Boston City Council Members Float Eliminating Parking Minimums For All Housing Development

As a crisis of housing affordability continues and fewer projects are being built across the city, Boston officials are looking at every facet to motivate development, including parking.

Boston City Councilors Sharon Durkan and Henry Santana filed a proposed text amendment that would eliminate off-street parking minimums for new residential construction during the Boston City Council's Wednesday meeting.

The 35-page amendment would impact the city's base zoning code and every neighborhood article, Durkan said.

"We must use every tool available to support development and make our city more affordable for Boston residents," Durkan said during the meeting. "This reform is a commonsense and immediate step we can take to lower housing costs, support housing production and build a stronger, more sustainable city."

Parking minimums for residential development were first enacted in Boston in the 1950s as a way to combat growing congestion in car traffic.

Durkan said these laws have made it costlier for developers to build housing and more expensive for residents, as the costs are usually passed down to them.

She said during the meeting that eliminating the parking minimums isn't meant to get rid of parking entirely but to move away from a one-size-fits-all approach to development.

"It simply will replace arbitrary minimum requirements with flexibility," Durkan said.

Housing production across the city has slowed in the last few years as rising interest rates, construction costs and local policy have put major pressure on the sector.

This is the city's first attempt to eliminate parking minimums for all residential developments. However, Boston City Council members did away with minimums for affordable housing developments in 2021.

Neighboring cities Somerville and Cambridge have eliminated the requirement citywide. In 2025, Salem became the most recent Massachusetts city to eliminate parking requirements.

Other major cities, including Seattle and Austin, have reduced or done away with minimums to spur more housing development.

The proposal has already garnered support from the real estate community.

"As the Massachusetts housing crisis worsens, we remain strongly opposed to any policy that restricts housing growth," Greater Boston Real Estate Board CEO Greg Vasil said in a statement. "Boston leaders must work to eliminate all unnecessary and costly requirements, like parking mandates, in order to make the city more attractive to developers who want to build new housing here."