My local weekly newspaper, The DC Current, (like most such things amply funded by real estate ads) reports that the latest housing development in my upmarket D.C. neighborhood has run into an obstacle.
What is the nature of this obstacle, you ask? Well, the planned development will go on what is currently a parking lot, so no one can complain about the architectural character of the neighborhood being defiled. Plus, the developers have promised to incorporate underground parking sufficient for the cars of the residents of the new building. So far, so good.
However, the development will require a cut-out in the sidewalk to make space for access to the garage, and the cut-out will eliminate four on-street parking spots. That’s apparently a big problem. A neighborhood association and several self-styled activists have registered their disapproval of the loss of free on-street parking.
I suspect that the developers will ultimately find a way to navigate the issue, but there’s nothing that better encapsulates the problems with housing policy in a major metropolitan area than this: A neighborhood that is all but unaffordable for middle class families may see a development that would add a big dollop of housing killed to save a handful of free parking spots that are used mainly by the wealthy.
I’ve said it before: Washington, D.C., doesn’t have a housing policy: It has a terrible, misguided parking policy that makes on-street parking free for wealthy car owners who live in nice neighborhoods. The primacy of this policy largely dictates what we do about housing issues in deplorable ways. It’s hard to square the ostensible social-justice/fight-inequality inclinations of my neighbors who at the same time spend their free time fighting development out of fear it will increase the amount of time they’ll have to cruise to find a parking spot.
If we were to auction the right to park on the street and use the money to subsidize mass transit for low income residents it would be hard for an objective liberal to not declare it to be a massive victory for economic justice. I strongly suspect my neighbor with the vintage Corvette parked in front of my building would find some way to disagree, however.
Ike Brannon is president of Capital Policy Analytics, a Washington, D.C., consulting firm.
