Eliminating Parking Requirements is Not the End of Parking

Many places are eliminating parking requirements to help make it easier and cheaper to build more housing and reduce their carbon footprint. Interestingly, some see these attempts as the beginning of the end for the future of parking, but that’s not the case at all. It is simply an opportunity for a more demand-based parking approach that also helps to improve housing affordability and promotes more sustainable urban development.

The high cost of housing is a real issue in California and it can't be solved without increasing the supply of new housing. However, building housing in California is not cheap. In fact, Donald Shoup, the dean of parking studies at UCLA and the author of The High Cost of Free Parking, recently told Slate: “The way you really get affordable housing is to get rid of parking requirements. That reduces the price of housing for everybody, not just low-income residents.” We agree with Shoup, outdated and onerous parking requirements make it more expensive to build new housing. Parking policies need to be updated to account for how increased public transportation access and transit-oriented development helps offset future parking demand.

If you're wondering how parking makes building housing more expensive, here's the short of it: parking costs a pretty penny to build, especially when it involves underground parking or building a parking structure. One underground parking spot can cost between $50,000 to $60,000 to build, not to mention the opportunity cost of using the space to build parking spaces instead of more housing units.

The California state legislature along with some cities across the Golden State have started to eliminate parking requirements to help reduce the cost of building more housing. The cities of San Francisco, San Diego, Emeryville, Berkeley, Alameda, Sacramento and Culver City have also eliminated parking requirements to help bring down the cost of new construction. Below is a timeline of the updated parking requirements policy progress in California:

This year on January 1st thanks to AB2097 (Friedman, D-Glendale) the state of California now "prohibits minimum parking requirements for new housing, commercial and other developments located near transit to reduce vehicle emissions and promote denser, more affordable housing closer to people's destinations." With the passage of AB2097, California became the first state to broadly eliminate parking zoning requirements to promote more transit-oriented development; ironically, California was also the first state to implement minimum parking requirements in the 1920s.

The idea of removing parking requirements is to incentivize builders to use the saved money and space to build more housing. However, some are taking the "no minimum parking" requirements to mean no more parking will be built, and it's creating some strong opposition even among groups that agree reducing the cost of building new housing is essential to making a dent in the housing affordability crisis. Removing parking requirements for new housing does not eliminate parking demand. It simply means developers will have to study real-time market conditions to identify the needed parking spots for new housing developments; this is by no means the end of parking.

In a state that was primarily built around the automobile and neglected to upkeep or build more complimentary public transportation, it is no surprise that some are taking the elimination of minimum parking requirements as a personal attack on their way of life. Since I've moved back to San Diego from New York City 10 years ago, I have observed the gradual progression to increase density in an effort to tackle affordability and sustainability challenges in the Golden State. Yet, as much as everyone wants more housing and to protect the environment, taller buildings with less parking is not how many locals think of their beloved California and it is taking time for some to warm up to the idea of less urban sprawl and slightly taller buildings. The key thing to remember is that parking is not going away. Minimum parking requirements will simply no longer be an obstacle to build more housing.

Can Cities Convert Office Space to Housing?

Can cities convert vacant or underutilized office space to more housing units?

In theory the immediate answer is should be "Yes," yet the answer is more like "It's Complicated."

In fact if you Google "can cities convert office space into housing?" these are top 5 similar questions that "People also ask":

Equally as interesting here are also the search results from the 1st page on January 15, 2023. They are all links to articles from different publications that delve into the complexities of converting vacant, unused or underutilized office into housing:

1. "Cities push to convert deserted office buildings into housing" published September 2022 by Axios

2. "Why empty offices aren't being turned into housing, despite lengthy vacancies" published July 2021 by NBC News

3. "Why the dream of turning empty offices into housing is a bust" published December 2022 by Slate

4. "Converting office to residences can help fight the housing shortage" published December 2022 by Forbes

5. "Cities are turning empty offices into apartments" published April 2022 by Quartz

6. "Why it's so hard to convert offices into housing" published December 2022 by Quartz

7. "The top 10 cities turning old office buildings into apartments -take a look inside" published November 2021 by CNBC

8. "Newsom signs bill aimed to turn empty commercial properties into housing" published September 2022 by capradio

9. "Yes, S.F. could turn empty downtown offices into housing. Here is what it would take" published October 2022 by the San Francisco Chronicle

10. "Vacant stores will become homes more easily under new California laws" published September 2022 by NPR

Even before the work from home (WFH) phenomena started to create office vacancies during the height of Covid-19 the city planning world and policy makers had started exploring the idea of converting unused office space into housing as a strategy to tackle the housing affordability crisis plaguing many US cities.

Allowing housing in land currently zoned for office space helps to solve the problem of "where will we build it (more housing)" without perpetuating urban sprawl. So why can't we just do it? It's expensive. There's a ton of red tape and zoning laws that make it very hard to get a project approved and the conversion process takes a long time. The actual construction costs are also high, and in some markets it takes "almost as much money to convert an old building to residential as it does to build a new one from scratch." Also office rents are typically much more lucrative for developers than building housing units. So while the office building vacancy rate may make some building owners and developers reconsider their options, they also know the market is cyclical "would rather wait out the pandemic than begin a yearslong process."

Cities and states understand the potential this can have on their housing shortages and are putting policies into place to eliminate some of the land use red tape and also offer tax credit and financing tools incentives. Plus, repurposing existing underutilized buildings to higher use building also has some environmental benefits that make this strategy even more attractive. For instance, New York City's Office of Adaptive Reuse Task Force recently published their recommendations in a report. Last year, California, after years of pitching housing legislation finally passed two laws to accelerate housing construction around the state, Senate Bill 6 and Assembly Bill 2011.

Additional suggested readings

• Insights on the NYC Office Adaptive Reuse Report read these insights from land use & real estate law firm Kramer Levin

• Highlights on the two new California housing laws from the law firm Holland & Knight

A Free Summer Transit Treat in Coronado

Despite San Diego's amazing year long weather, there are a few extra treats we get during summer, like outdoor concerts and some free transit. One of my all time favorites is the free shuttle on Coronado Island that runs along Orange Avenue on the 904 bus route. We usually hop on at the Ferry Landing and head south on Orange Avenue until we get to the Hotel Del Coronado.

Part of the charm of the free shuttle is it's predictability, it runs every 15 minutes so need to worry that if you miss one that it's gonna take forever to get on the next bus.

The free shuttle is a courtesy of the City of Coronado has operated since 2013 except for 2020 because of covid. This year the city spent $192,312 to operate the shuttle, provide extra 904 service schedules and to distribute 1,000 MTS day passes to the Coronado Cays to help reduce vehicle traffic on the island during summer. In addition to being a fun summer perk the free shuttle, like other forms of public transportation, also helps to reduce parking demand and green house gas emissions, and incentivizes people to spend more by creating more opportunities for carefree foot traffic to discover the many shops on the island.

If you haven't tried the free shuttle, you have until September 5th to try it for free, after then you can still take the 904 along the same path. The only difference is that you're going to have to be a bit more aware of the bus schedule, since the 15 minute frequency is meant to support the increased summer traffic on the island, and pay a regular fare.