Boston City Councilors Weigh Whether Parking Reform Can Boost Housing Production

As the affordable housing crisis rages on, Boston City Council members are looking to eliminate parking minimums that have historically added high costs to housing production.

During a Thursday morning public hearing, city councilors, housing advocates and Boston residents debated whether eliminating parking minimums would help create more housing or simply create more parking problems.

The proposal — a 35-page text amendment to Boston's zoning code — would eliminate parking minimums for all new residential construction across the city's 23 neighborhoods and amend the city's base zoning code. The proposal was introduced in April by Councilors Sharon Durkan and Henry Santana.

"What makes this city great is our people, and right now we are losing too many of them," Santana said.

The proposal will remain in committee, as it is not ready to go before the Zoning Board of Appeals, which needs to approve any zoning amendments. However, the hearing gave insight into how other council members, advocates and residents feel about the amendment.

"I think there's a misconception that no parking minimums means no parking, and that's not the case," Councilor Liz Breadon said.

Breadon, who represents the Allston neighborhood, said there's been a "de facto" removal of parking minimums in Allston, providing the developers with flexibility rather than outright banning new parking.

George Washington University law professor and zoning law expert Sara Bronin called the city's zoning code "bloated, outdated, inconsistent and inequitable," stating that parking requirements would be the "single best substantive change" the city could make for its betterment.

During the meeting, she also made two recommendations to the proposal: to expand the reach to nonresidential projects as well and to streamline the parking mandates to one section rather than hundreds of pages.

Parking minimums have always been a point of contention for the development community, and within the last decade, hundreds of municipalities nationwide have eliminated or tweaked their parking requirements to boost housing production.

Neighboring cities, including Cambridge and Somerville, have eliminated parking minimums. Salem followed suit last year, citing its housing production goals. 

City officials have been looking at several avenues to jump-start its slowed development pipeline.

New housing unit approvals have slowed drastically over the last six years, with 9,800 units approved by the city's planning board in 2020 and 2,389 in 2024, The Boston Globe reported. The reduced growth has also put pressure on the city's budgets.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has looked into other avenues to accelerate affordable housing production, including tax breaks for developers, which she ultimately dropped a few years ago due to the economic environment.

City Councilor Brian Worrell argued at Thursday's hearing that without minimums, developers would have no incentive to build parking in neighborhoods with less access to transportation or walkable communities, leading to further inequity.

"Not every neighborhood is the same in terms of amenities and walkability," Worrell said. "I know we need to streamline things, but at what cost? How much money are we saving?"

Councilor Ed Flynn pushed back on the idea that parking minimums would help alleviate the costs of development, pointing to numerous policies, including inclusionary development, rent control and sustainability mandates, that have also put pressure on development.

"We are not listening to the repeated feedback we've received for years from the development and business community on why we are not building housing in the city of Boston, especially affordable housing," Flynn said.

He also said the Zoning Board of Appeals, which oversees any zoning variance requests from developers, has approved roughly 90% of parking changes, with many projects seeing only 0.5 parking spots per unit.

"Our affordable housing crisis can't wait several years for the economy to improve," Flynn said.