Who would want to live on a parking lot?
I hate to break it to you but it wouldn’t be “affordable” housing.
God no. Plant trees and make bicycle-only and pedestrian-only roads.
If you want affordable housing, build taller structures on the existing lots. We don’t need to convert parking lots to more structures
If vertical expansion isnt possible, make it horizontal. People would flock to suburbs and rural areas if mobile working would be mandatory for suitable jobs. Rents would decrease, less cars on streets, less CO2 emissions. At zero cost.
Suburbs are the worst of several choices. The density is a big factor in what makes cities appealing.
*and also makes mass transit pencil out
God no. Vertical expansion is possible.
Okay, let’s do some napkin math here. DDG’s AI says NYC has about 8.5 million people. DDG AI also says that more than 350,000 people are unhoused in NYC.
That’s 58 and a third people in each of those 6,000 homes. So, are they homes or apartment complexes? Let’s say each of these apartments, because you’re not getting 58.3 people in anything defined as a single-unit “home”, has 1.5 people (half the people are single and half are a couple), that’s 39 units per each of these 6,000 apartment complexes.
Now how affordable will that be?
Oh, and let’s not forget you’re also taking away all the parking spaces, so everybody in NYC sells their car because they have nowhere to park it. So public transportation has to step up in a big way. I think NYC could do it. They have buses and they have subways. They just need a couple more to move more people. We’ve all seen the meme where you have a street full of cars moving X people, then a couple buses moving the same number, or something like that. So we can put a couple more buses on each route, have subways constantly running, etc.
Please don’t share your slop as if it’s fact without fact checking it.
That’s 58 and a third people in each of those 6,000 homes. So, are they homes or apartment complexes? Let’s say each of these apartments, because you’re not getting 58.3 people in anything defined as a single-unit “home”, has 1.5 people (half the people are single and half are a couple), that’s 39 units per each of these 6,000 apartment complexes.
The article specifies 6000 apartments by only utilizing surface level parking owned by the city that are close to public transportation, and by sticking to current zoning laws in those areas. Hypothetically if the city wanted to rezone the area, or if the author wanted to be less realistic and utilize all city owned parking it would be significantly more than 6k apartments.
Oh, and let’s not forget you’re also taking away all the parking spaces, so everybody in NYC sells their car because they have nowhere to park it.
This article only specified the use of a couple city owned surface level parking lots. Not all parking in NYC.
[My attention was drawn to your comment because somebody reported it as misinformation. I don’t think it is, but your conclusion is misguided enough that I felt compelled to respond as a user, LOL.]
The thing you’re failing to take into account is this: nobody [or at least, nobody honest] is expecting this to solve the entire problem by itself. 6000 units obviously only chips away at 350k people worth of demand. But! You do need that chipping away to happen because you’re never gonna have some magic silver bullet project that will do it; a bunch of projects all chipping away at it is what adds up collectively to a solution.
