Urban drug addictions, revoked drivers' licenses, and pedestrian-only housing

Those people hate cars, or they live in big cities and hate the traffic, or else they're usually too drunk and/or high on drugs to drive themselves.

Bothell Drops Parking Mandates, Legalizes Neighborhood Corner Stores Citywide » The Urbanist

# Bothell becomes the first city in either King or Snohomish County to fully eliminate off-street parking mandates in order to reduce costs for homebuilding. The move clearly solidifies the city as a leader on housing and land use reform.

The Urbanist » Advocacy journalism for better cities.Ryan Packer

Without costly parking requirements, builders can make more projects pencil out as feasible, especially on smaller lots. Not needing to add parking stalls on-site can make room for additional housing than otherwise possible. Given those advantages, dropping parking mandates tends to stimulate homebuilding while getting rid of a hidden subsidy for cars.

Cars cost money of course, but that's the most important thing about a home. The freedom and ability to get off the property of it fast and far away without asking anyone's permission.

So there's a walk-in corner store with no gas pumps, the cigarettes kept behind bullet-proof Plexiglas, and teenaged boys begging to borrow your ID for a shot of liquor or a pack of cigarettes, no backpacks allowed in the store, and if the owner doesn't like you, he calls the cops and has you trespassed or banned on a $500 warrant bail police pickup charge. So now you're stuck with a lease in a pedestrian-only neighborhood with no stores in walking distance. Yeah. Ride the bus and get picked up for prostitution or solicitation or something like that because that's what it is if you're not driving your own car. So that's another $500 bail pickup charge. And now your jailbird buddies downtown stole your checkbook and got you reported to ChexSystems, slammed your credit, and conflated your criminal history with that of others with similar names, because just walking into that corner store or riding the bus, or hanging out at the bus stop makes you a criminal in that town, and don't cross the street or get arrested for jaywalking, because that's another $500 bail charge, or else they're upping it to $1000 because of your prior criminal history.

No real law or order to any of that of course. Just the usual gang of inner-city beat cops feeling people up on the street, shaking them down for money, destroying their reputations with courthouse trash and ransacking their apartments when they're at work. And then the cat burglars come at night when you're sleeping. And don't call the cops because they are the cops, in plainclothes on a search warrant.