Zoning

Will City Council Impose Rent-Raising Minimum Requirements In NW PDX?

May 24, 2016 By TonyJ 2 Comments

On July 6th at 2PM City Council will consider a Planning and Sustainability Commission (PSC) recommendation to allow for more flexible and efficient uses of the existing parking supply in NW Portland, a smart move. During the hearing, however, Northwest Parking Stakeholder Advisory Committee (NW Parking SAC) members will ask council to amend the proposal and add back in minimum parking requirements.

In March, Portlanders on the NW Parking SAC asked the Planning and Sustainability Commission to recommend new minimum parking requirements for multi-family developments in northwest Portland.

The Planning and Sustainability Commission declined to make the recommendation due, primarily, to concerns about the effect of parking minimums on housing affordability. Furthermore, as Commissioner Chris Smith pointed out, the NW Parking SAC could have requested higher monthly parking permit fees or denied access to permits in new developments without parking, both would be more effective at solving the perceived problem than minimum parking requirements.

It’s possible that the committee will eventually look to market-rate permit prices to manage the on-street supply, but apparently not until they are sure they can’t pass the cost of parking onto new residents instead.

According to the minutes from the committee’s May meeting, they will give testimony concerning “affordable housing, market behavior, car ownership, and permit restrictions.”

This will be an important test of City Council’s resolve to deal with the affordable housing crisis.

Mark your calendars and prepare testimony, all the Shoupistas in Portland can send a strong message to council that we don’t want to see another step backwards with parking policy. The way forward is with market-rate permits and other progressive parking policy.

Planners, developers, and community housing advocates agree that parking minimums have negative impact on housing affordability

May 7, 2016 By Shoupista 1 Comment

(Photo source: CityLab)

On Friday, Metro and the American Planning Association Oregon Chapter (OAPA) hosted a full-day affordable housing workshop at the Metro Regional Center. In the afternoon session, a panel of planners, private and non-profit housing developers discussed their successes and challenges with housing development and working with affordable housing policies

Since regulations on parking is a relevant issue that affects affordability, I asked the panel what they think of parking minimums and how parking affects development projects. The panelists were: Emily Lieb, Metro; Cindy Walbridge, City of Hood River; Madeline Kovacs, Orange Splot; Sarah Zahn, Gerding Edlen; Adrian Boly, Guardian Real Estate Services; Ben Sturtz, REACH CDC; and Nick Sauvie, Rose CDC.

The panelists, who have worked with a wide range of types of housing development (from ADUs to mixed-use, high rise apartments), unanimously agreed that parking minimums (1) make housing units more difficult to build, (2) are detrimental to housing affordability, and (3) need to be reduced or even removed completely as Portland faces a housing shortage and affordability crisis.

I have summarized the responses from each panelist who spoke about the issue regarding parking minimums and housing affordability below:

The first person to take on this question was Madeline Kovacs from Orange Splot, a housing development company focusing on developing small and green homes, said that since her organization works on small-sized projects, the parking minimums in single-family zones in Portland really affect if a project is feasible or not. “Especially with ADUs, to fit a parking space on site often means there is no land left for building housing”, said Kovacs. While Portland does not require ADUs to provide additional on-site parking, “if parking is required for the existing dwelling unit, that parking must either be retained, or if eliminated in the creation of the ADU”. [1] She recommended a thoughtful report by the Sightline Institute called “Legalizing Inexpensive Housing” for more information on land use regulations like parking minimums that are preventing affordable housing units coming into the market today.

Ben Sturtz from REACH CDC, a community development corporation that has developed a wide variety of affordable housing units in the Portland region for over 30 years, said parking minimums is a barrier hard to overcome for non-profit development. Sturtz said “for a project we worked on in Hillsboro, the City approved an exemption to only require 1 parking space per unit instead of 1.5 spaces per unit. We later found out that only about 0.6 parking spaces per unit are actually utilized by residents of this project”.

Adrian Boly from Guardian Real Estate Services told the audience that he has seen “projects live and die because of parking minimums”. “1:1 (one parking space per unit) parking minimums make a big hit on development pro forma.” Boly explained that sometimes there are other forces at play that influence the decision on how many parking spaces to build beyond zoning code. For example, he shared that some investors, who may be living in another state, may feel less risky if the project includes more parking. “Sometimes the costs associated with constructing parking spaces may be recovered through higher rent”, Boly said. However, he also mentioned that existing neighbors often pressure developers to build more parking spaces for fearing that they can no longer park in front of their houses. “I think Portland is experiencing some pains as it grows… But we all need to learn how to live together if we really mean to create 20-minute neighborhoods, [2] we need to reduce or remove parking minimums”.

Sarah Zahn from Gerding Edlen, which recently redeveloped a parking lot in Old Town China Town into a six-story mixed-use apartment building with zero on-site parking, echoed Boly’s perspective. “I think we made a big mistake by setting parking minimums in our neighborhoods… We need to re-think what our priorities are as a city”, said Zahn. She said for the mixed-use develop in Old Town China Town, they worked with the Portland Development Commission to find shared-parking opportunities in the adjacent area.

Concluding the discussion on parking, Nick Sauvie from Rose CDC, a non-profit community development organization focusing on outer Southeast Portland, offered advice on moving the conversation about parking, new development, and affordable housing forward. Sauvie said “people think neighborhoods are some kind of monolithic forces that oppose this issue. The fact is lots of people in the neighborhoods want Portland to be affordable and livable. There is a lot of common ground to for us to work together”.

After the session, I spoke with Emily Lieb, the Equitable Housing Project Manager at Metro about the epidemic of cities requiring development to over-supply parking. I asked her if Metro will step into a regional leadership role to address parking, as both a transportation and land use issue, and its impact on housing affordability. Lieb said that Metro is looking at Minneapolis’s example of reducing parking requirements near rail transit stations and will convene a forum to have policy conversations on parking with stakeholders. When I asked if Metro will go beyond just convening for policy discussions and actually lead the region on policy reform, Lieb said “we have a very diverse group of stakeholders and committee members and Metro Council currently does not consider taking regulatory actions”.

The conclusion is that planners, developers, and affordable housing advocates all seem to agree that parking minimums really stifle progress in housing affordability and there is a need to reform parking policy in the Portland region. This agreement also may suggest that there is opportunity to build a coalition that supports progressive parking and housing policies across different sectors and interests. It is now up to our local and regional elected officials to take the lead for a future of more housing for people and less parking for cars.

[1] Assessory Dwelling Units, Bureau of Development Services, City of Portland, https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bds/36676

[2] referring to the concept of living in a place that gives you access to work and other daily needs within a 20-minute trip. http://www.portlandonline.com/portlandplan/index.cfm?a=288098&c=52256

Affordable Housing for Cars is One of the Major Obstacles to Affordable Housing for People

April 5, 2016 By Shoupista 5 Comments

Following up on a blog post on minimum parking requirements’ impact on inclusionary zoning, I want to further illustrate why requiring parking minimums for residential development is an unwise policy.

Parking requirements reduce the number of affordable units a development can provide.

Housing in Portland has becoming more and more unaffordable. The average market-rate rent for a 900ft²two-bedroom apartment unit in Portland is $2,007 per month^{^[1]}. However, the affordable monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment for a household of three earning 80% of the area median income is $1,323 per month^{^[2]}.

Let’s say there is a hypothetical development for 100 two-bedroom units in inner Portland with good transit access. The City of Portland can require up to 20% of units be affordable to households earning 80% of the area median income – so 20 affordable units and 80 market rate units. The developer will be given a choice to pay a fee instead of building the affordable units. .

In this scenario, let’s say providing 20 affordable units with 80 market rate units and no off-street parking can achieve the lowest monthly revenue for the developer. Existing Minimum parking requirements, however, will require this development to provide a minimum of 33 parking spaces^{^[3]} (minimum parking requirement for 50+ unit multi-family development near transit corridors is 0.33 per unit). In order to make room for 33 on-site parking spaces^{^[4]}, the developer might only build 95 units instead of 100 units.

Now, if the developer was required to build 20% affordable units, the development will have to provide 19 affordable units and 76 market-rate units. You might say losing only one affordable unit is not a huge loss. But it is not so simple. Remember, our assumption is that providing 20 affordable units with 80 market rate units can achieve the lowest monthly revenue for the developer. With that in mind, we can estimate the monthly revenue using the average market rate rent and the affordable housing rent for these units. The average market-rate rent for a 900 ft²two-bedroom apartment in Portland is $2,007 a month and the maximum rent affordable for a two-bedroom apartment for a household of three earning 80% area median income is $1,323 a month.

In the first scenario, the developer makes the lowest monthly revenue by earning $187,020 per month ($2,007 x 80 + $1,323 x 20 = $187,020). In the scenario with 33 required parking spaces, to earn at least as much revenue, the developer will have build 90 market-rate units and 5 affordable units ($2,007 x 90 + $1,323 x 5 = $187,245). In other words, the same development needs to reduce 15 affordable units because of parking minimum to make the development financially feasible.

Parking Requirements Reduce the Number of Affordable Units-01
In addition, the construction plus maintenance cost of the 33 parking spaces will need to be covered by additional revenue streams. This means that either market-rates apartment units will be more expensive or there will be fewer affordable units. The bottom-line is parking degrades affordability for everyone.

Parking requirements make all housing more expensive for everyone.

There are a number of studies in the U.S. that estimate how much renters pay for the hidden costs of parking, even if they don’t own a car at all. For example, the Sightline Institute reported that renters pay about $246 per month to cover landlords’ losses on parking in the Seattle area^{^[5]}. Using the average residential parking construction costs in Portland and a parking cost calculator, I developed a more conservative estimate that each unit in our hypothetical development will need to pay $121 a month for the 33 on-site parking spaces^{^[6]} ^{^[7]}.

$121 may not sound like a lot of money to some people, but let’s put it in perspective. The difference between the average market rate rent for a two-bedroom apartment ($2,007) and the maximum affordable rent for a household of three earning 80% of area median income ($1,323) is $684. We can consider that an affordable housing subsidy. The monthly parking cost for each tenant, regardless if they own a car or not, is 18% of that subsidy. When people are getting pushed out of their neighborhoods and unable to find housing near their jobs, do we really want to spend 18% of affordable housing subsidy for people to park their cars?

Moreover, for a household of three earning 80% of area median income, $121 is 9% of the maximum affordable rent per month. In other words, requiring parking also means requiring low-income Portlanders to pay an additional 9% of their rent for someone else’s parking space. If our neighbors and elected officials really care about housing affordability and displacement, they should understand that requiring parking for residential development only exacerbates the affordability crisis and helps displacing more people by making rent more expensive.

Parking Costs in Perspective 2-01

Parking minimum requires more affordable parking for cars than affordable housing for people.

Even with inclusionary zoning, the City can only require up to 20 affordable units in our hypothetical development. However, minimum parking requirements generously give 33 spaces to cars at the cost of higher rent for everyone, regardless if they own a car or not. Comparing the size of two parking spaces and the size of a two-bedroom apartment, it becomes even more clear that our current land use policy prefers housing automobiles rather than people. Two parking spaces plus the turning aisle take up about 864 ft² whereas a two-bedroom apartment is about 900 ft². Put it simply, every time a development is required to make room to store two cars, the same amount of space could be used to house a family of three.

Parking increases housing costs for everyone and reduce the total number of affordable housing units. Parking also takes up valuable building space that could otherwise be used to house people instead of storing cars that sit idle most the time during a day. Portland’s elected officials and residents must recognize that parking degrades housing affordability and equity by requiring renters pay for someone else’s parking space. As long as we continue to require affordable housing for cars, policies that support affordable housing for people will always be thwarted.

^{^[1]} Median Rent List Price per Sq Ft, Multifamily 5+ Units, Zillow, February 2016

^{^[2]} State of Housing Report in Portland, Portland Housing Bureau, 2015

^{^[3]} City of Portland Planning and Zoning Code, Title 33. March 1, 2016

^{^[4]} Cost of Onside Parking + Impacts on Affordability. Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, 2012

^{^[5]} Who Pays for Parking? Sightline Institute, 2013

^{^[6]} Cost of Onside Parking + Impacts on Affordability. Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, 2012

^{^[7]} Parking Cost, Pricing, and Revenue Calculator, Victoria Transportation Policy Institute

Central City 2035: Comments on Parking Policy Reforms

March 30, 2016 By TonyJ Leave a Comment

Thursday, March 31, 2016 is the deadline to make comments on the Central City 2035 Discussion Plan. The document is quite lengthy (over 200 pages) and addresses many topics. Effectively the Central City 2035 Plan is the blueprint for the next 20 years of the heart of our city. Many advocacy groups are poring over the details to submit testimony and Portland Shoupistas has drafted some comments on the parking related portions.

Our comments, which you can view on Google Docs are focused, primarily, on two aspects of the plan:

Shared use of existing and to-be-built parking stalls for commercial and residential uses.
Implementing parking maximums for all parking usage types.

These policy recommendations, which came out of the Central City Parking Policy Update Stakeholder Advisory Committee are designed to “limit the growth of the parking supply and encourage the use of alternative modes to support the mode split goals for the Central City.” The policies are a bargain of sorts, the city proposes to tighten parking maximum entitlements for much of the central city, but they are offsetting those restrictions by allowing building managers the freedom to use virtually all of their parking as they wish. Currently, building managers cannot lease spaces built for residential uses to commuters or downtown visitors.

Additionally the city proposes to allow developers to retain some, or all, of their parking entitlement which can be bundled into future projects nearby if they find that they beuilt too few spaces for their building.

All in all these are smart policies in our opinion and they should, in theory, lead to less structured parking being built in the central city and more efficient uses of the parking we already have. But there are some potential pitfalls and the proposal could be improved by staff or the planning commission before enactment:

Some areas of the central business district (CBD) are seeing increases in their parking entitlement. Currently the densest, most transit-rich portions of downtown have parking maximums of .7 or .8 parking stalls per 1000 square feet of commercial or office space. The proposal, in a good-faith effort to simplify the code, has created one zone for much of downtown with a ratio of 1 stall per 1000 square feet. This is a lower maximum entitlement than some areas, but the increase in the city core should be eliminated. At the very most the parking ratio should be held at .75 stalls per 1000 square feet in the CBD.
When combined with the shared parking allowance, we could be dramatically increasing the amount of commuter parking available downtown see this example from out testimony:

Under current maximums, a hypothetical building in the CBD might be limited to 80 spaces for 100,000 square feet of office space and might build 120 stalls to support 100 residential units. The argument for shared parking suggests that a developer might be inclined to build 120 stalls total under the new policy, rather than 200 stalls (say ⅓ of the residents don’t move their cars every day). Under the proposed policy, however, the developer would have a maximum parking entitlement of 220 stalls as the proposal increases the maximums in the CBD by 20-30% for many sites for office and commercial use.

The biggest problem with the proposal is that it doesn’t get us closer to meeting the city’s own 2035 mode split goals. The parking built in the next decade will last for 50 years or more, inducing demand for driving downtown, taking up space, and causing pollution. Our admirable and aggressive mode split target is that fewer than 25% of trips to the city center should happen by single occupancy vehicle in 2035, just 19 years away. If PBOT is serious about meeting these goals, they should commit to developing and sharing an analysis that ties off-street parking maximum allotments to mode split targets in each zone of the central city. Without such analysis showing that the proposed maximums will be effective, we must assume they won’t be effective.

Our comments recommend cutting the residential and commercial parking entitlements by 50-75%. These lower ratios take into account the effective increase in current supply provided by the legalization of shared use parking and are an attempt to tie parking maximums to the city mode split goals.

Read our entire testimony here. If you would like to sign onto our testimony you can add a comment to the google document or comment on this story.

Portland Planning Commission Declines To Recommend New Parking Requirements

March 8, 2016 By TonyJ 12 Comments

Portland’s Planning and Sustainability Commission, on March 8, heard staff recommendations to impose mandatory minimum parking requirements in densely populated NW Portland.

Northwest Portland, because it is in a plan district, was left out zoning changes passed in 2013 which required parking in new multi-family developments with more than 30 housing units. Neighbors argued that the region was short 2000 parking spaces already and that new developments proposed would exacerbate the problem further in the future.

Housing affordability advocates, transportation activists, and Portland Shoupistas countered that minimum requirements were a step in the wrong direction during a housing crisis. Portland Shoupistas pointed out that there are many parking management strategies available to the district, such as limiting the number of permits and charging market rates, that would lead to right-sized parking being built at the developer’s discretion.

Commissioners agreed with concerns about the effect of minimum requirements on housing affordability and cited lack of any data or studies on the impact of the 2013 requirements as a reason to proceed with caution. Northwest Portland Parking

Commissioner Chris Smith moved to recommend only the shared parking provisions of the staff proposal, which would allow for more flexible use of off street parking. The commission also recommended that the process to gain approval for shared parking be streamlined.

The recommendations will be heard at City Council where it is likely some NW residents will attempt to convince city commissioners to impose requirements contrary to the recommendation of the PSC. Such an outcome, however, is far less likely now due, in part, to the work of Portland Shoupistas and our allies.