A misguided effort to mandate an additional off-street parking space for every bedroom in either new construction or additions to a house in the Tulane area would mean big problems for affordable housing and effective transit service if passed. And it would also mean more parking lots, less trees, and more pavement!
Sign the Ride New Orleans/HousingNOLA petition below to tell the City Planning Commission (CPC) that transit and affordable housing can't take a back seat in zoning decisions anymore!
We, the undersigned, ask that the City Planning Commission reject ZD #044/21 at the July 13, 2021 City Planning Commission meeting.
While ZD #044/21 is intended to address concerns raised by some residents around quality-of-life disruptions from off campus student housing, the remedy proposed by ZD #044/21 would not solve the problem at hand and would, in fact, harm two key priorities for the City of New Orleans - the production of affordable housing in a range of neighborhoods and the delivery of efficient and equitable public transportation service.
ZD #044/21 would make housing more expensive to produce in the affected areas, effectively locking out potential buyers and renters below a certain income level. It would incentivize car use to the detriment of transit riders, make walking to transit more difficult, and, by effectively freezing out new transit-reliant neighbors, would make it more difficult for the RTA to provide robust and reliable transit service for neighborhoods in the affected areas. It would also incentivize more pavement and curb cuts, creating a less safe environment for pedestrians, enhance the urban heat island effect, and put at risk the historic built environment of many of our oldest neighborhoods.
Parking regulations such as this are used nationwide as a form of modern-day segregation - something that has a long and sad history in New Orleans and something that the current leadership of the City has rightfully pledged to defeat. Please make sure that we do not set a precedent that we will regret in the coming decades. Please reject ZD #044/21 and make sure that zoning policy is not used to worsen many of the glaring inequities in our city that we are all fighting against.