Boston Weighs Elimination of Parking Minimums

Boston is turning over every stone in an effort to unlock affordability and speed up development in Beantown. The next target of this push could be parking minimums.

Boston City Councilors Sharon Durkan and Henry Santana proposed a text amendment to eliminate off-street parking space requirements for residential developments, Bisnow reported. The city hasn’t attempted to strike the minimums since they began being instituted in the city in the 1950s.

Five years ago, the Boston City Council eliminated parking minimums for affordable housing developments. But the city had yet to go as far as Massachusetts counterparts, such as Somerville, Cambridge and Salem, which entirely took the minimums off the books.

“This reform is a commonsense and immediate step we can take to lower housing costs, support housing production and build a stronger, more sustainable city,” Durkan said during Wednesday’s City Council meeting.

The amendment is being framed as a win-win for developers and residents alike. For developers, the loss of the parking minimums could help projects better pencil out. For residents, the added costs of the parking wouldn’t be passed down to them.

Notably, the gutting of parking minimums wouldn’t mean they would no longer exist across Boston. It would simply create more flexibility for what the minimum may be in certain neighborhoods, taking away the one-size-fits-all approach.

“Boston leaders must work to eliminate all unnecessary and costly requirements, like parking mandates, in order to make the city more attractive to developers who want to build new housing here,” Greater Boston Real Estate Board CEO Greg Vasil said in a statement of support for the proposal.

More cities are doing away with parking minimums to inspire more housing development, including major municipalities like Austin and Seattle.

As part of the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity reform New York City created three zones: one where parking restrictions remained largely intact, another where minimums were reduced and one where they were erased.

The original proposal, however, would have eliminated parking minimums citywide for new construction; areas of Manhattan south of 96th Street are already exempt from such requirements.

— Holden Walter-Warner