Grubb concluded that parking is anathema to housing affordability. That was both because of the cost of building, he told me, and because of the cost of driving: in 2021, Americans spent more than $800 a month or nearly $10,000 a year on new-vehicle ownership, according to AAA. (Median per-capita pre-tax income in Charlotte, for comparison, is $40,000.) The high cost of getting a car for each adult has created a cottage industry of subprime auto loans—high-interest, long-term debt. America’s outstanding car balance almost doubled in the ten years between 2010 and 2020, from $740 billion to
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