The Merc is highlighting a 23-story apartment building with less than one parking space for every three units. Guess what? It’s a problem
The Fay apartment tower in downtown San Jose was built to draw residents back to the city, a sleek high-rise with rooftop views and luxury amenities. But two years later, the building is 60% vacant, and city officials say one key reason stands out: not enough parking. Two years after it opened with fewer than one parking spot for every three apartments, The Fay has plunged into foreclosure.
The Fay’s parking problems provide an early test of a 2022 statewide law that erased parking requirements on housing developments within a half mile of a major public transit stop. But those policies are colliding with California’s deep-rooted car culture — and in pockets around the Bay Area, the signs of pushback are starting to show.
I love it when they talk about our “car culture” like it’s some Happy Days muscle car cruise night memory or a low-rider meet up. Or drag racing up at Ocean Beach before they closed the formerly Great Highway. But cars are intrinsic to everyday life if you need things like groceries, trips to the vet, Home Depot, etc etc etc.
Across the Bay Area, tenants living in housing projects with limited parking are finding themselves running up parking fines and doing battle with neighbors over street parking. At some affordable housing projects, where parking requirements were eased as early as 2015, the frustration is mounting. “I have 20 parking violations,” said Candy Sandoval, a custodian and single mother of four who lives at Quetzal Gardens low-income housing in East San Jose, “plus my car was vandalized because of parking on the street.”
Her fellow tenants are so exasperated without enough parking — there are 42 spots to accommodate 70 apartments — some of them park in silent protest directly in front of the building, smack in the middle of a designated bus stop.
I’ll bet you would stump Google and ChatGPT is you asked, “how does a single mother of four manage without a car?” This little charade is creeping into B’game as well. The latest example is a proposal at 2 Park Rd. where Crosby N Gray is located. While not nearly as bad as The Fay or Quetzal Gardens, it’s proposed to have 140 spaces for 144 “units”. One really needs to consider the number of bedrooms and the number of units to understand real parking needs. Will we have to rename it No Park Rd.?
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