Municipal parking rules cost projects up to $59,000 per space for an above-ground garage, or as much as $152,000 for each underground parking spot. iStock photo
As debate mounts over potential solutions to the housing crisis, two of the most important and frequently discussed terms are zoning limits and parking minimums.
So it’s highly unfortunate that both are so wonky that eyes glaze over when housing researchers or advocates talk about the urgency of reforming either.
I’ve tried to use different words over the years to get at the same meanings, sometimes referring to zoning as local regulations or restrictions on what can be developed, but there are no obvious replacements.
Still, after a decade of increasing attention at the local, state and national levels to the housing shortage and the ever-higher prices and rents it has fueled, we are starting to see a little wider public understanding of zoning, though it remains as wonky a word as ever.
That is less the case with parking minimums, another key concept, which spell out how much parking a developer rolling out a new apartment or condo building must provide.
But that may be poised to change as housing researchers and YIMBY activists ramp up efforts to clear away the barriers holding back new housing construction in Massachusetts.
Big Savings on Construction Costs
As it turns out, towns and cities across the state have been heaping additional and very substantial costs onto proposed apartment and condominium projects by requiring two or even three spaces per unit, a new report by the Pioneer Institute finds.
A little bit of a mouthful, the title of the report spells it out: “Parking Problem: How Reducing Off-Street Requirements and Improving On-Street Management Could Rein in Massachusetts’ Housing Costs and Accelerate Economic Development.”
“Many off-street parking requirements imposed by local zoning codes are excessive and outdated,” Andrew Mikula, a senior housing fellow at Pioneer and author of the report, said in a statement accompanying the report. “Relaxing or removing parking mandates could better align parking supply with demand.”
So how much savings are we talking about?
Try 17 percent off the construction price of a mid-market rental building in Boston, and you wouldn’t even have to eliminate all the parking.
Just one space instead of two per unit would do it. In fact, the money saved could enable city officials to add, say, 8 additional affordable units – targeted at renters earning 80 percent of area median income – in a project with 80 apartments or condos.
After all, building a parking garage is not cheap.
Costs range from $34,000 and $59,000 per space for an above-ground garage, rising to from $106,000 to $152,000 per space for underground structures, the Pioneer report notes, citing numbers from construction manager and consultant the Cumming Group.
And if you want to build multifamily housing in Massachusetts, there is no easy way to get out of building parking to go along with it.
Just three communities – Cambridge, Salem and Somerville – have fully ditched parking minimums, although a few have ratcheted theirs back in recent years.
Cities and towns are requiring, on average, two parking spaces per unit pretty much everywhere else in Massachusetts.
Seattle Shows Idea’s Potential
Meanwhile, Seattle provides an example of what ditching these parking requirements can do for housing development.
Seattle axed parking minimums in 2012, and guess what? Housing construction boomed, with developers adding 35,000 new homes over the next five years, according to Pioneer.
Too often, a significant number of all the new parking spaces that developers are being forced to build aren’t even being used.
Even new Boston-area multifamily buildings that provided just three parking spaces for every four units – not even one for every apartment or condo – were still winding up with more spaces than they needed, Metropolitan Area Planning Council research found in 2015 and again in 2019.
More than a quarter of the parking spaces across Boston-area suburban developments were going unused, the most recent report found.
Letting developers and the banks who finance them decide how much parking to build in new housing has another, more hidden benefit: reducing the risk of lawsuits from NIMBY abutters upset when a planning or zoning appeals board lets a building go forward with less parking than required.
Scott Van Voorhis
In a city like Boston, with an infamously complex zoning code, eliminating parking could zero out that fear, Boston City Councilor Sharon Durkan told Banker & Tradesman last week when launching her own, 35-page zoning amendment to cull every parking mandate in the city’s ordinances.
“We’re getting in the middle of this – the market has already found ways to determine what’s appropriate for different areas,” she said.
The idea also seems to have fans on Beacon Hill. The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Housing recently advanced a version YIMBY groups’ catchall policy bill that cuts all local parking requirements back to one space per unit. But with the Senate providing most of the visible momentum on housing this session, it’s still unclear whether the House of Representatives will jump at the idea, too.
As it stands now, new housing development has stalled out across Massachusetts amid a combination of a tight financing market, sky-high construction costs.
Boston and other cities and towns as well have piled on additional costs with pricey new clean energy and affordable housing mandates.
It’s time to ditch parking minimums across the state and focus on getting stalled plans for new homes, condos and apartments moving again.
Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist and publisher of the Contrarian Boston newsletter; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.
