New SJ developments no longer constrained by "arbitrary" parking minimum requirements; bike advocates cheer

In an important inflection point for San Jose's housing market, the City Council voted unanimously last month to remove parking minimum mandates for new developments. Daniela Castañeda of Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition explains how eliminating this "antiquated," restrictive construction ordinance—as generally recommended by Houston's Housing Dept on Opp Now—will reduce costs for local homebuyers and empower builders to implement parking spots as is contextually appropriate.

What does this mean for a car centric city like San José and more specifically for communities like the east side where my family lives? A few things.

Eliminating parking minimums does not mean that the already existing parking will be taken away. (My aunt’s neighborhood parking situation will remain the same.) Instead, this new policy will remove mandates on developments to have an arbitrary, antiquated amount of parking that ends up sitting unused. They’ll bring into balance the number of parking spots with other ways of getting around. To be clear, this doesn’t mean developers won’t provide parking. It means the city won’t dictate a minimum amount of parking a developer must build, instead allowing a project’s parking to be right-sized according to the context.

Currently, San José requires 1.7 parking spaces for every two-bedroom home in multi-dwelling residential buildings, and retail stores often must provide one parking space per 200 square feet dedicated to sales. Constructing a single parking space in San José costs between $30,000 to $100,000 depending on location and design! That is a lot of cement, money and space that is being used to accommodate vehicles and not people. By not requiring multi-dwelling residential buildings to have the 1.7 parking spaces for every two-bedroom home, the cost of building housing significantly goes down and the cost of a parking spot is not added to your rent especially if one doesn’t own a car (For example, UC researchers Gabbe & Pierce found that nationwide, bundling the cost of a single garage space into rents “adds about 17 percent to a unit’s rent.”)

This article originally appeared in Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition. Read the whole thing here

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Image by Don Sniegowski