The following chart represents births in the United States per 1,000 people. The segment in red demarcates the birth years between 1946 and 1964, which is generally considered to represent the Post-World War II population spike known as the Baby Boom. Besides this jump, we have for the most part been seeing declining birth rates.

“US Birth Rates” by Saiarcot895. Licensed under CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Given the magnitude of this population segment, demographers and others love to talk about the impact that this generation has had and will continue to have on society, particularly as many Baby Boomers now start to enter retirement.

But arguably one of the most significant areas of impact could be the housing market. Today, I stumbled upon an interesting CityLab article from last year talking about “The Great Senior Sell-Off.” And it raises an important question: As Baby Boomers begin to sell off their large single-family homes in the suburbs, will there be enough people to buy them?

For the most part, the next generation seems to still want a nice detached house in order to raise a family. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the numbers will match up. Because if you factor in generation size, buying power, and even small shifts in consumer preference (towards, say, urban centers), the equation may not balance.

If this ends up being the case, I don’t think it’ll impact large, growing cities as much. I mean, most are operating today with severe supply deficits. Instead it’ll probably be the smaller, perhaps already declining cities, that feel it the most. And this will ultimately serve to reinforce the “spiky” world that we’re already seeing today.

At least that’s my hunch.

The cost of a parking spot in downtown Toronto has reached as high as $60,000 (per stall) in some new construction projects. If you convert that to a per square foot price (which is typically how people measure condo prices), you’re looking at over $350 per square foot for that parking stall. Is it worth it?

Most cities around the world have what is called a parking minimum. This means that to build, say a new residential condo, developers need to provide a certain number of parking stalls. In Toronto, those minimums will depend on your unit mix. Bigger units have more stringent parking requirements. 

In some cities, though it’s much rarer, they actually have parking maximums. Portland, for instance, has a maximum number of parking stalls that you’re allowed to build, which fluctuates based on the development’s proximity to transit.

And finally, there are some cities, such as Berlin, with no parking minimums or maximums at all. In those cases, the market dictates the number of parking stalls that should be built. If people want a parking spot with their apartment and won’t buy or rent it without one, then the developer builds it.

Though parking variances do happen in Toronto (for reasons such as proximity to transit), the city is generally skeptical of a market led approach to parking requirements. And there are a couple of reasons for that. They worry that investors might be buying the units (with no parking) and so the sales data may not be indicative of the end-user market.

The city also worries that developers might actively discourage purchasers from buying parking spots, as it’s usually more profitable not to build them. Underground parking is costly and often subsidized by the sale of the condo units themselves. In fact, I’ve heard of instances where underground parking has cost upwards of $100,000 per stall because of buoyancy forces and other technical details.

But I’m generally a free market guy. So I question if the market really isn’t capable of figuring out how much parking there truly needs to be. Undoubtedly, there will be families who demand 2 parking spots. I also bought a parking spot with my condo. But there may also be a number of people who would rather pay less for their home than subsidize a parking garage that they’ll rarely use.

And as I wrote in a recent post called, Is traffic the right question?, we could be losing sight of the greater goal. If we truly want to build a sustainable and livable city, then we should be considering how our development activity encourages transit usage over driving, and how we can promote a more balanced modal split across the city.

What are your thoughts? Would you buy a home without parking? Should we get rid of parking minimums, just as cities like Berlin have?

You were probably expecting some kind of temporary housing solution. Because that’s certainly what I was thinking when Big Ben Myers tweeted me this article yesterday. But it turns out that in D.C., “pop-up housing” has come to mean what you see in the above photo – a pencil thin house rising amongst a bunch of low-rise rowhouses.

Local bloggers are calling it a “middle finger to taste and scale”, but it’s happening because of what appears to be a real housing supply shortgage in the District. And it’s been said to be hurting not only housing affordability, but also exacerbating income inequality. 

However, it’s become a threeway debate. You have people worried about aesthetics, local homeowners and residents worried about their own interests, and you have people worried about the overall health of the housing market. As I’ve argued before here on ATC, too much protectionism is often a bad thing for housing markets.

But policy makers in the District appear to be responding in exactly that way, by clamping down on pop-up housing, as well as on accessory dwellings such as nanny flats (which I’m assuming are similar to what we would call laneway houses here in Toronto).

I can certainly understand the concerns, but I think that cities need to find that fine line between preservation and growth. Because banning pop-up housing is only addressing the symptom. It doesn’t address the underlying cause, which, in this case, seems to be a housing market in search of more housing options.

Update: This post was updated to give credit to Big Ben Myers for the article.

Image: Washington Fine Properties via Citylab