Parking mandates can have a large impact on affordable housing projects, according to a report by the Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice.
It’s been about five years since the City and County of Honolulu eliminated parking mandates for developers in the urban core, transit-oriented development districts, and areas within half a mile of a rail station.
Around the same time, the city also created an affordable housing building incentive. Bill 7 included some property tax exemptions, grants, and waived parking mandates.
Since then, the number of parking stalls available per housing unit has decreased.
“When we analyzed how developers are responding to the elimination of parking mandates, there was a really big difference between affordable rental housing development versus for-sale,” said Hawaiʻi Appleseed Director of Transportation Equity Abbey Seitz, who worked on the organization’s report.
Over the last five years, for-sale projects have seen the average number of parking stalls per unit drop by only about 3%, while rental projects have seen a decrease of about 19%.
“Something that we hear is, in some cases, particularly for-sale developers, whether how much of this has been studied or not, is that they feel that they need to build some level of parking to attract buyers. And I think that's maybe lesser of the case, in rental housing development,” Seitz said.
For a 200-unit high-rise building, building one stall for every two units would add $6.8 million to the cost of the project. For a small rental studio in Honolulu, a parking stall could add up to $410 a month to rent.
Geena Thielen, who develops Bill 7 housing, wrote in an email to HPR that adding a parking requirement to any development of fewer than 50 units would kill the project.
She developed three buildings with no parking, but the demand for the units has been strong with low vacancies.
There has been some pushback against the lack of parking mandates for Bill 7 projects. Earlier this year, the council considered Bill 53, which would have added parking mandates back to those developments: one stall per two units.
Some testimony in support of the bill came from those who lived near the Bill 7 buildings and felt that the lack of in-unit parking exacerbated street parking issues in the surrounding areas.
Councilmember Scott Nishimoto, who represents the Mōʻiliʻili, McCully and Makiki area, the location of many Bill 7 projects, introduced the measure.
“I introduced this bill for community members and for neighborhood board members in my community. We've been the first round of Bill 7 projects, so we've experienced the good and the bad with these projects,” he said during an August hearing.
“The intent of this bill was to correct some of the community issues that have come up from my constituents. I appreciate you willing to start this discussion. There's proposed Bill 7 projects in all of our districts. So they're coming to everyone's district, and I anticipate the issues that will come up will be very similar to the ones that have come up in my district.”
However, the council tabled the bill to work on it further.
Honolulu's transportation future
Seitz said that the elimination of parking mandates does not mean that parking doesn’t get built. She said developers will build parking due to market demands and permitting processes, like when buildings need to be approved first by the county council.
She explained that the availability of parking is also one of the greatest influences on people’s transportation choices – and that impacts investment into public transportation.
“People are probably always going to choose the most convenient option that is available to them. … I kind of have this vision of the future we want to create is where you look on Google Maps and where you're trying to go is the fastest way is taking TheBus or walking,” she said.
“But getting to that can be limited by continuing to create a lot of parking, because it gets to that vicious cycle of, we get into this mindset that we need to have a car and that's the easiest way to get to this place. And that also influences government investment or lack of investment in other modes of transportation.”
Seitz explained that the next steps could be implementing parking maximums in transit-oriented development zones to cap the amount of parking supply, or decoupling housing and parking costs so that people don’t pay for parking they don’t need.
Hawaiʻi Public Radio exists to serve all of Hawai’i, and it’s the people of Hawai’i who keep us independent and strong. Help keep us strong to serve you in the future. Donate today.
