Is it a net good? I don't know. But I think it's a huge and common misconception to interpret NIMBY-ism as a malicious action rather than a simple case of people acting in their own self interest.

That seems like a bit of a false dichotomy. Plus, I think it's a bit disingenuous to imply there's this big, nefarious "they". It seems more realistic (to me, at least) to view NIMBYers as a bunch of individual homeowners concerned about the value of what's likely their single biggest investment.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that the post you're referencing the "tent city" thing from was tongue-in-cheek. That's entirely personal speculation, however.

In areas like San Francisco and San Jose, there is just not enough housing to house all of the homeless people. There is not enough public funding to create housing for all of the homeless people. And the effectiveness of each dollar keeps going down, faster than inflation.

The article goes into detail, how micro-apartments can be $900 per month each in current market conditions, unsubsidized. But regulations force the cost upwards and the unit count downwards, so both the price goes up (or you do not build until median rent goes up) and the number of low-income people housed goes down.

But, hey, at least the tent city is not directly in your backyard.

I think we have some common ground in that we both think the best solution is not have a tent city in the first place. Homelessness comes with a whole host of other problems that microhousing can't actually solve - like the fact that most homeless people have a hard time applying for housing by virtue of the fact that they have no prior address.

So, maybe the better question is: how do we do that?

Between walking, bike, bike share, car2go, uber, lyft, zipcar, busses, and the light rail, and upcoming self driving car services... Why do i need a car again?

No, but I can expect them to suffer if they do have one. Our current car system is unsustainable, and is a luxury. We really need to get rid of it long-term. I'd love to have a boat in my front yard, but it's too hard to find a place to park it. Should boat-owners have the right to a boat spot?

The problem, and the reason why parking requirements exist, is because people externalize that "suffering" on others. They decide they need a car anyway, and then they park that car on other streets, or they park overnight illegally on private property, etc.

It's not like parking requirement laws fell from the sky one day on a bunch of stone tablets. They didn't exist a hundred years ago, but were created and became ubiquitous across the U.S. as cars became more popular because there were such problems when parking is in short supply.

Now, maybe there are some alternative solutions -- maybe you could get people to sign some sort of blood oath that they'll never own a car while living at a particular address, or maybe we could pass laws that prohibit cars from being registered to addresses that lack parking...? (Maybe we could require that in order to register a car, you have to prove you have the right to a place to park it, and stop treating parking as a public good?) But until there's some better solution, the underlying problem that parking requirements were created to solve still exists.

People are very, very good at sharing their suffering with everyone else and society is typically worse off for it. It takes a lot of work to prevent that from happening.

They usually are designed to produce neighborhoods where no one ever needs to spend any time searching for a free parking space— which leads to a great deal of suffering for anyone not in an automobile, since such neighborhoods have vast expanses of surface parking that are completely inhospitable to human beings, and are very difficult to serve with public transit.

They also often require an amenity that is very expensive to produce (parking spaces, especially structured spaces) be provided for free, which incentivizes people to own cars and drive everywhere— exactly what we don't want in urban areas, since cars pollute a lot, are dangerous, and require huge amounts of scarce land to store and transport.

But that problem is still a luxury problem. It's not some fundamental right for people to own a car. If you want luxury benefits, you should have to pay luxury pricing. I'm not saying you shouldn't have the right to own a car, just that, like any luxury good, it shouldn't be cheap.

In Seattle there are many public transportation options. Sure, it could be much better, but it's still available and quite feasible to use.

Inadequate parking does have a negative impact on a neighborhood, and it's not the only way to nudge society in the direction of driving less.

Sure, there are better ways to push people, and that's now why I want less parking, that's just a pain-point we shouldn't be trying to fix.

> Unsustainable or not, most people do have a car, and it is a major nuisance when there is inadequate parking around housing.

So? A nuisance that those people can avoid if they chose too. Sure, they have a right to own a car, but there's not right to avoid nuisance.

EDIT: Are you able to reply to my other post now? I think HN has a timer that limits how often you can reply, but I could be wrong.

I take it you haven't spent much time in non-downtown Seattle?

If people can't even store a bike anywhere, that's a problem. And as the business case for these pods is that they're for people who can't afford a bigger place, they're unlikely to want to pay for an uber that regularly.

I've lived in Seattle since 1991. I've lived without a car since 2005. It was harder then than now. These days we have Zipcar, Car2Go, Uber, Light Rail, marginally better Metro. Walking and biking are always options. It's getting to the point in Seattle, as in other cities, where having a car is a cultural choice rather than a necessity.

Zipcar is great for the days or evening where you need to be in the car culture. It's way cheaper than actually owning one in Seattle, and you have a lot of models to choose from including some nice Audis, BMWs, etc.

This doesn't describe everyone but lots of people who live in cities like Seattle tend to want to get out of the city pretty regularly.

And to your broader point. Right. Developers can't build housing without parking on the grounds that people don't really need to have a car in Seattle. And good luck renting apartments that can't have a car registered to them. (Though people would just find a way to cheat I suppose.)

The fact that the city of Seattle has legislated a need for off-street parking in new construction does not mean that the market actually demands it in any way. Further, the skyrocketing price of housing in Seattle shows pretty clearly that folks will take whatever they can get, parking or no.

Pity it's not shared.