Council Slashes Parking Requirements, Ushering in New Era of Development Rules

A sea of cars (Photo via Getty Images)

One of the drivers of Austin's housing affordability crisis – perhaps the biggest driver – is the cost of land in the city. Austin officials can't do anything to lower that, so a large part of City Council's strategy to decrease housing costs is to allow more housing on each individual lot in Austin. Minimizing parking spots is one way to do that. As we reported last week, Council is preparing to amend the city's building rules to allow more housing to be built in single-family neighborhoods, but before that, they voted Nov. 2 to eliminate parking mandates.

Now, developers will be able to decide how much parking (which can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $60,000 per spot) they want to include in their projects. That doesn't mean they can stop providing accessible parking spaces for people with disabilities; those will still be required by other city rules. In an affordability impact statement, city staff wrote that Americans Disabled for Attendant Programs Today estimated the change could even lead to a positive exchange in the amount of required accessible spaces in the city.

In that same statement, city staff wrote that the change will have a positive effect on all types of housing – market rate, subsidized, and "naturally occurring affordable housing," which basically means older housing stock. "Eliminating parking minimums will lower the cost of building housing," the report reads, simply.

It's become something of a City Hall cliche at this point, but it bears repeating at least one more time – the thought that Council would eliminate off-street minimums for residential development was unimaginable even just three years ago. For many in the housing development community, the elimination of parking requirements had earned a spot as one of the holy trinity housing reforms that were coveted despite the widespread belief that they could never happen. The other two items on that list are currently working their way through the city staff machine – easing height rules (compatibility restrictions) and making minimum lot sizes smaller.

So it is no understatement to say that Council's 8-2 vote to eliminate the minimum parking requirements (Council Members Alison Alter and Mackenzie Kelly voted against) will go down as one of the most important housing votes Council has taken in at least the last decade. Before casting their no votes, both Alter and Kelly spoke of concerns over "unintended consequences" that the "universal elimination" of the rules might unleash.

CM Zo Qadri – who, along with his District 9 staff, championed the effort from start to finish – spoke to the benefits the elimination of parking minimums could bring to Austin's housing market. "If we truly want to achieve our progressive goals of making Austin a less car-dependent city, we cannot be forcing developers to provide car storage on every single new project that goes up in our city limits," Qadri said. "It gobbles up scarce land, adds burdensome costs to developments that get passed onto renters and buyers ... and it actively works against our public investments and transit bike lanes, trails, and sidewalks."