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Written testimony will be accepted on this topic until 8AM on Monday, October 17th! Let City Council know you want them to trade parking requirements for more housing by eliminating minimum parking requirements.

On October 6th, City Council heard testimony from eight Portlanders who were concerned that minimum parking requirements are ineffective, raise the cost of housing, and are contrary to our climate action and transportation goals. Additionally, organizations like The Street Trust (formerly the Bicycle Transportation Alliance), Oregon Walks, and Portland for Everyone have joined dozens of other citizens by sending in written testimony supporting the elimination of these requirements in mixed use zones.

At the October 13th hearing, a handful of people gave testimony in opposition to these proposed reforms.  To our ears their testimony was not compelling. Whereas Portlanders for Parking Reform and our supporters are able to cite reports from the White House and plain evidence that on-site parking is terribly expensive, the opposing testimony is often based on anecdote and concerns for personal convenience.  Nevertheless, there were several points made in their collective testimony which, unwillingly, support our request to remove parking requirements.

“We don’t even know what adequate parking is.”

Susan Lindsay, co-chair of the Buckman Community Association told the commissioners that eliminating parking requirements would be “just another giveaway [to developers].”  Lindsay, however, seemed to acknowledge that the current ratios set in 2013 are arbitrary and likely ineffective:

“For one thing we don’t even really know what adequate parking is. There’s never really been a substantial look at this…” – Susan Lindsay

This is absolutely correct. Because Portland has free (or very cheap) on-street parking, there are no market forces

which can help the city, or developers, determine how much parking is truly needed for tenants. The city can, and has, studied car ownership rates among new residents to neighborhoods, but if a new tenant owns a car already, and on-street parking is free (or $5 a month), why wouldn’t they keep their car, even if they don’t use it?

When cities set arbitrary ratios, they usually end up with too much parking and not enough housing.

“Provide adequate but not excessive off‐street parking”

Tamara DeRidder, the chair of the Rose City Park Neighborhood Association Land Use/Planning Committee, also opposed our efforts.  She provided that her board “supported a revised requirement for off street parking where you need have three parking spaces for every 4 dwelling units for mixed use.” This demand is not novel, neighbors commonly request that the city require parking ratios base on the assumption that every household owns at least one car, but we are planning for the future, a future where transportation will look much different than it does today.

What was interesting about DeRidder’s testimony was that she cited the same comprehensive policy to support higher ratios that Portlanders for Parking Reform uses to support eliminating them.  Policy 9.58 of the Transportation System Plan reads:

Off‐street parking. Limit the development of new parking spaces to achieve land use, transportation, and environmental goals, especially in locations with frequent transit service. Regulate off‐street parking to achieve mode share objectives, promote compact and walkable urban form, encourage lower rates of car ownership, and promote the vitality of commercial and employment areas. Use transportation demand management and pricing of parking in areas with high parking demand. Strive to provide adequate but not excessive off‐street parking where needed, consistent with the preceding practices.

While DeRidder claimed that eliminating parking requirements would be out of compliance with this policy (a claim that Commissioner Amanda Fritz seemed to be very interested in), as Susan Lindsay pointed out, “we don’t even know what adequate parking is.”

Market rate residential permits are the best way to determine what adequate parking is. Mandating parking at the current, or higher, ratios will impede our ability to achieve land use, transportation, and environmental goals. Parking requirements encourage higher rates of car ownership and driving. In calling attention to Policy 9.58, Tamara DeRidder is, truly, supporting our proposal to eliminate required parking.

“What the lack of parking allows developers to do is increase their footprint.”

After DeRidder’s testimony, Donna Bestwick, a taxpaying resident of Multnomah Village for the past 35 years told council that “every neighborhood in Portland is very distressed about parking.” Bestwick continued to remind the commissioners that “people are not going to get rid of their cars.”  Eliminating parking requirements would be “putting incredible pressure on neighborhoods and street parking.” She warned us that without a 1-to-1 ratio for new construction, “people are going to be parking in front of our homes.”

However, assumption that everyone will continue to own cars so we need to build more parking is completely contrary to evidence. Census data show that the commute trend for new Portland commuters since 2000 is that the majority of them are not driving to work. If more and more Portlanders don’t need their cars, why require new development to build more parking?

Bestwick went further to say that if the parking mandate were removed, the end result would be more homes.  “What the lack of parking allows developers to do is increase their footprint,” she said,  “so if they were going to build a structure, anywhere, and had to have at least 1:1 parking they couldn’t go as big on the footprint.”

Indeed, the effect of required parking is to suppress the amount of new housing built. If neighbors are concerned about the form of new buildings or the density of their neighborhoods, then they should provide input to the Residential Infill Project. Parking policy has long been a stalking horse for keeping lower-income and more diverse populations out of an established neighborhood. By stoking anxieties about parking convenience, neighbors can keep their neighborhoods more exclusive without seeming xenophobic.

“A tug of war between two different visions of how the transportation system should work”

After hearing her testimony Mayor Charlie Hales responded to Bestwick:

“I think it’s important to note that this is a difficult issue for the council on the parking issue. But most of the advocacy that we’re hearing on the other side is not from developers, it’s from transportation advocates like ‘Portlanders for Parking Reform’  who are disinterested in the question of this or that development but believe that we should be working towards a future where we are walking more and using transit more and driving less.  So it really isn’t a tug of war, in this case, between neighborhoods and developers, it’s a tug of war between two different visions of how the transportation system should work, that i’ve been hearing from.” – Mayor Charlie Hales

Hales’ reply gets directly at the heart of the matter. We are currently planning for the future of our city and Portlanders are looking at our current situation and the proposals for the future and coming to different conclusions from the same evidence.

Both sides admit, we don’t know how much parking we need. Some of us want to use data and markets to find out, others want even higher arbitrary ratios. Car ownership rates among residents of mixed-use developments are available; some of us would like to use policy to encourage lower rates of ownership while others want to require, by law, the subsidy and continuation of the status quo. Both sides understand that requiring more shelter for cars will cause there to be less housing for people; some of us want to prioritize people over cars while others want to strengthen this exclusionary zoning policy.

Putting policy goals aside, what we really need to ask ourselves is what kind of future do we want to build for the next generation of Portlanders? Do we want a future where there is enough housing for our kids or only storage space for cars, which they won’t be likely to own? As Mayor Hales said, we will continue “working towards a future where we are walking more and using transit more and driving less.” Join us!

We’ve made the case for eliminating parking requirements and we’ve shown up in person to tell City Council it’s time for a change. To ensure that the mayor and commissioners pay attention, we need to generate more written testimony, and you can help.

Your message does not need to be complicated or long.  The important thing is to ask council to “Trade minimum parking requirements for more affordable housing by eliminating minimum parking requirements in Mixed-Use Zones.”

If you want to add some reasoning, we have prepared some “talking” points for you.

After you do that, spread the message on Facebook and Twitter.

If you’d like to go the extra mile, you can also send an email to the members of City Council individually.  We suggest you do this by October 13th. Write to Commissioner Steve Novick, Mayor Charlie Hales, Commissioner Nick Fish, Commissioner Dan Saltzman, and Commissioner Amanda Fritz.

Let’s not let this opportunity slip away.  If we act now, we can correct the mistake our city made in 2013 when council imposed minimum rent requirements and suppressed the supply of new housing in Portland.

Minimum parking requirements “have a disproportionate impact on housing for low-income households because these families tend to own fewer vehicles but are nonetheless burdened by the extra cost of parking’s inclusion in the development.” This is the verdict of the Obama administration’s recently released Housing Development Toolkit, a report which “highlights actions that states and local jurisdictions have taken to promote healthy, responsive, affordable, high-opportunity housing markets.”

The toolkit lists a host of cities: New York, Denver, Seattle, and Minneapolis which have taken steps in recent years to reduce or mitigate parking requirements in order to encourage affordable housing and more environmentally sustainable development patterns. Portland is notably absent from this list. Our city has, historically, been a trailblazer for progressive parking policy. City Council enacted a controversial, but very successful, “parking lid” on downtown parking stalls in 1975 and in 2002 a City Council featuring future mayor Charlie Hales, eliminated parking requirements for housing developments near frequent transit. But in 2013 Mayor Hales and City Council yielded to neighborhood anxieties and took a step backward, re-implementing requirements in much of the city. In doing so, Portland’s reputation as an example of forward-thinking urban policies took a hit.

The timing of this reversal was unfortunate. Portland was entering a massive building boom and the restrictions parking requirements placed on new developments has lead to an untold number of “lost” homes in our city. The residents of apartments that have been built during this boom will bear the cost of mandatory parking, whether they own a car or not, for decades.

The Tide Has Turned

Since 2013 the teachings of Professor Donald Shoup have leapt from the pages of his dense and wonky opus “The High Cost of Free Parking” into the mainstream. Widely read publications like Wired, Mother Jones, and the Washington Post have promoted his advice to cities to eliminate parking requirements, charge market rates for on-street parking, and create parking benefit districts.

And governments are taking his advice. Oakland, California removed minimum parking requirements in September 2016.  Fayetteville, Arkansas did the same in October 2015. Also in October 2015, the State of California passed a law requiring all California cities to reduce parking requirements for affordable housing.  In September 2016 the Planning Commission of Philadelphia refused to roll-back reductions in parking requirements enacted in 2012.

And here in Portland it would seem that the rollback of Shoupian parking policy in 2013 was more of a blip than a trend.  Portland is planning a host of progressive parking policy changes including supply-limited residential parking permits and performance based pricing. In July, City Council took a bold step in declining to impose parking requirements in Northwest Portland. Council members signaled that changes to the 2013 off-street parking mandate were needed.

On the heels of the White House report and what seems to be a favorable environment at City Hall for reform comes an opportunity for eliminating the most harmful of Portland’s remaining parking requirements.

A Window Of Opportunity

Portland is wrapping up a long process to develop and approve a new Comprehensive Plan, “a long-range 20-year plan that sets the framework for the physical development of the city.” The bulk of this plan is in its final stages.  Called the 2035 Comprehensive Plan Early Implementation Package, this package contains the changes to the zoning code and zoning maps that will govern new development for the next 20 years.  In the remaining months of 2016, City Council will hear testimony on this package, propose and vote on amendments to it, and finally approve the plan.

One part of this plan is the Mixed Use Zones Project.  This project “is an initiative to develop new mixed use zoning designations to implement Portland’s new 2035 Comprehensive Plan. The 2035 Comprehensive Plan calls for managing growth and creating healthy, vibrant neighborhoods in part by focusing new housing, shops, and services into a network of centers and corridors located throughout Portland.”

These new zones replace much of the area affected by the 2013 minimum parking requirements and we can ask City Council to eliminate minimum parking requirements within them.

City Council should eliminate minimum parking requirements in Mixed Use Zones because the policy approved by council supports such an action:

Policy 9.58 Off-street parking. Limit the development of new parking spaces to achieve land use, transportation, and environmental goals, especially in locations with frequent transit service. Regulate off-street parking to achieve mode share objectives, promote compact and walkable urban form, encourage lower rates of car ownership, and promote the vitality of commercial and employment areas. Use transportation demand management and pricing of parking in areas with high parking demand. Strive to provide adequate but not excessive off-street parking where needed, consistent with the preceding practices.

Perhaps more importantly, City Council should eliminate minimum parking requirements in Mixed Use Zones because parking requirements make housing more expensive and parking requirements make it much harder to build more affordable housing.  The Mixed Use Zones project creates bonuses to incentivize developers to build affordable units.  That’s great, but the city is concerned that even with the bonuses, the affordable units won’t be built if parking is required:

Modeling revealed that additional required parking may limit utilization of the affordable housing bonus due to the high cost of providing structured or underground parking.

The proposal exempts the affordable units from the ratios that determine the parking, but we will see even more affordable housing built if we require affordable housing for people, via inclusionary zoning, and promote building more homes for people by not requiring shelter for cars.

We Can Do This

Is this possible? We think so. The report from the White House is a big deal and our housing/houseless crisis is still the biggest issue the city faces. Testimony on the Mixed Use Zones Project can be given through October 13th and Portlanders for Parking Reform is asking Shoupistas in Portland to join us on October 6th at the first hearing. If we show up to City Hall and write letters to City Council, we can put Portland back on the vanguard for progressive parking policy and further our goals to create more affordable housing, make safer streets, and combat climate change.

How To Help

Join Us on October 6th and Give Testimony

The biggest impact will come from people showing and speaking to council.  Council needs to hear from people who face rent increases and displacement due to anti-affordable housing policy like parking requirements.  Testifying is easy.  Simply state, in your own words, why this issue concerns you and tell council that you want them to eliminate minimum parking requirements.

We have prepared a document with talking points for your convenience.

October 6th, 2PM @ Portland City Hall

If you plan to testify, please RSVP via this form so we have an idea of what support we can expect. We may be able to save you time by signing you up.

Send testimony to City Council

Before midnight on Thursday, October 13th you can send written testimony to cputestimony@portlandoregon.gov with subject line “Comprehensive Plan Implementation.”

Write to the Commissioners

Send an email to the members of City Council.  We suggest you do this by October 13th.

Write to Commissioner Steve Novick, Mayor Charlie Hales, Commissioner Nick Fish, Commissioner Dan Saltzman, and Commissioner Amanda Fritz.  Let them know that you value housing for people over shelter for cars.  Let’s plan for the future we want for Portland and not a smog-choked-and-gridlocked playground for the wealthy.