October 1, 2024
MEDIA CONTACT: Catie Gould, Sightline Institute, catie@sightline.org
FULL REPORT: The State of Parking Mandates in Washington
SEATTLE, WA – One-size-fits-all parking requirements are exacerbating the housing shortage in Washington and writing sprawl into city law.
The decades-old mandates—largely based on guesswork—drive up the cost of homebuilding or prevent it altogether. Even as one in four homeowner households and 58 percent of renter households own one or no cars, in most cities and counties across Washington, it is illegal to construct a home with only one parking spot.
Parking mandates are also a tax on businesses that limit opportunities for new establishments, conversions of historic buildings, and other uses. That’s according to new research from regional think tank Sightline Institute, which analyzed parking requirements across Washington’s largest cities and counties that are home to 75 percent of the state’s residents. From daycares to duplexes, retail shops to restaurants, Sightline’s report finds that parking mandates vary widely across city and county lines, but that Washington communities consistently mandate an excess of parking that is out of sync with people’s actual car ownership and is counterproductive for local homebuilding and business development.
Key findings include:
- Six out of every ten jurisdictions surveyed required even studio apartments to supply more than one parking space per unit, while two out of ten require that studios come with two parking spaces apiece—overbuilding parking for most residents.
- One in four homeowner households in Washington have one or no cars, but 91 percent of jurisdictions require two or more off-street parking spaces for every single-detached home.
- Parking lots are often forced to be as large or larger than the buildings they serve:
- 61 percent of jurisdictions studied for the report require offices to have at least as much space for parking as for office space itself.
- 80 percent required that minimum for retail stores.
- Restaurants have it even worse: the typical jurisdiction requires parking lots to be 3.3 times larger than the eatery itself.
- Parking mandates can block critical services like daycares. Washington jurisdictions require an average of 87 square feet of parking per child, with wide variation between jurisdictions: the same daycare would require 4.5 spots in King County; 12 in Pierce County; 36 in Puyallup.
Parking is expensive to build. On the low end, a surface parking lot might cost $5,000 to $20,000 per space. A multilevel parking garage can cost $60,000 (or more) per spot. Those costs are passed down, rolled into the price of food, rent, and taxes, whether you park a car there or not.
Some Washington cities and towns have begun eliminating these rules, returning decisions about parking needs to individual property owners. When given full flexibility, developers frequently still choose to build parking, but in different amounts than zoning codes prescribed.
Catie Gould, senior transportation researcher for Sightline Institute, is available to comment on how the excess parking requirements are holding back neighborhoods.
“Towns and cities in Washington have inherited a mess of scarce housing and commercial vacancies thanks in part to these arbitrary and arcane parking mandates,” says Gould. “But the decisions we make together now can change that—determining whether the neighborhoods of the future have abundant housing, local businesses, and community spaces… or an abundance of unused parking lots.”
Read the full report: The State of Parking Mandates in Washington
See the state rankings: Washington’s Most Parking-Burdened Towns and Cities
Related:
- Bellingham’s parking reform pilot pays off | A new building project has more than double the number of homes and less parking than old code would have allowed. The rest of the city might follow suit.
- Unlock middle housing with parking reform | As long as parking is required, smaller, lower-cost homes are still illegal.
- Homelessness is a housing problem | Why do some US cities struggle more with homelessness? A key component of the issue is housing supply.
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Catie Gould is a senior transportation researcher for Sightline Institute, specializing in parking policy. Find her latest research here, and follow her on X/Twitter.
Sightline Institute is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank providing leading original analysis of housing, democracy, energy, and forests policy in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, British Columbia, and beyond.
