Want More Affordable Housing? Try Reducing Parking Requirements

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the housing crisis. But it’s crucial to remember that small changes can have a large impact.

One of the simplest ways to make housing more affordable is to reduce minimum parking requirements.

Minimum parking requirements specify the minimum number of off-street parking spaces a development must provide. They ensure that drivers always have a convenient place to park.

But this convenience comes at the cost of effective land use and construction of affordable housing.

Minimum parking requirements increase the cost of housing and favor luxury developments over affordable developments. They also subsidize car ownership and prevent home and business owners from improving their properties.

And they reduce walkability, promote sprawl, and lead to environmentally harmful development patterns.

This summer, we worked as policy fellows with Housing Hawaii’s Future. We researched minimum parking requirements and their impact on housing costs.

We convened over Zoom to discuss our findings. And we reached consensus that removing parking minimums would put affordable housing in reach of more families.

By the end of our fellowship, we had created a policy brief outlining our proposed solutions.

Removing parking minimums reduces development costs. Currently, developers are forced to build a specific number of parking spaces for each unit. These costs are passed on to renters and homebuyers, making housing less affordable.

The cost is not trivial. According to Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, “Current parking practices are comparable to about a 10-15% tax on development.”

And minimum parking requirements add 25% to the cost of “lower-priced housing in areas with high land costs.”

Also, parking minimums are part of a set of land use policies that lead to sprawl. By forcing homeowners and businesses to build large parking lots, parking minimums cause destinations to be spaced further apart, creating car dependence (which further increases demand for parking).

Removing parking minimums can help to create the density necessary to support public transit and alternative transportation.

And removing parking minimums is key to building accessible, compact town cores.

Honolulu has already taken a stand. With Ordinance 20-41, minimum parking requirements were axed for new homes and businesses in transit-rich areas, and requirements were lowered elsewhere.

Focusing parking reform on transit-oriented developments strikes a smart balance for fostering more housing.

Cities like San Francisco and Seattle have already embraced parking reform. This month, Austin bid farewell to minimum parking requirements, and New York City’s Mayor Eric Adams is eyeing a similar move.

We encourage readers to review our research here. Let’s reduce or remove minimum parking requirements now.