In 1923, the city of Columbus, Ohio, enacted the first known off-street parking requirement for new apartment buildings.
The city’s rules got stricter over time. In 1954, a building with 100 one-bedroom units had to have at least 100 parking spaces; by 2022, the minimum was 150. For a 2,500-square-foot restaurant, the mandate grew from nine parking spaces to 34.
But in recent years, housing shortages have prompted Columbus and other cities and states to scale back or eliminate minimum parking requirements. The need to provide parking makes projects more expensive, raising costs for developers that they often pass on to residents. In some cases, the rules prevent projects from ever being built.
Since 2019, at least 14 states have enacted 34 laws reducing or eliminating parking minimums, according to the Parking Reform Network, a coalition of groups that opposes minimums. Since 2017, 116 cities, including Baltimore, Denver, Minneapolis and San Francisco, have removed all parking minimums citywide.
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“I don’t think parking reform would be happening if we weren’t having a housing crisis,” said Catie Gould, a senior researcher at the Sightline Institute, an environmental think tank that is part of the Parking Reform Network.
In some cities, residents have pushed back against changes, arguing that eliminating on-site parking lots creates more congestion and crowding on public streets. Opponents also have questioned whether developers will simply pocket the savings, rather than make units more affordable. And they note that older people and those with disabilities will have the hardest time coping with an absence of off-street parking.
But the growing movement has unified some groups, such as developers and environmentalists, who are typically at odds.
In recent years, housing shortages have prompted more cities and states to scale back or even eliminate minimum parking requirements.
“From the developer’s side, parking is the big thing that has to be solved early on to determine feasibility of a project,” said Matthew Fitzsimmons, an architect and project manager at HCM Design who been involved in building more than 11,000 residential units, including in Baltimore.
Eliminating or reducing parking minimums, Fitzsimmons said, allows developers to use land and money that would have been devoted to “very expensive structured parking” for better amenities or design features for a project.
For Ryan Carter, policy director for Catawba Riverkeeper, which is dedicated to preserving and protecting the Catawba-Wateree River Basin in North and South Carolina, fewer parking lots means less water pollution: Carter noted that even 1 inch of rain on a single acre of impervious parking surface can generate 27,000 gallons of storm runoff into the river basin.
California goes first
In the fall of 2022, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the first statewide ban on parking minimums. The law prohibits city and county officials from imposing parking requirements for housing developments or businesses within a half mile of a transit station.
California later added a law reducing parking requirements in areas zoned for residential development and a law restricting local governments from increasing minimum parking requirements for renovations and additions to single-family homes.
The state also instituted a cap on parking requirements for multifamily housing developments and approved a measure allowing developers to use shared parking spaces to meet parking minimum requirements.
Oregon enacted a law in 2023 that prohibits or restricts parking minimums in 48 cities and three counties in the state’s eight metropolitan regions with populations of at least 50,000.
In the past three years, Connecticut, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Maine, New Hampshire, Washington, Virginia and North Carolina also enacted laws that restrict or prohibit parking minimums.
Local authority
Some have bristled at state efforts to limit local zoning authority.
Betsy Gara, executive director of the Connecticut Council of Small Towns, testified against the legislation in her state, arguing that “municipalities are in the best position to determine whether eliminating or modifying minimum parking requirements will pose any public safety or other issues in their community.”
Gara noted that in areas without sufficient off-street parking, vehicles may be parked haphazardly on the street, potentially blocking emergency vehicles and snow plows and limiting access to fire hydrants and loading docks.
But Virginia Democratic Delegate Irene Shin said the shortage of affordable housing has become so acute that state lawmakers had to act.
Shin said that in her hometown of Herndon in Fairfax County, parking minimums have inhibited much-needed residential development.
“We’ve come to a point where the state is much more interested in stepping in to increase housing because the localities on their own just haven’t been doing enough,” Shin said.
Gould acknowledged that eliminating parking minimums will place additional burdens on cities, which will have to manage curbside parking for residents and businesses with strategies like residential parking permits, parking meters and loading zones.
She pointed to her own Portland, Oregon, neighborhood, where a 12-story subsidized affordable housing building is under construction near the city’s light rail. She supports the project, but worries the city has not done enough to manage street parking before the new residents arrive.
