Portlanders for Parking Reform

Better Parking Policy For The City of Roses

housing

More housing and no required parking. It’s time to pass the Residential Infill Project!

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Shoupistas, now is our moment in Portland. It’s time to eliminate the remaining residential parking requirements in Portland. The dragon is weak and can be slayed, but we’ll all need to rise to the occasion and support the Residential Infill Project to get the job done.

It’s hard to fit four or more homes and four or more cars on a lot. And even if you can, you won’t have room for much of anything else.

Fortunately, the Residential Infill Project has shaped up to be an aggressive housing policy package that will lead to less displacement citywide, neighborhoods with more economic and racial diversity, more housing options available at more price points, and less cars and a more sustainable and equitable city.

Thanks to your hard work over the years supporting progressive parking policies like residential permits, parking maximums, performance-based parking policy, and elimination of multi-family parking requirements, we don’t have to ask for better parking policy in RIP, it’s great as it is!

What we do need to do is make sure Portland City Council understands that Portland needed this housing and transportation policy, and needed it yesterday.

If you need more information about the Residential Infill Project including talking points and suggestions for how to make the housing part of the policy better, our partners at Portland: Neighbors Welcome have you covered.

Once you’re ready, submit testimony online via the Portland Map App. Let council know why you support eliminating minimum parking requirements so we can build more housing for people!

If you can, there are two opportunities to testify in person: Wednesday 1/15 at 2pm and Thursday 1/16 at 5pm at Portland City Hall (1221 SW 4th). The Portland: Neighbors Welcome link has more information on that too!

Better chances for affordable housing? Not if parking is required.

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Action Alert: send in testimony by 3pm, Wednesday 10/2/2019 to cctestimony@portlandoregon.gov. Let’s increase the odds of more affordable housing by eliminating arbitrary parking requirements in Better Housing by Design.

Quick Update: Sightline Institute has published an article this morning which delves deeper into the City of Portland’s scenario modeling for Better Housing by Design and explains why parking requirements will be so detrimental to more affordable housing. Check it out!

On Wednesday afternoon (October 2nd, 2019) Portland’s city council will hold a hearing on Better Housing by Design (BHD). BHD is a planning project that has been in development for several years with goals to encourage more housing types for all income levels built in more connected and healthy ways. BHD is focused on existing multi-family residential zones.

Probably the most impactful policy changes to help meet those goals are proposals to reduce or eliminate existing minimum parking requirements in these zones. Currently, parking is not required in apartments, condos, or townhomes, if the new building is within 1,500 feet of a light rail station or 500 feet of a frequent transit stop. Elsewhere, one parking stall is currently required for every home.

Because parking stalls take up hundreds of square feet and can cost tens of thousands of dollars, a project with required parking will usually contain fewer homes, at higher costs, than one without. In fact, the city’s own analysis showed that if parking is required on lots in the proposed RM2 zone, the most profitable (and perhaps most likely) type of development will be $700K townhouses. If parking isn’t required, the most profitable development would be $280K condos in buildings which could be big enough to trigger mandatory permanently affordable housing.

On-site parking requirements lead to development of fewer, more expensive, homes.

The BHD proposal would eliminate parking requirements for projects on lots less than 10,000 square feet and would reduce parking requirements on other lots that currently require parking from one space per home to .5 spaces per home.

This is a small step in the right direction, but there is little risk in just eliminating the existing requirements. Most of the potential development would take place in areas near transit, but the transit grid leaves hundreds of properties out of the waiver zone, often by just a couple dozen feet. Requiring parking on one side of the street and not on the other doesn’t make sense, particularly if we want to build more affordable housing and reduce driving to meet climate goals. Additionally, the BHD proposal mandates “greener” parking stalls in the form of permeable or covered spaces. While this is a nice gesture, there’s no such thing as a “green” required parking space.

On-street parking needs better management

If the city requires parking, more cars will be invited into our communities at a critical time when our climate goals necessitate reductions in driving and vehicle ownership. PBOT is pursuing bold plans to improve public transit, but those plans will be undermined by the sprawl and traffic that these additional cars will cause.

The only potential downside of not requiring parking is that incumbent residents of the neighborhood who utilize free (or very cheap) parking in Portland’s neighborhoods might experience more difficulty finding a parking space very close to their house. A good working definition for “congested parking” is when there is less than one space available on a block-face for long periods of time. By that definition, few Portland neighborhoods are currently congested.

Nevertheless, if there is parking congestion caused by new, more affordable, homes without parking, then there are plenty of solutions available to manage the on-street public parking supply. The city has a Parking Management Toolkit, passed in 2016, but council has refused to grant PBOT the authority to actually create effective parking permit zones.

Eliminate minimum requirements in new housing, manage the on street parking we have, and use parking revenues to subsidize and improve the safety of transit and other modes.

Action Alert: send in testimony by 3pm, Wednesday 10/2/2019 to cctestimony@portlandoregon.gov. Let’s increase the odds of more affordable housing by eliminating arbitrary parking requirements in Better Housing by Design.

23 Stories and zero parking stalls: Proposed Pearl District hotel/apartment project packs meeting

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A building that would likely be the city’s tallest to have no on-site parking went before the Portland Design Commission on January 3rd. The meeting was reported to be packed with residents, many of whom opposed the development’s height and impact on traffic. But others in the neighborhood, including the Pearl District Neighborhood Association (PDNA), were more supportive of the project with some reservations.

The 250 foot tall building would provide roughly 170 hotel rooms on 11 floors and another 110 apartments on 11 more floors as well as ground level retail, all parking would be provided by off-site valet services.

Rendering of proposed building containing 170 hotel rooms, 110 apartments, and no parking.

The location, on NW 12th and NW Flanders, has been owned since 2016 by Vibrant Cities, a Seattle-based development firm. In June, the Oregonian reported that the developer had initially planned to build an apartment tower on the site, but shifted the focus to a hotel use after the city of Portland passed inclusionary housing requirements. Additional height allowed by the 2035 Comprehensive Plan, seems to have enabled a reimagining of the project to provide both a hotel and apartments, including the required affordable homes.

In September, the PDNA submitted a letter to the design commission which was particularly forward-thinking regarding the developer’s choice to forgo building expensive on-site parking, recognizing that “parking garages are the most expensive part of new developments” and building less parking can “[increase] housing affordability and [provide] more options for renters that do not own vehicles.” 

This project will likely face further opposition from neighbors who will insist on lower heights and on-site parking. Ironically, on-site parking would cause additional traffic and conflicts with pedestrians and cyclists; the very issues opponents claim the current configuration will bring. Proponents of multi-modal transportation will be needed to point out what should be obvious, more parking brings more congestion.

While many smaller parking-free projects have been developed in the last decade, this is, hopefully, a sign that larger buildings with no parking will be able to secure funding in the future. As the PDNA points out, “the Pearl is an ideal location to live and work car-free, especially at this particular site where numerous amenities and tens of thousands of jobs are located in reasonable walking distance.”


Eliminate Minimum Parking Requirements In Favor Of More Affordable Residential Infill

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Action Alert: Submit testimony to the Planning and Sustainability Commission by Friday, May 18th.  You can do this easily online at this link. We encourage you to support Portland for Everyone’s suggested modifications for the Residential Infill Project and to strongly support eliminating minimum parking requirements in all residential zones.

For several years, Portland’s planners have been crafting a proposal to encourage more housing to be built in our “single-family” neighborhoods. The general goal of the proposal is to discourage the 1:1 replacement of smaller, often more affordable, single-family homes with very large and expensive homes, often called “McMansions.” Instead, the city would like to see more housing created in these neighborhoods in the form of accessory dwelling units (ADUs), and internal conversions of large older homes into duplexes or triplexes.

The plan hopes to achieve these goals by allowing homeowners and developers in “single-family zones” to build additional ADUs and allowing duplexes mid-block (currently they are restricted to corners). There are a lot of aspects to the proposal and you can read a detailed analysis and suggested improvements from our coalition partners at Portland for Everyone.

It is critical to push for a complete elimination of residential parking requirements if this plan is to succeed. Even though the plan recommends waiving parking requirements in many cases, many homes will never be built if shelter for cars continues to be given a priority over housing for humans.

As an example, a garage can be converted to an ADU without providing an additional off-street parking stall for the ADU, but in most cases the homeowner will still be required to maintain at least one off-street stall! This is even more ridiculous when one considers that an off-street stall requires a curb-cut which removes one public on-street parking stall from circulation.

Maintaining our current arbitrary parking requirements will lead to more traffic, less safe streets, more pollution, less housing, more expensive housing, and more trees removed. It’s a bad policy that benefits the few at the expense of the many.

For some inspiration, here is the testimony I gave at the Planning and Sustainability Commission hearing on May 8th.

Send in testimony now (certainly before May 18th) to ask the planning commission to support Portland for Everyone’s recommendations for the Residential Infill Project and, particularly, to recommend eliminating minimum parking requirements.

Build Housing, Not Parking

Affordable Housing, Open Spaces, Abundant Parking: Pick Two

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It’s time for Portlanders to pick their priorities and stick with them.

ACTION ALERT: Send email to betterhousing@portlandoregon.gov by Monday, March 19th telling staff you choose affordable housing and open space over parking requirements.

Portland planners are preparing a host of policy suggestions under the banner of Better Housing By Design.  The project which is a counterpart to the Residential Infill Project has four goals for improving the zoning code governing multi-family housing including (from the project website):

  • Help meet Portland’s diverse housing needs, including housing that is affordable to lower income households and units designed for people of all ages and abilities.
  • Include open space and green elements that support healthy living for residents.

These are laudable goals, but Portland’s desire for more affordable housing and open space are at direct odds with our minimum parking requirements.

a picture of housing, a picture of a garden, a picture of a parking lot, the text reads, pick 2
Portland must choose between affordable housing and open space and more parking.

Better Housing By Design allows more density in multi-family zones and adds new landscaping and outdoor space requirements to larger lots (20,000 sq/ft+). In addition, the proposal limits surface parking to 30% of the site area and limits impermeable paved surfaces to 15% of the site area. These restrictions are meant to reduce “heat islands” and excess runoff, and those are important goals, but this is greenwashing unless minimum parking requirements are completely eliminated first. What the suggested requirements in the discussion draft do are to complicate site planning for new housing and potentially make any required parking more expensive.

A developer building a project which triggers required parking will find it difficult to accommodate the open space requirements and the parking requirements without building structured parking. Structured parking takes up space that could be used for more homes and is much more expensive than surface parking.

This plan is over-thinking solutions to our most pressing problems. We need housing and we need open space much more than we need to require parking. Eliminating minimum parking requirements will allow the flexibility for builders to erect more aesthetically pleasing, functional, and affordable housing projects. Many developers will continue to build parking, but the parking they do build will be voluntary (and more “green”). If parking demand declines in the future, developers of new projects will be free to build fewer stalls without a city council fight to change requirements again.  

The Discussion Draft of the plan has gotten better from the concept draft, staff are currently proposing to eliminate parking requirements for lots which are 7,500 sq/ft or smaller.  They are also proposing to cut remaining parking requirements in half, from 1 required stall per home to 1 stall for every two homes in a housing development. This is a step in the right direction, but we need to go further. Ask staff to recommend eliminating minimum parking requirements for all multi-family housing zones as part of Better Housing By Design.

ACTION ALERT: Send email to betterhousing@portlandoregon.gov by Monday, March 19th telling staff you choose affordable housing and open space over parking requirements.