Wait? Free street parking is not a general law of nature? Then why do all our alleged "bicycle streets" have 100% dooring zones on both sides?
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2026
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I quite like Toronto's system. It's not free, but it prioritizes residents and guarantees you a spot on your street. it's $25/month for one car but gets significantly more expensive if you register multiple cars or have private parking.
Not a fan of cars in general, but as far as parking goes it seems to work well, especially coming from NYC which is the wild west
Back when Leticia James was Public Advocate of NYC, she was pushing for residential parking permits of that sort. Would love to see that initiative revived.
Rent control & mininum wage are a subsidy for landlords. This isn't a joke & it's impossible to get people to take seriously. Same genre of reforms. I ask people to take note of the singleminded focus of the new wave of American progressives on these paltry concessions.
I live in an apartment built by a municipal housing authority. This isn't about social housing; rather, it's about the city building as many apartments as possible so that prices for private apartments can also be kept down.
Not to say my apartment is cheap, but it's a lot cheaper than it would be otherwise.
Rent control
a subsidy for landlords.
That doesn't follow.
paltry concessions
:-/ it's always paltry until it's impacting your own pocketbook
That is a good bit of vagueness to focus on here, the problem with rent control is that it just alleviates the pressure caused by collusion between landholders, reinforcing their position. It's a lot less intuitive than "landlords just do more collusion when minimum wage rises" which everyone can see happening & wish they could counter with more reforms (you can't the landholders designed this electoral/legal system for themselves). It gives the renters something to quarrel over that, at the rate of legislation, is actually helpful to keeping landlords in charge & centers their political prioties in the discussion.
The problem with concessions is not that you get them, the problem with concessions is you are now negotiating to get back what was effortlessly snatched away from you that older generations got. They will be taken back as soon as necessary, repeating the reform bait
I mean think about what we're arguing here, nobody denies this is a matter of survival when insurance, auto, & housing cuts into every cent for low-wage workers (for most of them, every extra dollar is harder to lose & never coming back, driving them into hedonistic consumption patterns), but saying we should just cut back to the pressure to the point it no longer threatens people, temporarily, that just delaying what needs to be done about the landholders. Shooting for Euro welfare is just trying to time travel 5 or 10 years into the past. I see many Americans these days optimistic about achieving the same kinds of policies as the Chinese at their ballot box, but they shouldn't ignore what China did with its landholding class to make it possible
alleviates the pressure caused by collusion between landholders, reinforcing their position
I don't think that logically follows. It alleviates pressure because it undercuts the collusion. But permitting unfettered collusion doesn't improve any renter's position.
What we should want is a broader and more strict rent control policy that ultimately encourages landlords to divest, not a monopoly renter that experiences marginally more enmity.
The problem with concessions is not that you get them, the problem with concessions is you are now negotiating to get back what was effortlessly snatched away from you that older generations got.
Older generations didn't get it. They were under the same boot we see today.
The big difference is the changes in bureaucratic practice and the profit margin over time. But the idea that we don't want rent control because Boomers used to have it? Totally revisionist.
No, renters positions aren't improved by the turbo chuds getting rid of rent control, but it forces them to resort to more than stalling tactics. Rent control doesn't actively improve their position or grant any leverage. It can be signed away instantaneously, it's the perfect capital-friendly reform. It stops the parasite from killing its host.
I disagree that older western generations didn't get better welfare or have a smoother ramp into homeownership/becoming landlords themselves. That's kind of the point of them going turbo chud and denying it to their kids lol