a proposed approach for flexible low-cost housing, e.g. for addressing homelessness, refugee, emergency, affordable housing needs, from Tim McCormick.

The idea is that cities, especially in the US, typically have large numbers of free parking spaces that are often unused, or in any case arguably mis-priced. Cities usually also have parking management programs for their parking on public land, e.g. streets, that create zones and rules, and issue different types of permits for parking use (police/emergency, special event, Resident Parking Permit programs, commercial vehicle, etc).

What if cities extended their parking management programs to create a "Parking Dwelling Permit" (PDP) sub-program, in which certain parking locations might be marked as allowing or requiring such PDPs? PDPs might work as follows:

issued by a city office, in cooperation with public and/or private housing agencies
permits are unique, non-transferable, and issued to a particular vehicle or vehicle-dwelling owner
permits might be issued to only vehicles meeting certain inspection standards, or only certain pre-approved units
permits might be for a specific zone, or a specific specified location, and certain time period.
permits must be displayed on the vehicle
permitted use would include rules on garbage and waste disposal, nuisances, etc., and can be revoked for violations.
approved units for this use might be supplied by the city, or other parties (e.g. non-profits, donors, crowdfunded)
permits could have a price, or price per time period, to reflect and support public services related to them such as garbage collection, police, fire, etc.

Twitter hashtag search link for topic: #ParkingDwellingPermit.

The conversation (reverse chronological):

References

Kimble, Megan."We Tested the Tiny-Home Trend: What it's like to spend the night in a 325-square-foot Kasita." Austin Monthly, May 2018. https://www.austinmonthly.com/AM/May-2018/We-Tested-the-Tiny-Home-Trend/.