In my book, The Affordable Housing Crisis: Causes and Cures, I examine many different policies that have impacted the affordability of housing in the United States, including single-family zoning and federal highway policies. One policy that I did not examine, but which has a significant impact on housing, is minimum parking requirements.
CNN reports that there are approximately two billion parking spaces in the country, enough to pave over the entire state of Connecticut. There are at least three times as many parking spaces as automobiles, and some estimate that parking spaces outnumber automobiles by eight to one.
As with single-family zoning, minimum parking requirements prevent land from being used as the owners think best. Such requirements force builders and developers to include a specific number of parking spaces. Those requirements are often bizarre, such as a SeaTac, Washington mandate that butterfly and moth breeding facilities have one parking space for every 150 square feet of office or retail space.
We have all experienced frustration when we cannot find a parking space, so it is easy to support laws that provide ample parking. But as I point out in my book many times, we cannot examine an issue or policy out of context. Ample parking is good, but when it is mandated by law it creates other problems.
Minimum parking requirements began being enacted at the same time that the federal government was embarking on massive highway construction. As the roads improved, many began to move out of the central city to the newly developed suburbs. Because the roads were subsidized, suburban motorists did not have to bear the full cost of their transportation into the city. They were simultaneously creating a need for more parking.
At the same time, the federal government was subsidizing homeownership, particularly in the suburbs. As more and more people fled the central city, once thriving mass transit systems could no longer operate profitably. An auto-centric mentality has guided many policy decisions and dramatically shaped the American landscape. These policies have had a huge impact on the affordability of housing.
Denser development is necessary if we want to successfully address the affordable housing crisis. That means eliminating single-family zoning, as well as all other land-use regulations, including minimum parking requirements. Repealing land-use regulations would dramatically increase the land available for housing. And denser housing would make mass transit much more viable, thereby eliminating dependency on the automobile and the need for so many parking spaces and highways. Freedom in land use will go a long way towards solving the housing crisis, as well as many other problems plaguing America.