Why Parking Makes Housing More Expensive
It’s a big driver — pun intended — of why housing is so hard to build
In his terrific new book Paved Paradise, Henry Grabar opens by telling the story of an affordable-housing project that was derailed …
… by parking.
Back in 1999, Solana Beach — a small beachside town near San Diego — set aside a parking lot to be turned into an apartment building with affordable units. This was the result of a series of long lawsuits. Basically, about eight years earlier, the Solana Beach city administration had demolished a previously-existing affordable-housing unit; they were sued over it; and they settled the lawsuit by agreeing, okay, sure, we’ll turn one of our city parking lots into the site for a new affordable-housing building.
In 2008, a developer named Ginger Hitzke decided to take on the project. Initially, she planned to build 18 affordable units. The thing is, the city also demanded she provide an absolute mountain of parking. She had provide 22 parking spots for these new residents — and also provide 31 more parking spots, to replace the ones lost when she built on top of the city’s parking lot.
That’s a lot of parking, so Hitzke would have to build a large underground parking structure, an expensive undertaking. But she…
