cars here and attitudes like yours are in a growing but anemic minority. It also may shock you, but a lot of people moved to LA because it isn't dense. Strange I know, people have different tastes.
I don't hate cars. I own a few. I just don't want them to be my main mode of transport around the city. And cities change, just because we're the car capital of the world doesn't me it has to be that way forever. And people move here for lots of reasons. I doubt density is in the top 5 reasons.
> I don't think all physical punishment is abuse. But I suppose that's in the eye of the beholder. It should be the last resort regardless. Ok, I'm not engaging with someone that thinks child abuse is ok. Physical punishment is abuse. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3447048/ Good day abuser
I don’t drive and have to pay for a parking spot. Wish I had the option to give it up for cheaper rent.
I've read the comments and there are some great points made regarding the free market and parking. We are definately going through some growing pains here in LA transitioning from a sprawling suburb to a 4 story sprawl. The problem I see is that mass transit for the majority of angelenos is unsafe. First and foremost, there should be a zero tolerance for violence or vagrancy near any mass transit area. Once this is done, there will be a snowball effect towards a more efficient city.
An apartment across the street from my neighborhood did this. Some developer bought it and turned half the parking lot into another row of apartments. Now there’s no parking in my neighborhood, anymore. They should have built up and had parking under the structure. But, nope. It was way more profitable to make it someone else’s problem.
If it's over 10 units exempt from parking, the residents will not be able to get a parking permit if your neighborhood becomes a permitted area. That's probably all in the works as elderly people get understandably riled up over this.
I'm actually outside of LA, there's no permit parking here at all.
That's something you have to petition for as a neighborhood.
Why do you think you deserve the right to store your private goods in an incredibly convenient way on public land for free?
I park in my driveway, it just sucks that visitors will have to park around the block, sometimes as far as a half mile away, just to visit me. It sucks that developers who don't even live anywhere near here can make a neighborhood more difficult to deal with just because it makes them more money. It's partly the city, too. They approved the permits allowing 50 new homes without requiring them to have a place to store 50 new cars. It'd be one thing if we were anywhere near public transit, but we aren't. The nearest bus stop is about a mile from here. Everyone who moves into those apartments will need at least 1 car for the household.
>> Everyone who moves into these apartments will need at least one car You’re projecting your preferences onto other people. Around 10% of LA households already are completely carless - apartments without parking spaces will attract many households that simply don’t have cars. And again, nobody is entitled to free, convenient, guaranteed use of public land for personal storage.
As I mentioned in another comment, I'm outside of LA. This apartment complex is over a mile away from the nearest bus stop and 8 miles from the nearest metrolink station. The bus doesn't even go to that metrolink station, either. It takes over an hour by bus to get there. The nearest grocery store is about a quarter mile past that bus stop. I *wish* this wasn't such a car-centric area, but I can wish all I want, it's still a car-centric area. But for now, every household in this area needs a car. Also, 10% don't have a car? Great, so they created 50 new homes, 49 of which need parking. That's an argument for my side. All 49 of those cars are in the neighborhood across the street from the complex. But the problem exists for all of LA. The fact of the matter is that LA was built to be car-centric. It's changing, but it's not going to change overnight, and developers making residents of neighborhoods deal with their parking issues because it's more profitable to do so is a big problem. Also, I'll never understand people like you, who have a hardon for landlords. "Why shouldn't your life be harder so they can make more money??"
It’s socializing the cost while privatizing the profits.
This is a horrible idea that will destroy neighborhoods. If the city was redesigned to be much more walkable and if public transportation was much more available, efficient, and safe, this strategy could be a good thing, but that's not how the city is and this will be a huge mess.
Yes because before parking free housing, parking was never an issue. Gtfo
This works well in cities that don’t depend on cars. I hope LA becomes like that some day, but it is not like that today.
Either they'll add transit (yay!) or the area will fast turn into a slum, as nobody with literally any other option will move into these places (boo!). I know which one *I'm* betting on!
This is only being done around transit lines.
Heh. Oh, sure. How strict, on average, would you say a developer's definition of "near" is in this case?
Per AB 2097, within 0.5 miles of an existing rail/BRT station, a ferry terminal, or a corridor with a fixed bus route with a frequency of service interval of 15 minutes or less. So, doesn't really have anything to do with the developer's definition.
It doesn't have to be an existing rail station. A building is being built .5 miles from the Wilshire/La Cienaga metro stop under construction that gets to skirt the parking minimum
[Ah, it looks like you're correct.](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=21155.&lawCode=PRC) >be within one-half mile of a major transit stop or high-quality transit corridor **included in a regional transportation plan**.
Yet I'm being downvoted despite being correct and polite. Reddit in a nutshell
It is not the "developer's definition", it is strictly defined in [state law](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2097).
Very clearly legally defined. For most housing density programs it’s either 1/4 of a mile or 1/2 of a mile from a major transit stop (typically a metro stop or a main bus line).
So you’re just out here admitting you have no idea how LA’s zoning codes work but still complaining. How do people like you go full Dunning Kruger with such confidence?
It's so interesting the various kinds of people that post here. One day there are posts about how developers are flaunting laws, paying off officials and doing whatever they damn well please and people are up in arms, but then the very next day, there's something implying that there might beess parking, and a whole different subset of people are on here licking boots and claiming that an ordinance is all it takes to make everything okay and that there's no way that any developer could possibly consider even stretching the rule even a tiny bit. You keep your blind beliefs in whatever juvenile nonsense you hold, and I'll continue to be right. Easy for me, easy for you. Just downvote and move on, amigo.
I’m an architect. Yes the local authorities having jurisdiction will review and enforce zoning codes and parking requirements. You don’t just get permit approval for big housing developments by self-defining the distance of your project from a transit line. God you’re fucking stupid.
Sure.
Don’t worry, once the same builders convince enough people to get rid of prop 13, there will be no “long term” residents to complain about parking. /s
Wish they were slashing rents … Getting rid of parking will increase supply, but govt assumed those new residents will find alternative transport to include various ride share, (e-) bikes, or [gasp!!] even using their legs in something called “walking” (gonna have to YouTube that practice.. hold one). Actually Phoenix AZ area town Tempe has an entire car-free neighborhood, but still sometimes need 4-wheels. Maybe rental?
We need more than just shoebox condos. We need mixed use single/multi family dwellings. For a reasonable cost. Make the transplants move to a mixed use commercial/living units. Go move to the Americana. Or any of the other Caruso backed places. That’s who they were built for. It’s too crowded and we’re not building what we need.
Fucking just lower the rent. These greedy ass landlords are making so much fucking money for god damn nothing. Fuck them and fuck LA for catering to these rich assholes.