The Editor:
Few would argue against improving housing affordability, reducing the impacts of climate change and promoting healthier living, yet those who oppose reducing parking minimums are doing exactly that — they are making life worse for everyone, including themselves.
Firstly, decades of investments in transit infrastructure and a community plan centred around transit were designed to reduce car dependency, and it’s working — 20 per cent of Burnaby households don’t own a car any longer, and that number is increasing, especially for those who live near transit hubs. The amenities they need are walkable, and the jobs they go to are reachable by transit, so a car isn’t a requirement of their lives.
Secondly, the costs of constructing a parking spot ranges from $50K to 100K (along with 18 tonnes of carbon emissions), meaning that it can be as much as 15 per cent of the purchase price of a new condo — why force someone who doesn’t own a car, in the midst of an affordability crisis, to spend an additional 15 per cent to own housing? At current interest rates, that’s an extra $500 a month in mortgage payments — it’s easy for existing homeowners to say parking should be required when they don’t have to fork out an extra $500 a month. Let the people who need the spot pay for the spot; don’t make it a mandatory part of the purchase price.
Finally, developers are in the business of making money. If they could make money selling parking spots, they would build them as many as they could, but instead they’re finding they make selling housing harder and that many parking spots sit empty (walk through any condo parkade to see how many empty spots exist and how many people are trying to rent out their spots).
The city’s proposal is merely a minimum requirement, not a maximum. If developers can make money and there are buyers for parking spots, they are free to build more — no one is stopping them, beyond the reality that people don’t need so many spots.
Eric Bin
