Don’t think of that $25 as a way to pay for the cost, it’s a way to limit parking to residents only, and usually only one vehicle.

Boston does similar but no one is guaranteed a spot. You only know that your neighborhood streets are only used for neighborhood drivers. It’s a great compromise between no cars and all cars.

Actually Cambridge, MA, is more interesting. They’ve gone the furthest toward no cars of any city I’ve seen. Of course they have a subway line and good bus service. Of course they have a really good bike trail and lane network. Of course they’ve spent decades turning roads one way or do not enter to keep cars out. Of course the one parkway has been pedestrian only every summer weekend for decades. Of course a few years ago they redid the only major east-west road to cut from three lanes each way down to one, to give a full bike lane and a full bus lane. You can’t entirely get rid of cars, but most neighborhoods are resident permit only and they have been removing parking spots on main roads and shopping areas.

So $1000/month would get you 2,000sq ft of real estate.

I'd love to rent a 2,000sqft appartement in Toronto for $1000/mo

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