Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cars per unit

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

on 9/30/2002 10:01 AM, Gary Kent at garykent [at] uniserve.com wrote:

> As we will are planning on 30 units this seems ridiculous for us to dedicate
> so much land to 60 parking stalls.  We have the space (20 acres), however we
> are trying very hard to limit our footprint.
> 
> Our present 13 equity members have a total of 12 cars (average per unit of
> .9).
> 
> My sense is that this low ratio of cars to unit is fairly typical of
> Cohousing communities.
> We are gathering information to support our application to reduce the
> parking.

We are in the city where we were required to have only one space per unit
and it is definitely not enough. Two spaces per unit is much more realistic.
Many of our cars are on the street and it isn't always safe or convenient. I
don't have a car so I rent my spot -- and have a waiting list for it.

Our people complained about having to have one space per unit, but as it
turns out, with two working adults in a unit, plus guests and roommates, we
could easily use the space. AND don't forget bicycle parking. We have
something like 34 bikes and had parking for only 10 or so. We now have new
babies coming along -- 4 at the moment with more to come and that means even
more bikes in the future. Strollers are all over the place.

My numbers are probably not exact but the point is that the parking areas
will be used for one thing or another. If we had more parking, we would use
them for bikes, big gardening equipment, more space for dumpsters and
recycling, and a basketball hoop. Skateboarding. Hockey.

If you make the space, you can allocate it however you please once the
project is built and inhabited.

Sharon
-- 
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org


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