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Meter maids don't have time to read pitiful pleas posted under windshields
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meter maids and M&M's
i dont know if it still works but back in the day if you put an M&M package on your dash the metermaids would not ticket the car. i used this trick quite a few times and never got a ticket. i only share this now because i think those days are over and i dont park in town much anymore.
also, if you know a cop or metermaid a citation ticket book on the dash is pure gold.
meter maids and M&M's
i dont know if it still works but back in the day if you put an M&M package on your dash the metermaids would not ticket the car. i used this trick quite a few times and never got a ticket. i only share this now because i think those days are over and i dont park in town much anymore.
also, if you know a cop or metermaid a citation ticket book on the dash is pure gold.
Books don't help
BTD tickets regardless of any books or insignia on the dash. You don't need to go much further than Cambridge Street infront of Suffolk Superior to see a fleet of cruisers (some marked, but mostly unmarked Crown Vics with blue lights and MTD consoles) with tickets under the wipers. A book would only help you avoid the blue police tickets not the dreaded orange ones.
for profit
This also appears to be a private, multi-state, for-profit business... not sure why they should be exempt from parking regulations.
Truuue...
But depending what specific service they're providing, that service could be entirely government funded. There are many services that are provided under federal law that Massachusetts contracts out. Early intervention, special education, supported housing, day habilitation, etc. are required by federal laws and are paid for entirely by government funds, but the agencies that do them aren't required to be nonprofit. The agencies are required to provide them under really strict guidelines that make it basically like they're being provided by the government. In my program, for instance, the state decides exactly what geographic region we can serve, what ages we can serve, how many hours per week we can provide services, how we determine whether someone is eligible for services, what sorts of forms we fill out and give to families. All of the other programs doing what we do are totally standardized and using one computer system, and someone can easily transfer from program to program if they move. But we're a nonprofit and some of the other agencies that provide the exact same service are for-profit. A for-profit agency still charges the state and the insurance companies the exact same (low) rate for each service, and has people with the same credentials providing it. "For-profit" doesn't necessarily mean "rich."
I always took the ticket as part of the coding
I worked around the corner from the old Berkeley St. BPD headquarters, and all the cars had the ticket book and also the orange ticket. I can't imagine they would all park and g2t tickets each day. There was clearly an understanding of some sort.
Boston hates healthcare and PWD
Cambridge and Somerville, among others, have parking permits for healthcare and social services providers making home visits. Boston refuses to do this -- the CEOs of several large agencies have been trying to get them to do it for years. The VNA people use their own permit, which isn't officially recognized by the city, but it works for not getting tickets in residential spots probably because the parking people view nurses as fellow union-types even if the specific agency isn't actually union.
Also, they won't let people in supported apartments for people with disabilities get a resident permit for the house vehicle, stating that a residence is a business and the van isn't connected to a resident unless the resident registers it (which they can't, because these are people who don't drive). Obviously it violates the ADA to treat someone's apartment and vehicle differently because the person isn't capable of signing a lease and owning/driving a vehicle, but it would require a lawsuit to get the city to actually realize this.
Boston does not hate healthcare or pwd
It's not as though handing out permits is free. It actually costs the residents of the affected neighborhood real money.
The differnce between Boston on the one hand, and Somerville on the other, is that in Boston, the number of resident parking permits exceeds the number of on-street spaces by about 5:1 in a lot of neighborhoods. So that means, every time you issue a parking permit - to a construction job, to a health care worker, etc., you're displacing some other resident into a paid garage parking space, at a cost of, say, $20 per day.
So it's a question of how much we're willing to spend, how we want to spend it, and who pays for it. If a health care person wants to visit someone in a crowded neighborhood, maybe it would be better to impose the cost of a $10 taxi ride on all of us, rather than imposing $20 worth of parking on some randomly chosen neighbor...
Home healthcare reduces car parking needs
Like zipcar, each worker replaces the need for the ride to come park, for a family member to come park, etc.
Who cares if it displaces someone to a garage - don't have a car in the city if you don't have a place to put it.
Grow up and get a life and a clue, please!
"Get a life and get a clue"
You say, "If you don't have a place to put your car, don't have one." I'd say exactly the same thing to the health care person looking for special treatment: if you don't have a place to put your car, don't drive it into the neighborhood. Sauce for the goose and sauce for the gander, and all that.
Just as you said
They issue permits for construction, dumpsters, etc., but not for healthcare visits. Or for transportation for PWD who actually live in the neighborhood.
What's really fucked up is that DCF, DDS, and other agencies that are state employees have placards that the city doesn't ticket. Most other programs (supported housing, early intervention, healthy families, crisis team...) are state contracts that are heavily monitored by the state, but we aren't employees of the state so we don't get the same consideration.
Here is the problem eeka,
I had some experience dealing with parking clerks and transportation boards in Boston and suburbs like Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline over the past 10 years, and the issue of permits for home health care aides and the like is really a hot topic.
The bottom line is that the number of people who would request permits is simply too high for the actual number of spaces in Boston. Who do you let get a permit? Kids helping out their sick parents? Home health aide shift workers working on 24/7 shifts? Social workers? Mental health workers? Are they private or public? What kind of doctor do you need to sign a form requesting a parking spot? Psychologists? Just medical doctors?
I also think that places like Cambridge, Watertown, Brookline and Somerville really have more spots during the day that Boston does and can give out permits easier than Boston can. Somerville and Cambridge have more issues at night, and I believe Brookline and Watertown have overnight regulations that they deal with as well.
I think the bottom line is that when you make up permit programs, you have to be specific on who can and can't get them. Some buildings have dozens of people who need 24/7 health care and if workers could get a permit and drive instead of taking the T, they might do the latter.
Construction vehicles and dumpsters have to be right in front of the address. Home health care workers logistically don't have to be right in front.
Yes, all of that makes sense
It's just odd that Boston doesn't ticket state employees (DCF, DDS, DMH, et al) who park with their official placard in their window, but has nothing in place for others providing services that are required by federal law to be provided and are government-funded, but which Massachusetts chooses to contract out rather than having their own employees.
In my particular program, we're not asking for a 24/7 space outside the home of every family we serve. We just want workers to have permits to use while going to see a family for an hour or two, during the day when there are tons of resident spots open on the streets. The city won't do this for us. Cambridge and Somerville do do this for their providers.
Tons of resident spots?
In areas where there are "tons of resident spots" available (e.g., Cambridge, Somerville) then the city issues guest permits to the residents; any resident being visited by a home health worker use his or her guest permit.
In other neighborhoods, where there is not a surplus of parking spaces, if the meter maids are not ticketing DCF, DMH, etc. employees who violate the parking laws, then the issue can be addressed by managing the meter maids better, not by issuing more permits.
The difference between a construction permit and the kind of forbearance you are seeking for health workers, is that a construction permit is valid only for things that are physically necessary for the construction (e.g., loading and unloading supplies and equipment.) Occasionally, people try to abuse the construction permits "just to give the guys a place to park while they work on my house," they inevitably get busted.
Tons of spots during the day in Boston
I get that resident spots are a premium after about 6:00, but when I go do visits during the day, there are many open resident spots.
When we met with the city about trying to get permits, they said that DCF etc. displays their "state official business" thing in the window and the city doesn't ticket them if this is up. We asked if we could get a similar agreement, since we aren't state employees but are a state contract that the state requires to do home visiting, and they said we can't.
FWIW, Cambridge and Somerville also have healthcare worker permits in addition to the resident-specific visitor permit.
I get that resident spots are
Then in those neighborhoods, by all means, it would be reasonable to give out visitor permits and whatnot, good during the day. Chinatown, North End, Bay Village, Beacon Hill, and parts of Back Bay -- there are no spaces open during the day.
PWD transportation
I'm afraid I've lost the plot, eeka.
Anyone with a disability can get a handicapped hang tag, whether or not she owns a car. That placard allows him or her to park in a handicapped reserved space. The city will generally reserve handicapped spaces where there is a need, and I know from direct personal experience that they will do so on an individual basis.
Any business (say, for example, a group home) that is located in a resident parking permit district can register a vehicle at its business address and obtain a resident parking permit for the vehicle. That handles the shared car issue. Additionally, with commerical plates, the vehicle can be parked in a number of no-parking zones not available to the rest of us.
A health worker coming into the neighborhood is treated exactly the same as anyone else providing services: a plumber, a tutor, etc.
What, exactly, are you asking for, here? The city cannot simply make parking appear out of thin air.
That's the thing...
I'm talking about group residences for people with mental health or intellectual disabilities. These folks don't generally qualify for a placard because they usually are mobile. The residence itself is not a business; the residents' names are on the rental subsidy agreement (section 8, shelter plus care, DMH set-aside). The van that the house uses is registered in the name of the agency, and is only allowed to be used for taking the residents places. Boston doesn't issue resident permits in this situation, but the other communities where my employer has residences do.
I'm not asking for permits out of thin air. I'm asking that the city allow apartment residents who need supports to have a resident permit for the house's van, which they would be allowed to have if they didn't have disabilities and were driving the van themselves.
To summarize
A resident sticker for a vehicle that is not owned by a person living in the district or by a business located in the district, but that belongs to a business or agency located somewhere else, on the grounds that it is for the exclusive use of people living in the district, sounds entirely reasonable; it seems like a situation that was not foreseen when the sticker program was developed, and one that is worth remedying.
How have your city counselors, Tommy Tinlin's office, or the mayor's office of constiuent services responded when you've laid it out to them this way?
If I were them, I'd support the idea, subject to a good mechanism to prevent abuse. Bearing in mind that the high value of downtown parking, which provides ample incentive to cheat (ask a meter maid to point out the fake stickers some time), I'd want some easily verifiable way to verify that the vehicle was legitimately for exclusive use of residents and not for some staff member to commute to work, enforced with some teeth.
Right!
Yeah, these are indeed company-owned vans with logs of when/where they're used and all that. What ends up happening in reality is that the agency has a very few apartments in central neighborhoods, because they're rarely able to find one that includes parking at the rental rate that rental subsidies will cover. But usually they have to forego a particular apartment because it doesn't include a space for the van, so they'll then end up locating residences in the neighborhoods further out where it isn't near the residents' culturally relevant businesses and where there isn't transit (the goal of course is that the folks who are able will eventually learn to go places on their own, or at least that relatives who might not have a car can come see them). There are parts of Dorchester (think the parts with low rent and crappy transit, but no parking sticker needed) where agencies actually can't make any more supported residences because it's considered too saturated with residences for pwd, thus wouldn't meet the federal rehabilitation requirement of being in a regular-old community setting (rather than a setting with a high percentage of people living in programs).
The agency has been meeting with the city for decades. The city just continues to say that resident permits are for a car registered at the house to a resident.
If they're mobile, then what's the issue?
Then if they're mobile, there's no need for the van to be parked right in front of the house; if the staff person is able bodied, he or she can run for the van when it's needed, or the residents can walk to the van, thereby living the way the rest of us do. I happen to rent a parking space; it's a quarter mile from my house. If I parked on the street with a resident sticker, I could sometimes park closer, and sometimes not, depending upon the time of day.
Folks living in such a home got kind screwed in the first place when the cards were being dealt; it's entirely reasonable to give them a break here and there wherever feasible. But there are more than one way to accomplish an objective; instead of giving them $2,400 per year of parking at the expense of their immediate neighbors, we could, for example, give them $2,400 per year of taxi rides at the expense of the community at large.
No funding for that
So first, while these folks are mobile, most have extreme paranoia and little frustration tolerance. The reason they're living in group homes is because they don't do things without tons of prodding -- things like going to appointments, leaving the house, getting up off the couch and remembering to eat. Have you ever tried walking several blocks with someone with severe autism or major mental illness? These are people who don't understand that you're trying to get them to walk to a van unless they can see it, and who aren't going to come with you for a reason they don't understand. If they're not an immediate danger to themselves, you can't restrain them and force them to walk to a van they don't want to walk to, but you do get charged with neglect when they miss several doctor's appointments.
Also, if the house doesn't have a resident permit, then the individual needs to pay for parking. But the individual gets a housing subsidy that pays the same amount regardless of neighborhood, and most of the centrally located apartments don't have parking included. The reimbursed amount for the person's care only provides enough for staff to help the person. Where is the parking space money supposed to come from? Isn't the city supposed to be encouraging people to live in the city?
But this wasn't what we were talking about; we were talking about people who are residents, except they don't personally drive, but their house has one vehicle just like yours and mine. Why on earth can't they get a resident permit?
Unsuitable neighborhood
It sounds like a neighborhood with difficult parking is not an appropriate choice for some people. I know that if I needed access to a conveniently parked car several times per day, I would never live downtown; it's just not feasible, unfortunately.
Many of the objections you cite, people not wanting to go to a car they can't see, people not wanting to go far to a car, could be addressed by using a taxi rather than a private car. Figuring the entire system costs, a taxi might in fact be cheaper.
I don't think a taxi is cheaper, but I'm not sure
If you have a house with six residents who go to day programs, the pharmacy, shopping, appointments, etc., I think having a car is probably cheaper.
Regarding the neighborhoods, see my above comment. Certain neighborhoods are already saturated with group residences so that any more that opened wouldn't meet guidelines of being in a mixed community.
Also, there are guidelines about culturally relevant communities and providing residences near where people grew up and might still have family if applicable. I wouldn't want to live downtown either, but Chinatown is really relevant for many people. So is the part of the South End near Villa Victoria. It isn't right to say that only people who transport themselves independently on the T or are wealthy should get to live in certain neighborhoods (i.e., people with disabilities aren't welcome).
There's where we part company
I'd love to live on Central Park West in Manhattan. Unfortunately, only people who are a lot wealthier than I am get to live there. I really don't have a philosphical or moral problem with that in the slightest. That seems to be where we part company.
Dude, and again with the patronizing comments
You know, while there are incompetent human services people, for the most part, human services programs are run by people who are overworked, underpaid, deal with stuff you probably couldn't imagine, and who keep doing it out of really caring and wanting to see that folks are well taken care of.
So clearly, if the people I'm talking about could take the T, or walk several blocks, don't you think their staff would be having them do that? Do you really not think that people who've gone to graduate school to learn how to help people be independent and functional would just decide to, you know, not do these things? How about if you trust that when clinicians say that someone right now who has been institutionalized for decades just is not going to go that far out of their comfort zone quite yet without a major incident, these people are usually in a far better place to judge than someone who doesn't have the training and has never met this person? Or probably anyone much like them?
I don't disagree with any of that
I don't disagree with any of that. That's completely orthogonal to the question of how much of a subsidy we want to provide to help people live in neighborhoods they can't afford to live in, and who should bear the cost of the subsidy.
I'm all about inclusion, and I've worked hard to prevent the transformation of my own neighborhood into some developer's idea of a yuppie paradise. But it still bugs me when some someone in the city or state government, with no clue about the actual facts on the ground, tries to tinker with the mechanics of daily life.
Parking happens to be an area where this is particularly evident. To pick one tiny example, consider the case of designated handicap spaces. The city's policy for designating spaces in West Roxbury is the same as it is in Chinatown or the North End. And yet, the economics are completely different. Designating a handicap space in West Roxbury imposes at most a miniscule cost on the neighbors: there will always be someplace else to park.
Desginating a handicap space in the North End, on the other hand, imposes hard dollar costs on the neighborhood, to the tune of $25 per day, $350 per month, $4,000 per year...
Now I happen to think that a $4,000 per year parking subsidy to the person unfortunate enough to need the handicap space is entirely reasonable, and I'm happy to cover my share of it. But, there are two problems:
Let's have a policy around transportation subsidies for the disabled that at least tips its hat to economic reality and cost/benefit analysis, and let's not pretend that West Roxbury and Chinatown are the same thing.
For example, I would be entirely in favor of the city studying the parking supply and demand in the resident parking zones and, if there are places or times of day in which there is no severe shortage, issuing visitor passes, or, even better, allowing general use of those spaces during those hours.
Anyone who thinks that people downtown are nutty to be so concerned over parking issues is ignorant of the reality of living in neighborhoods where parking is so scarce that an off-street space sells for $200,000, and where there are literally no spaces available except for certain narrow time periods during the day.
You're missing the point
All politics is about the allocation of scarce resources.
Stipulate for a second that every mental health and social services professional is perfectly trained, inerrant in their assessments, and immensely pragmatic about getting things done effectively and cheaply.
That still doesn't mean that we give said professional a blank checkbook, or that because he or she says "person X needs Y" that we immediately go out and buy Y.
The reality is, resources are finite; we're not going to be able to give everyone everthing he or she ideally needs. Or maybe we're able to, but (collectively) we don't want to; we choose other priorities.
There has to be some sort of economic reason applied here. Right now, the argument made by the city seems to be that parking passes for private agency health staff fall below the threshold of what we are going to fund. That argument might be wrong, it might be inconsistent with stated principles and other actions, and it might be stupid and shortsighted, but if you want to argue against it, you need to argue cost/benefit, not guidelines and needs.
Also
I love the people who clearly don't know the ins and outs of our programs but think we're overlooking obvious solutions! If these things were available to us, the program would have tried them in the 40-odd years they've been doing this.
Visiting Nurse access
Is there something specific about a visiting nurse's job that requires vehicle access to the doorstep of the client's house?
Are visiting nurses unable to use public transportation, taxis, walking, the way most of the residents in the neighborhoods with problematic parking get around?
That's not a snarky question, it's a serious one -- maybe they need to carry equipment, for example. I honestly don't know.
Efficiency could be a
Efficiency could be a justifiable reason. My side gig from my main job is tutoring on the weekends. Sometimes I have multiple homes I have to come and try to go from Everett to Hyde Park to Allston giving sessions to each student. Each home is assessible using a combination of buses and trains, but try and see how well that works out taking in between taking waiting for the bus, then time it takes to go to the station, then waiting on the train, and you get what I mean.
I imagine that the nurses have to visit even more homes and perhaps at greater spread across the cities.
Public Transportation is great more single daily trip thing. Like commuting to and from work. Or a one-off trip to the city for shopping and eating or to a single area or two.
But for something like going house to house where the houses are not clustered together and there's a number of patients you have to visit by the end of the day (or for me students), public transportation doesn't work so well anymore.
if only there were a more efficient transportation method
Perhaps we can invent one. Give it two wheels, connect one via chain to a set of levers actuated by your feet. I bet it could be the most energy-efficient (and usually quickest) way of getting around Boston.
No worries about parking, either. And since that poor "largest for profit healthcare provider" is so concerned about the bottom line: think of all the money they'd save in gas, maintenance, depreciation, and insurance that could go to helping their customers.
Imagine if the city limited
Imagine if the city limited the issuance of neighborhood parking permits such that more people wouldn't bring cars into the city that don't absolutely need them. Really, on street parking is way too cheap in the city for the amount of demand for it.
Yeah!
What's up with this? It definitely feels as though the city gives out more parking permits, than there are spaces. They must be run by the airlines...
Way more..
The ratio of parking permits to available street spaces is well over 5:1 in the downtown neighborhoods. A parking permit is not a guaranteed space, it's merely a hunting license.
brett
if everyone rode bikes i would have to yell at too many people in cambridge. and what am i supposed to do about my wooden leg?
And...
think of the worker comp claims for dooring, shin splints, back aches...
Hey Brett, don't pull that
Hey Brett, don't pull that snark on me. If you have read my comments before. You would/notice that I bike too. I also have access to a scooter too.
If it only in the Boston area, it works pretty well. But biking loses its lust when I went from trying to bike from campus to downtown or Cambridge to biking from the very bottom end of Boston to Everett or East Boston. Even with a scooter, it just can't make time and it just can't go fast enough to be on the highway.
I am imagining the nurses have a larger number of places to go with a more spread out locations.
If the locations only involves going from North End to Fenway with only enough stuff to fit in a backpack, then yeah. I totally get that. If you on a time crunch, then a scooter is a fine upgrade.
So yeah, I get your point. But I don't need your asshole snark.
Yeah
I'd love to be able to do my job on a bike, but the laws and regulations are such that the government pays the same per billable hour for services in the city as in the suburbs, so we still have to have large caseloads and get between families quickly, and don't have time to drop off items back at the office so as to have a load of supplies that's manageable on a bike. Also we serve the whole city, so a 15-minute trip from Dorchester to Brighton might be an hour on a bike. My day would take 16 hours instead of 8. Do you want me to come work on your kid's social skills at midnight? Oh, and I'd still make the same salary, because the rate doesn't go up if I'm doing my job on a bike, so do you want an angry, tired, hungry therapist who never sees her family coming to work with your kid at midnight?
waaaambulance
The exact same argument you are making could be made by a plumber or a piano teacher. You'd like to get special treatment because what you're doing is valuable and important. I dont' dispute that: it is. But if we get into the slippery slope of granting parking permits to deserving people who provide important services, then the number of people deserving permits so vastly exceeds the number of spaces that there would scarcely be a point in having permits in the first place.
No.
Plumbers can raise their rates. Piano teachers can make you come to them. Either one can tell you that you need to have somewhere for them to park. We are required by federal law to provide services in the home.
What if we say that police cars and school buses must park legally at all times?
You are not required by federal law to do anything
You are not required by federal law to provide services in the home. That would be involuntariy servitude. You are entirely free to say to the Federal government, "I'm sorry, but the reimbursement structure makes it economically impossible to do what you're asking, I'm going to exit the business and open a deli, or teach ESL classes, or become a professional cellist."
This is an informative discussion; the more we look at it, the more obvious it seems that the problem lies in the reimbursement structure, not in the city's parking permit process. Any service that inherently requires vehicular access to the premise is going to be more expensive to provide in the city than in suburbia; rules, standards, and procedures that are designed around suburbia don't translate well to cities.
You see this all the time in health services... some employee of a health plan, sitting in a suburban office center near Winston-Salem, says, "I don't see what you're complaining about, we have half a dozen participating pharmacies within 5 miles of your client's house." The person honestly has no clue, not even the foggiest concept, that asking someone living in Chinatown to go 5 miles to fill a prescription would be unreasonable.
WTF?
Part C of IDEA absolutely does require that services are provided in home. Yes, I personally could stop working in Boston and go provide services in pretty much any other city or town where the municipality realizes this is required and provides parking permits. But then the children in Boston would still be legally entitled to these services, so other people would still have to provide them and pay out of pocket to park to see their clients.
Oh come on
Now you're just being silly. Nobody can be required to go provide those services. If the reimbursement rate is inadquate, people won't do it, and the services won't be provided, and the government will face the choice of either paying what it actually costs, or dropping the service.
Question Being Avoided Here
If Cambridge doesn't have all of these "fantasy problems" with provider permits listed here, and neither does Somerville, why would all these problems magically apply in Boston?
Sorry if the reality of experience in two very closely located cities doesn't jibe with the wild imaginings of persons obsessed with their parking entitlement.
I think it's a matter of simple arithmetic
I think the difference between Cambridge and Somerville, on the one hand, and Boston on the other, is a matter of simple arithmetic.
Take the number of cars registered in a neighborhood. Subtract the number of private parking spaces (e.g. driveways, garages) belonging to the owners of that cars. What's left is the number of cars looking to park on the street. Divide that by the number of on-street parking spaces, and you get a sense of the parking picture in a neighborhood. In the downtown Boston neighborhoods, the ratio is 5 to 1. In Cambridge and Somerville, the ratio is much less.
If you're in a residential neighborhood in Cambridge or Somerville right now, 2PM monday, look out the window and see if you see any parking spaces. I'll bet you will. I happen to be sitting in a Boston neighborhood right now. I just came in from walking the dog, and I can verify that there are no spaces open on my block, or on either of the adjacent blocks, except for 2 handicapped spots, and one ten minute pick-up and drop off spot in front of each two facilities with elderly residents, many of whom need assistance getting to and from a car.
That's why Cambridge and Somerville have a different set of issues than Boston, although I can imagine that Harvard Square and Kendall Square are more like downtown Boston, and Mission Hill and Hyde Park are more like Cambridge and Somerville.
One size does not fit all. Different condtions call for different rules.
Circular problem
We built out sprawl that was only accessible via automobiles while disinvesting in public transportation until it is just a shadow of its former self. Then we turn around and say that transit can never be used for more than one trip a day, and so it gets worse.
Of course it is going to be ineffective for this kind of business where you have to go to far-flung houses, if everyone thinks that way. Then people just agitate for more parking lots and more highways, and voila: more sprawl, and more need for parking lots and highways (which are never enough).
We need to find a way to break the cycle, or it'll just get worse.
Don't let reality
Kick you in the ass on the way home.
There will always be a need for home visitors and those people will always have stuff/people to haul.
You just haven't had your ass kicked by reality yet, son. You will. You will.
And we should enslave ourselves?
Base our entire lives and the way we build homes and businesses around the small number of vehicles that really truly need this capability (mostly emergency vehicles)? Tear our neighborhoods apart with parking lots and highways, destroy all urban fabric, turn our cities into grey mush, just for this one thing?
Sounds like you're kicking your own ass.
Theoretical ideality vs. reality
The reality is that, even in the most densely populated and car-free areas, people will need visiting nurses.
The reality is that visiting nurses and elder service visits SAVE the need for cars because they transport the worker to the client. Most enlightened European societies realize this and have a whole slate of visiting services for elders and people who have mobility limitations - even for midwifes delivering children and visiting mothers at homes!
I swear, Matthew, you really need to grow up sometimes. Just because YOU have never needed such services or to arrange such services for an elder relative, and just because YOU haven't considered the possibility that such services exist and are necessary for a portion of the population with restricted mobility DOES NOT MEAN that they have no place in society and no place in that simcity lala land you like to grow in your head. Not every use of a vehicle is EVILE KILL KILL KILL KILL!
I didn't say never drive
I said we shouldn't focus our lives and our resources around building out parking lots and highways at the expense of walkability and transit.
The need for visiting nurses and other such services is relatively rare compared to the ordinary businesses of everyday life. We should focus on providing for the latter, primarily.
For example, we don't build roads to the width and standards of airport runways -- even though there is a tiny probability that an airplane might need to land on it. But imagine how insane it would be if we had to build every road to the standards necessary to land a plane?
It is likely that nobody would ever land a plane on that road, but I can assure you that drivers would take full advantage and travel at high speed, every day, making it a hellhole for pedestrians.
So the need for these home-visit services is much higher than the need for airplane landing, but it is still much less than typical everyday use, and it is important to consider the trade-off between auto-friendly roads and people-friendly streets.
Car-unfriendly societies
Hey, I'm personally very much in favor of societies like most of western Europe where cities are planned around walking, transit is everywhere and affordable, and having a car is expensive and a pain.
But since we don't currently have this in Boston right now, and since the federal government mandates that certain services be provided in-home on a regular basis no matter where in the family lives, it would be nice if Boston helped us out a little to provide such services.
All of the above
I visit 5-8 families in all neighborhoods of Boston each day. During my day I might need two different standardized assessment kits (each are in duffel bags or briefcases that weigh about 20 lbs), a therapy ball, a bag of clothing and books to deliver to a family, a guitar, etc. I also sometimes take families to appointments and families with fragile infants with feeding tubes etc. won't do this in a cab or on the T. Believe me, I'd love if I could do it without driving.
Nurses usually have a medical bag, a baby scale, often lots of feeding tube supplies, ventilator supplies, etc. and are visiting the same amount of people.
Program budgets are decided on a statewide basis, so they assume car use and mileage no matter where your clients are. They don't reimburse for cabs, garage spaces, etc.
"one size fits all" budgeting is the problem
It seems, based on your description, that part of the cost of providing your services to an in-town family is $20 parking space. There are really only three options:
Am I missing an alternative?
I've long argued that if you could do it without turning it into an administrative nightmare, when the city issues a permit (for construction, for a dumpster, for whatever) then the charge for the permit should equal the market value of the parking spaces, and the city should turn around and give the parking spaces back to the affected neighbors (for example, by lottery).. You want to park a 40' dumpster for 3 days? Fine, that's 2 spaces x 3 days; fine, you give us $120 and we'll hand out 6 parking vouchers to the neighbors.
The second one would be great!
However, when I go see someone for an hour or two during the business day, there are always many open resident spots.
Local conditions vary
Any neighborhood that has lots of open spaces during the day is in an entirely different situation from the core downtown; it would not be a herculean task to actually gather the data and make the case that those neighborhoods don't have a daytime parking shortage, and so that there could be daytime visitor passes issued to residents, health worker passes, etc.
Yes!
It isn't so much an issue of periodically paying to see families downtown, and there really aren't many children living downtown. It's more the permit-only neighborhoods like Mission Hill, Dorchester near JFK, Southie, and most of the South End, where there are a buttload of open resident spaces during 9-5 hours, but no visitor spots. In parts of Southie and near JFK, there aren't even meters or garages anywhere near many of the homes. Would it really be that hard to issue a permit letting us park in these open spots for a few hours?
Is it true that you need a
Is it true that you need a driver's license to own a car?
Not sure
But pretty sure it's unethical to register a car in the name of someone who doesn't drive, doesn't speak, lives off of SSI. They would then be responsible for what the supported housing staff do with said car. That's why it would be registered to the agency that helps the person.
Why unethical?
Corporations do not have drivers' they register cars all the time. And I personally know a number of elderly people who no longer drive but who still own cars; in the case of the well off ones, the cars are driven by hired handymen, drivers, or paid companions; in other cases by family members. It's fully above board; all details are reported to the insurance company and the registry of motor vehicles; there's nothing even remotely unethical involved.
Right...
If the senior citizen can consent to it, sure. Our folks are people with significant disabilities who are coming out of institutions. Many are nonverbal. Most can't make their own decisions about much, which is why they live in a staffed residence. It would be really inappropriate to say "here, we have a place for you to live so you can get out of the state hospital, but you have to put the agency's car in your name."
Power of attorney
People who can't make decisions for themselves still have every right to own and register a car; they do it through a person with power of attorney, or a court appointed guardian, or other individual authorized to act in that person's best interest.
I'm still thinking you're unfamiliar with this population
Again, people with severe disabilities, who've been institutionalized. They don't have friends or family. If they have a guardian, it's a random lawyer-type professional guardian who the court has appointed.
I can see it being appropriate if, say, I had a sibling who had a severe disability, and I wanted to use the person's trust fund to buy a car so that person's staff could take him or her places, but I needed to have it in my sibling's name because of something to do with the trust.
That's not what I'm talking about. These folks have no possessions, only have income from SSI, don't have friends and family. The house's vehicle belongs to a healthcare agency, and the staff are hired by the agency, not by the person or the family. It is totally inappropriate for a non-relative guardian to decide to put the van that staff are driving in a resident's name rather than in the agency's name like it should be. It could even be considered abusive.
Meter maid acted correctly.
The meter maid's job is to issue citations to illegally parked vehicles, not to entertain people's private theories about why they should be allowed to park illegally. I really hate those notes and the "the law shouldn't apply to me because I'm a good person" attitude they convey.
Agreed...
...however, the City of Boston makes much about enticing people to come into Boston, and that surely includes people driving in. Yet, there's a dearth of spaces to park in, particularly in those areas they want you to go to. So there is a "built in" number of tickets they will give each and every day. Revenue.
Sounds like a scheme to me.
Problem is people want
Problem is people want something for free when there's a limited supply and a high demand for it. If anything parking should and tickets should be more expensive to ensure higher turnover of spaces and that deter people from bringing in or having a car whom really don't need one.
problem isn't just people who want free parking
I would gladly pay a parking meter that allowed me to park in resident spaces, but the city doesn't provide that option.
Not a free market
That's for sound reason (with which you may or may not agree). My neighborhood has about 1500 on street spaces, and it's got an 8,000 employee employer at one end of the neighborhood and a 9,000 employee employer at the other end, with a few dozen employers with 100 or so employees, and of course many dozens of small employers. Plenty of those employees are well compensated, and would happily pay a lot for those on-street spaces, which would pretty much price out anyone other than the richest people in the neighborhood.
Now you might say (and I have a lot of sympathy for the free market argument) that if a parking space is worth $25 per day, then the city ought to be charging $25 per day and not giving them away for free. But, on the other hand, the city has a policy of encouraging people to live downtown, and part of how they do it is by giving out street parking permits, which are essentially a lottery to obtain the small number of available parking spaces.
Question
Isn't the point of encouraging people to live downtown is to also encourage them to live without a car? If they want to go ahead and get a parking spot, fine, but why should the city be making special provisions for that?
It's arguable either way.
You could certainly argue either side of that one: on the one hand, resident sticker parking makes urban life easier (and maybe even pushes it across the line from "infeasible" to "feasible") for a lot of people, thereby encouraging an urban middle class On the other hand, giving away something valuable for free tends to lead to horrendous economic inefficiencies, and it might be wise to consider Tokyo, where, I've heard, you are not allowed to register a car unless you have a place to park it.
Proof-of-parking
Yes, I posted this link in another article: http://www.reinventingparking.org/2010/08/japan-st...
Point of living downtown
Not really. The point of encouraging people to live downtown is so that we have a real city, and not a corporate office park / shopping mall / entertainment complex.
Indeed, but...
Making special provisions and subsidies so that residents can store cars in downtown will only help turn it into a parking lot for a "corporate office park / shopping mall / entertainment complex" after all.
Exhibit A: San Jose.
Maybe?
Yes, I think the city should encourage people to live downtown, and I definitely think that part of city living is that you get around on transit. I mostly do when I'm not working. However, should living downtown also mean that you live in a community where adults with significant disabilities pretty much can't live there because the city won't make accommodations? I don't want to live in a place where a segment of the community is excluded. It also shouldn't mean that if you have a child who gets some in-home services, those services show up late, your kid's worker is distracted about getting a ticket during the visit, the worker doesn't bring as much equipment as s/he might to kids in other neighborhoods, etc.
Excluded?
If anything, living in a car independent neighborhood means more inclusiveness for elderly and disabled folks. Especially since the ADA requirements have been put in place.
I would much rather live in a place where health workers and other vital service workers were given priority on parking. To achieve that in a politically sane way, there needs to be less extremism about parking in general, which means more transit accessibility. If people downtown didn't feel like they "had" to have free parking to live there, then this problem wouldn't be so exacerbated. The nice thing about eliminating street parking is that it also eliminates the idea that the city "owes" the residents public land.
For some, but not for all
Yes, if we're talking about independent people who are able to use transit, then transit-oriented communities are great.
But if we're talking about people who have 24/7 staff supervision because they have severe autism or severe psychosis, and they're currently not willing to leave the house unless it's with door-to-door transportation (or will come along willingly, but then once you get into a train or a bus, you're dealing with a 6-foot, 200-pound person having a full-blown kicking and screaming tantrum because it's noisy and people are bumping into each other), then the ADA and rehabilitation act and related laws actually state that the program needs to be providing transportation that the person can use comfortably.