Posts about Parking Minimums

As Dick VanderHart explains in the Portland Mercury, the neighborhood has a vibrant nightlife which attracted new visitors to the area. Those visitors compete with residents for parking. Curbside parking is free at all times.

Residents can request residential permits to limit visitor parking and overnight parking. Last year, the city created a "mini" parking district program so individual neighborhoods can create new small parking districts, but so far, none have requested one.

Perhaps that's because it's not really hard to park there. In a Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS) survey, most residents said that they usually park on the street 1-2 blocks from their homes and most spend little time looking for parking.

It isn't clear that a parking problem exists in Portland today. Plus, building more off-street parking will not do anything about visitors patronizing the new bars and cafes in the area. That's especially true as long as parking is free on every street in the area. No matter how much garage parking new buildings have, many people will find it more convenient and cheaper to park on the street until the city limits on-street parking or charges for it.

This closely parallels issues in DC. In many neighborhoods, it's becoming more difficult to park. We have parking minimums, but they clearly aren't preventing this. The solution is not to cling tenaciously to parking minimums, but to set up a better system that actually manages on-street spaces.

The Portland zoning code didn't fail. Instead, the residents didn't or couldn't use other parking management tools. We don't know yet if switching the code back will improve matters for unhappy residents—the vote just happened last week—but it's unlikely.

The new Portland policy require one space per 5 units for buildings with 30-40 units, one per 4 for buildings of 41-50 units, and one per 3 for buildings over 51 units. If the developer puts in bike parking and car sharing, they can relieve some of the requirement.

Perhaps because of the impending election, Portland's council may have acted hastily. The city was also working on other policies to deal with parking through basic transportation demand management measures, but that proposal was not finished in time for the council vote.

Opponents have been complaining most strongly about the DC proposal to exempt residential buildings of up to 10 units from parking requirements citywide. Portland still exempts buildings up to 3 times that size.

Plus, while many tout Portland as a transit mecca for its pioneering streetcars and other policies, the percentage of trips by transit here is triple that of Portland, which has no subway at all. TriMet has cut service in recent years, while WMATA has not. DC neighborhoods whose residents consider their transit fairly meager still have a lot of transit by the standards of many parts of Portland.

Portland's parking experience is not proof that parking minimums are necessary. Instead, it shows that politics can get in the way of good parking policy. Just because politicians in one city had a knee-jerk but nonsensical reaction to a certain neighborhood's complaints does not mean DC should do the same.

DC needs to fix parking minimums, and quick

First of all, this clearly shows why we need to reform the zoning code. It also shows the consequences of overly restrictive rules.

Many people like rules that force almost any development to request zoning relief, because it gives residents a chance to speak up at a hearing or for neighborhood groups to ask for changes or concessions. However, such a process also forces property owners to hire lawyers and spend months to get through these hearings.

Perversely, that is a lot easier for the big project which will have a greater impact on the neighborhood than for a smaller property owner, or in this case, a nonprofit opening with city financial assistance in an area which has struggled to attract many types of businesses.

The council can't, and shouldn't, override

Okay, but until we fix zoning, does the Playhouse have to suffer? Wells (ward 6) and Barry (ward 8) introduced emergency legislation to let the project move ahead, but as the City Paper also reports, Council Chairman Phil Mendelson refused to put it on the calendar. Is Mendelson being a scrooge? Not really.

That's because the DC Council does not have power over zoning. Before Home Rule in 1974, the federal government controlled all zoning. Congress didn't entirely trust DC's elected representatives to make land use choices, so it gave that power to the Zoning Commission, a 5-member board with 3 people appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council, and 2 federal representatives.

The DC Council passes plans, like the Comprehensive Plan and individual Small Area Plans, which the Zoning Commission is supposed to follow. But the Zoning Commission actually decides whether to rezone any property or change the regulations. The BZA is a second hybrid federal-local board which rules on individual variances and exceptions based on the zoning code.

The pending zoning update doesn't need any approval from the council—just the Zoning Commission. While some councilmembers (like Muriel Bowser) have nonetheless been catering to residents who oppose the update, wiser councilmembers have been staying out of this contentious issue.

Barry's and Wells' original bill would allow DC's Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) to give the Playhouse permits to move ahead, but only temporarily. If the Playhouse then gets the zoning relief it needs, it can keep moving ahead; if for some reason it doesn't, it would have wasted a lot of time. But since the ANC, the Office of Planning, and basically everyone else supports the Playhouse's petition, they'd probably be okay.

Override this time, and what's next?

Still, the bill flirts with a dangerous precedent: directing DC agencies to partly disregard zoning. The Zoning Commission has no police force to enforce its orders. It relies on DCRA to deny permits that don't have zoning relief. We don't want to go down a slippery slope where the Council passes laws telling DCRA to grant permits for projects that violate zoning.

It could work the other way as well. Residents angry about a proposed apartment building at Connecticut and Military asked Councilmember Mary Cheh (ward 3) to intervene and even pass an emergency law directing DCRA to block the project, at least temporarily, until there can be more community meetings. Cheh rightly pointed out that she doesn't have that power.

In one of her responses to neighbors, Cheh wrote,

The Council has no authority over the zoning code: the Home Rule Act defined the Council's legislative authority, but made it clear that the Zoning Commission has full authority over zoning matters. The issue was addressed directly by the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia, who concluded that "the Zoning Commission is the exclusive agency vested with power to enact zoning regulations." ...

You ask that I petition the Mayor to direct the agencies not to issue any more permits until the concerns are addressed. Again, because there is no discretion in the issuance of permits, an intentional delay could open the District up to liability for takings and discrimination. The law simply does not allow the remedy that you seek.

If the council had passed Wells' and Barry's Anacostia Playhouse bill and someone had wanted to sue, there's a good chance the DC Court of Appeals would have struck it down. If they found a reason to uphold it, that would be even worse, because then it would create an opportunity for council meddling in zoning cases in the future.

This bill is probably safe because it doesn't seem like anyone actually has a problem with the project, but it's not a good idea to possibly set a dangerous precedent just because this specific case is uncontroversial.

There might be other fixes

This case does point to a flaw in the zoning process, in addition to the silly parking rules. Perhaps there should be a way for a property owner to petition for an expedited hearing when a longer delay would cause some hardship. Other processes include such shortcuts.

In fact, the zoning update doesn't do that, but it does allow the BZA to add a "consent calendar" where they can move through uncontroversial matters much more quickly. Perhaps that can help as well for the next Anacostia Playhouse.

And we need to get rid of parking minimums. This case shows how, while stricter rules can sometimes prevent bad projects, they also can at times interfere with good ones. Zoning restrictions have a cost.

As for the Playhouse, apparently the problem is that the building and its parking aren't on the same tax lot. A public alley separates the two. The DC Council does have complete control over tax lots and public alleys, unlike with zoning. Perhaps an emergency bill could temporarily close the alley, transfer the alley property to the Playhouse with a permanent public easement to let the public continue to cross it, join the two into one tax lot, then specify that everything goes back to the status quo ante, say, one year from now? Then DCRA can declare that the property meets current zoning and grant permits without messing with zoning at all.

That's still messy and an awkward thing to do by emergency legislation, but to me it's less dangerous than having DCRA issue a permit for a property that doesn't meet zoning. Or perhaps the clever attorneys in the council and DCRA could come up with another way to make the property conform to zoning while we wait for the slower process of making zoning conform to common sense and the needs of our city today.

Moreover, the rule is only enforced to require building the parking, not using it. Garages that contain required parking spaces are often filled with equipment for lawn care or shop work. County enforcement staff say they have never received a complaint about such violations of the zoning ordinance.

Sometimes, requiring off-street parking actually reduces the availability of parking. Montgomery County mandates one off-street space for houses built between 1955 and 1958. A parking space for a single-family house requires a driveway (except in neighborhoods with alleys, which exist in DC but not MoCo). That takes away at least one parking space, and sometimes more if driveways are spaced closely together.

The parking space goes to waste in the daytime if the owner drives to work. Without an off-street space, there would be no need for a driveway and one more space would open up at the curb. The curb space, available 24 hours a day, would supply more parking than an off-street space that is useless during working hours.

These rules may not do much for those who want to park. But parking minimums do reduce the supply of affordable housing.

Montgomery County requires an extra parking space (and sometimes two) when a property owner splits off part of a house into an accessory apartment. If there's no space to shoehorn the parking onto a small lot, the owner has to go through the time-consuming and expensive special exception process.

New apartment buildings near the Red Line and future Purple Line need underground garages, which can run up to $50,000 per space in lower levels. Driving up construction costs makes it harder to build for the middle class.

From this vantage point, the debate over off-street parking is about much more than where people put their cars. It's about what kind of communities we want to live in. Will our laws put economic limits on who can live here, or will we build places that welcome everyone?

A majority of the ANC voted for the changes at the meeting, making it very likely they will fully approve these recommendations at their full meeting on Tuesday.

Not everyone supported the changes. Francis Campbell, Chander Jayaraman, and Dave Garrison voted no. It also got opposition from Ken Jarboe, a former commissioner defeated by Pate in 2010; Jarboe spoke against reducing parking minimums back in 2008 during the first round of Zoning Commission hearings. Janezich writes:

Former ANC commissioner Ken Jarboe, who worked on the ANC's Regulation Review Task Force, said he opposed the OP proposals because no alternative to taking away the parking had been presented. He pointed to the problems likely to ensue from the plan to put multiple small units in the Medlink building (7th and Constitution, NE) with no onsite parking. He said he was frustrated by people trying to use the Zoning Code to fix a problem that you can't solve by using the Zoning Code, likening the effort to using a hatchet where a scalpel was needed.

It's funny Jarboe makes that last point, because that statement is a perfect argument for removing the minimums, not against them. Much of the opposition to removing parking minimums has nothing to do with parking minimums at all, but on-street parking. People are afraid that the change will mean more cars competing for limited space on the street, but that's already a problem, minimums or no minimums.

At a recent debate, Elissa Silverman expressed some trepidation about removing parking minimums entirely. I had a very productive conversation with her on the phone, and we were able to explore the issues more deeply. I pointed out the analogy to why the government doesn't require, say, rooftop pools on every building. That would certainly make buildings more expensive, though it's something many residents would benefit from.

One difference, Silverman noted, is that omitting rooftop pools has no detrimental impact on other neighbors. And this is what she had been most concerned about: new development significantly upsetting existing residents' ability to park on a street near their home.

Many zoning update opponents keep claiming that no parking minimums means no parking, but that's fallacious. The Park Van Ness project, for instance, is building 226 parking spaces, far more than zoning requires, even though it is a matter-of-right proejct and 2 blocks from a Metro station.

People are also already parking on the street even when buildings have a lot of parking. Often they park on the street and spaces in the building go empty, because on-street spaces are cheaper and more convenient. In short, we have a problem that parking minimums aren't solving today. The solution, therefore, is not to keep things as they are, but to actually solve the problem directly.

Silverman also said that she wants to see housing near Metro stations accommodate everyone from singles to larger families, but a lot of buildings in places like H Street and 14th Street are just providing studios and one bedrooms. I agree we should have housing for families. Again, though, parking minimums are doing nothing today to ensure family housing near Metro stations.

There are definite problems with our parking policies today. We don't effectively manage on-street parking spaces. That causes problems. Jarboe is, therefore, right to be "frustrated by people trying to use the Zoning Code to fix a problem that you can't solve by using the Zoning Code." People are trying to use the zoning code to protect some residents' ability to park on the street, a problem you can't solve by using the zoning code.

Our current parking minimums don't fix on-street parking; if they did, it wouldn't be a problem today. They don't ensure family housing; if they did, we'd have more being built. It's wrong to oppose reducing parking minimums because of other problems which our parking minimums aren't preventing anyway.

Parking minimums are a terrible idea for many reasons. Start with the fact that they simply don't work.

You can force a housing developer to build parking spaces, but you can't force a renter to rent them. It costs anywhere from $100-$300 per month to park in a garage, but only $35 per year for a residential curbside parking permit. Which would you choose? We've had parking minimums for decades, but the problem of spillover parking is still with us—because it costs so much less to park on public land than it does on private land.

And parking minimums come with unintended consequences, the worst of which is that they make housing unaffordable.

Forcing a developer to build unwanted parking makes it more expensive to build, by as much as $30,000-$40,000 per unit. That cost is passed on to tenants, whether they know it or not.

More broadly, the District's crisis of unaffordable housing has its roots in a shortage of housing supply. Between DC's geography, the Height Act, and the zoning map, real estate for residential development is scarce. Parking minimums require that much of that space to be devoted to parking lots and garages instead of housing, they limit the overall size of buildings, and they make some projects altogether unfeasible. Less housing supply leads to higher prices.

So what we have is a very aggressive affordable housing policy for cars that is at cross-purposes with affordable housing for people.

In a city that is growing, we'll always have more and more demand for lots of goods: More demand for parking, schools, police, transit infrastructure, and drinking water. At the same time, the newcomers create economic benefits for lots of people. Yes, housing developers benefit, but so does anyone else who is in a position to sell them goods and services: local merchants, tax accountants, construction workers, interior designers, waiters. Local employers also benefit from a broader pool of talent.

Of all those people who benefit from DC's population growth, why should we single out the housing developer and penalize them with what amounts to a hidden tax, just because they're satisfying the new residents' need for housing?.

DC's most beloved neighborhoods were built before parking minimums were in place. If any given street in Dupont Circle, Shaw, or Georgetown burned down today, it would be illegal to rebuild it as is—every building would need to be accompanied by a parking lot or garage, destroying the beauty and walkability that define the character of our older neighborhoods.

The zoning excesses of the 1950s and 1960s were reckless experiments, and their unintended consequences—from the oceanic parking lots and strip malls of Rockville Pike to the megablocks of Southwest DC—are plain for all to see. Today's zoning reforms take a small step towards undoing that damage.

None of this is to say that residential parking scarcity is not a real problem.

But it's only a problem because we act as if curbside space were abundant and valueless. The District gives away the right to park on public land for practically free (9.6 cents per day, to be exact).

When you underprice something valuable, you can be assured that it will be overconsumed.

If I have an old car that I no longer need, I have no incentive to get rid of it when I can store it on the street at public expense. If I have a garage, I have no reason to use it to store my car when I can use it to store my bikes and tools and junk. If I'm deciding whether my household needs one more car, the cost of storage doesn't enter my factor into my decision—but it should.

The city is currently exploring ways to price parking more accurately, neighborhood by neighborhood.

As the population of the city grows, the cost of residential parking should reflect its growth in value. This will cause demand to fall naturally, because residents have incentives to own fewer cars or get them off the street. And it will allow supply to increase naturally, because the private sector will have an incentive to create parking where it's needed.

Oh, and by the way: If you prefer your roadside assistance without a side order of retrograde lobbying, there are lots of options out there. Do a web search for "AAA alternatives." My family has switched to Better World Club, which—in a nice touch—provides emergency service for bikes as well as cars.

Code organization

What's happening: The zoning update will restructure the zoning code (while keeping almost all provisions the same). Instead of having to look in up to 3 places for conflicting rules that all apply to your property, the key information will be in one place.

Main positive point: The zoning code is too hard to understand right now. It needs reorganizing into a form that better helps property owners understand what is and isn't legal on their property.

Parking minimums

What's happening: The zoning update removes minimum parking rules for buildings downtown, residential buildings under 10 units, and buildings in mixed-use and higher-density residential areas near Metro and frequent bus lines.

Main positive point: Current rules force many buildings to include more parking than their residents or workers need. It's really important to remove many of the parking minimums, especially downtown and near transit.

Ways OP could go further:

• Fill in the "holes" in places like Logan Circle and Columbia Heights by making transit zones apply to non-residential uses in R-4 row house zones near transit.
  
• Go even farther and have no minimum parking requirements at all, citywide.
  
• Add parking maximums as well, in addition to one on 100,000-square foot parking lots. These would not have been absolute caps, but would just make developers do a Transportation Demand Management plan if they want to put in more parking than a set threshold.

Accessory dwellings

What's happening: In low- and moderate-density residential areas, people can't rent out a basement or existing garage without going through complex approvals. The proposal would allow this in most lower-density areas for interior units or existing external buildings, but still require a hearing for new or expanded external buildings.

Main positive point: Accessory dwellings help young people afford places to live and seniors age in place. They make housing more affordable and accommodate more residents without fundamentally changing the character of buildings in a neighborhood. They just let neighborhoods house the numbers of people they did 50 years ago.

Ways OP could go further:

• Allow ADUs by right in new external structures as well (as long as the new external structure conforms to the other zoning rules).
  
• Impose fewer restrictions such as on size, balconies, whether an artist can live above a studio, and more.
  
• Include ADUs by right in Georgetown as well—the current proposal requires a special exception for them (more on that later).

Corner stores

What's happening: Retail can locate in moderate density residential row house areas (not low-density or the higher density areas), as long as it's pretty far from other retail, in a corner building or historically commercial building, and satisfies many more restrictions.

Main positive point: People want to be able to walk to neighborhood-serving retail, and if they live in an area without a neighborhood commercial strip right nearby, they should be able to have a corner store to serve their needs.

Ways OP could go further:

• Allow stores on properties besides literal "corners" and historically commercial buildings.
  
• Allow corner stores even within 500 feet of mixed-use zones.
  
• Let corner stores locate in row house and apartment zones (now R-5) as well; now they do not count.
  
• Let the Board of Zoning Adjustment waive more of the conditions in a special exception hearing.

Green Area Ratio

What's happening: New or substantially changed buildings will need to get a certain score of environmental sustainability features, such as grass, green roof, stormwater management, or green walls, based on the property's size.

This will help reduce stormwater runoff and the urban heat island effect and potentially make DC a more pleasant place to live even as it grows. Some fear it will also further disadvantage urban development versus exurban greenfields.

Other changes

There are many other small tweaks in the zoning update, mostly good.

Some top positive changes:

• The new code requires more bicycle parking for buildings. There would be "long-term" spaces, such as in a locked room inside the building for employees or residents, and "short-term" outdoor racks for visitors or shoppers.
  
• Larger garages will have to have a number of car sharing spaces. Surface parking lots need canopy trees to shade some of the lot.
  
• Rules for building homes on alley lots become a little bit more permissive.

Proposals OP dropped:

• The previous proposal had the same limits on the actual size of a house but did not prescribe how many stories you can have inside (except as the fire code limits). In low-density zones, OP reinstated a limit of 3 stories.
  
• The original proposal let homeowners build a house of similar size to others nearby even if their lot has an extra-short rear yard. The Zoning Commission approved this idea but OP removed it.

The meeting is at Wilson High School, 3950 Chesapeake St NW by the Tenleytown Metro. It starts at 6:30 with a presentation by Harriet Tregoning, an "open house" format where you can ask OP staff questions, and then a "town hall" where people can speak to the entire group about their views.

Change is already here

The meetings start out with a presentation by the Office of Planning explaining the issues, the history of DC's zoning, and what they're hoping to tweak in the new code. After that, there is an "open house" format where you can write comments on post-its at various stations, and ask staff questions. They end the meeting with a more traditional "town hall" style where people can speak or ask questions one by one.

As they explain in the presentation, DC is very different than it was in 1950 and 1960, even though our zoning code is still substantially the same:

This last decade was the first time DC gained population since 1960, but the population is very different today. There are far more residents 60 years and older, and in the 20-34 age group, while there are far fewer children. The average household is a third smaller as well, which is why our existing stock of housing could be very full despite significant new construction, but still hold over 200,000 fewer people than in 1960.

What about the holes?

In its efforts to bend over backward and placate opponents, OP has left some significant gaps in proposals that are generally excellent steps forward. The upcoming meetings are also a good opportunity to ask OP to fill in the holes.

Parking minimums go away for mixed-use, non-residential, and high-density residential areas near transit and everywhere downtown, but that leaves what Matt Yglesias called the "Logan Circle gap": R-4 row house areas even right near transit. There's also a similar "Columbia Heights gap" and others.

There won't be parking minimums for residential buildings under 10 units, which covers most of the buildings in the "gaps," but this still leaves parking minimum requirements for some buildings right near Metro stations.

Corner stores will only be able to go in corner buildings or ones that have historically served as retail, and only 500 feet away from other retail. This leaves very few potential sites. Accessory dwellings can go in exterior garages but only if they already exist.

OP's early proposals had none of these holes. They added each one to try to address resident opposition and pare down the proposal to the absolute minimum necessary.

If the Zoning Commission approves the new code just as OP is proposing, it will be a major step forward for DC. It will fix many of the occasions when property owners have to ask for special exceptions to do things which match residents' desires and needs for our city. However, a number of these situations will remain, and we'll get less housing, bigger gaps between neighborhood stores, and more unnecessary parking than we might under a more expansive version.

Worse yet, if the Zoning Commission decides they need to "split the baby" and compromise between OP's plan and vocal opponents, we'll end up losing some essential component of the changes, since there's no fat left. There are almost no elements remaining that might be a good idea but maybe have some drawbacks, where you could go either way, since OP took all of those away already.

I'd have preferred to see OP leave the holes out, since we're better off without them, and also give zoning commissioners some room to compromise away elements that aren't absolutely essential. These public meetings are a chance to show OP that many residents not only support the zoning update but would support a less-timid variant as well.

Find the meeting nearest you

Here are the 5 remaining meetings over the next 2 weeks:

Saturday, January 5	10 am-noon	Ward 1	Harriet Tubman Elementary School	3101  13th St NW (1 block east of Columbia Hts Metro)
Tuesday, January 8	6:30-8:30 pm	Ward 3	Wilson High School	3950 Chesapeake St NW (adjacent to Tenleytown Metro)
Wednesday, January 9	6:30-8:30 pm	Ward 5	Foster Auditorium (Ely Building), Gallaudet University	800 Florida Ave NE (5 blocks east of NY Ave/Gallaudet Metro)
Saturday, January 12	10 am-noon	Ward 7	DOES Building, Room 2309/10	4058 Minnesota Ave NE (adjacent to Minnesota Ave Metro)
Wednesday, January 16	6:30-8:30 pm	Ward 4	Takoma Education Campus	7010 Piney Branch Rd NW (3 blocks west of Takoma Metro)

Which one can you go to? Let us know on this form and help us make sure we have good coverage at all the meetings!