Jeff Kaufman's Writing

How Many Parking Permits?

2026-03-11 · 13:00 UTC ·1 min read

Brief

Somerville's 2019 'parking-ineligible' zoning (exempting disabled, affordable, and hardship cases) produced low car uptake: a 450-unit Union Sq building (90 affordable) had only seven permits, implying ~10 permits for a proposed 500-unit Davis Square project.

Why it matters

Somerville's 2019 zoning created a new 'parking-ineligible' unit category but exempts persons with disabilities, occupants of affordable dwelling units, and residents with extenuating circumstances.

Key details

  • A records request by Ashish Shrestha found only seven parking permits for a 450-unit Union Sq parking-ineligible building (20% affordable = 90 units); this suggests a proposed 500-unit Davis Sq project (25% affordable) would generate ~10 permits, far fewer than opponents' estimate of 125 additional cars.
Source evidence

title: How Many Parking Permits?
contenttype: article
publication: Jeff Kaufman's Writing
published: 2026-03-11T13:00:00+00:00
sourceurl: https://www.jefftk.com/p/how-many-parking-permits

word_count: 279

In 2017 I wrote: One of the major reasons existing residents often oppose
adding more housing is that as more people move in it gets harder to
find on-street parking. What if we added a new category of
unit that didn't come with any rights to street parking? My city (Somerville MA) included
this in our 2019 zoning overhaul, but it does have some exceptions : This policy exempts residents that may be 'choice limited', including: Persons with disabilities Occupants of affordable dwelling units Residents with extenuating circumstances While this is a compassionate approach, it means we haven't fully
disconnected housing construction from parking demand. For example,
there's a proposal to build a 500-unit parking-ineligible building in Davis Sq (which
would no
longer be the end of the
Burren ). It's 25% affordable units, and opponents argue that if
each has a driver this would be 125 additional cars competing for
street parking. But would we really get that many? A few years ago we got a similar parking-ineligible building in Union
Sq, also a short walk from a subway station: This is 450 units, of which 20% (90) are affordable .
Ashish Shrestha submitted a records request to the city, and learned that only
seven units have parking permits. While the Davis project is a little bigger, this would suggest
something in the range of 10 permits, much less than feared. This makes sense: if you're in Union or Davis, with good public
transit and bike options, living without a car is pretty practical.
It also saves you a lot of money, especially for folks living
in affordable units. Comment via: facebook , lesswrong , mastodon , bluesky