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How Parking Will Drive the Coming Adams-Council Housing Development Deal
Eliminating mandates to create spots for cars is key to creating more apartments in the mayor’s sweeping City of Yes proposal heading to a crucial vote Thursday — but a compromise that could halve new housing is in the works.
This article originally apeared in The City.
NEW YORK - Parking has emerged as a central focus of negotiations on Mayor Eric Adams’ sweeping package of proposed development reforms ahead of a crucial City Council committee vote last Thursday.
The City of Yes for Housing Affordability proposal, which aims to ease up rules to spur more residential development, is projected to create between 58,000 and 109,000 new units of housing over the next 15 years. But realizing those numbers largely depends on a part of the proposal that eliminates requirements for developers to build specified numbers of parking spots.
Whether — and where — to mandate parking or to make it optional is in flux as Council members and Adams’ representatives hammer out details of the citywide zoning plan, which would allow more development flexibility, including allowing more housing above storefronts or in backyards.
A source familiar with negotiations said the newest version of the proposal includes three zones for parking that would apply to different areas of the city: one zone where creating new parking is optional — as it already is in much of Manhattan — another where parking requirements are significantly reduced and a third that barely changes the status quo.
The geographic areas remain in flux, but the zones where parking-creation mandates would be lifted would likely be those that have greater population density and are close to subway stations.
Some Council members have zeroed in on parking as their chief concern in the proposal, decrying the current lack of parking that makes life more difficult for car-dependent New Yorkers, many of whom live in neighborhoods far from reliable transit. Less than half of New York City households own a car.
Developers, on the other hand, say parking requirements add unnecessary costs to their projects and result in more expensive apartments — or fewer apartments outright. They say they’d add parking based on market needs, just as like any other amenity.
Getting rid of parking requirements for new development is a growing trend across the country. It was one of the main approaches Minneapolis took in its land use reforms in 2020, which the Pew Charitable Trusts deemed a “blueprint for housing affordability.” Boston, San Francisco, Austin and Buffalo have also dropped parking minimums in recent years in a bid to spur the creation of more housing.
“It is not only expensive, but it is directly competing with housing production,” said Dan Garodnick, director of the Department of City Planning and chair of the City Planning Commission, about parking minimums during an October City Council hearing.
Manhattan Test
Already, the developers of several apartment buildings around the city have received special approval to build without parking and, for years, creating parking with housing has been optional in certain neighborhoods.
Residents with cars who live in the buildings without parking are making do, while those without cars say they’re disincentivized to get one.
In 1982, with an eye to air quality, New York City stopped requiring parking for developments in Manhattan below 110th Street on the West Side and 96th Street on the East Side. The 2011 Long Island City rezoning eliminated parking minimums in much of the neighborhood, and the 2012 Downtown Brooklyn rezoning halved parking requirements there.
A land use change adopted in early 2016 allowed parking requirements to be waived for affordable and senior housing developments within a half a mile of a subway station. That change resulted in a 36% increase in affordable units built, the Regional Plan Association found in 2022, and yielded more housing built within transit-rich areas than in further-flung ones.
Developers are also able to apply for a permit to waive parking requirements as part of the land use review process. More than 20 projects — spanning all boroughs except Staten Island — have requested that permit to forgo parking spots or build less.
One such development is Bronx Point, home to residents of limited-income apartments and the Hip Hop Museum, and located on the banks of the Harlem River.
When Tyquan Mitchell, 28, moved to the building in May, he didn’t know there wouldn’t be a parking space for him until he tried to park on the curb in front of the entrance and got towed.
“I love my car, and they do make it hard. I wish we had parking for the building,” said Mitchell, who works in construction. “There’s only one building here, and they should have parking for the residents.”
But he said he usually finds street parking nearby, but sometimes shells out to keep his car in a lot.
The Axel, a high-rise luxury building located at the intersection of Prospect Heights and Clinton Hill in Brooklyn, has an outdoor swimming pool, a Chik-fil-A on the ground floor — and no parking.
That means Mils James, a 45-year-old artist who in May moved into an apartment he secured through the city’s affordable housing lottery, has to search for street parking for his car.
“It’s tricky. You learn the hours, you learn how to maneuver it and you make it work,” James said. “It would be a lot more convenient if there was a parking lot, but it probably would be a lot more rent, too.”
James’ neighbor, Deighton Little, said he wants to get a car but is turned off by the cost.
“There’s no parking anywhere, and it’s expensive to have a car here,” the 23-year old said on a three-minute walk to the C train to head to his job as a sales advisor. “I would love for there to be parking, but even at a lower rate, most buildings charge anywhere from at least an extra $100 to $300 or $400 per month, just for parking your car in the building that you’re living in.”
Empty Spaces
James and Little are right, according to David Schwartz, principal and co-founder of real estate developer Slate Property Group. He estimated every new parking spot increases the cost of building by between $50,000 to $100,000, which tracks with city planning department figures.
“More parking drives up the cost of the development. The more the development costs, the less affordable housing you can build because the affordable housing costs money for the project. It doesn’t generate money for the project,” he said. “How you pay for that additional cost is more rent. The higher the rent, the less affordable housing there is.”
Schwartz emphasized that if the market demands parking, developers will build it, and that in most cases where Slate has been required to include parking spots, the parking goes “underused.”
“Our parking occupancy is significantly lower than our apartment occupancy,” he said. “That tells you you just have too many parking spaces.”
That was true at a Slate apartment building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where last year, Open Plans, a nonprofit group that advocates for safe streets, staged a “studio apartment” out of two empty parking spots there.
Sara Lind, co-executive director of Open Plans, called that a “misuse of resources.” Documents developers file to the city reveal how they plan to use resources rather than on required parking.
In Gowanus, a project whose developer requested a parking waiver planned to rent space to stores in areas of the building that would have contained parking. If the project had to include parking instead, a planning document stated, it would not pencil out financially with “the additional cost of construction and loss of revenue from retail space.”
At Ray Harlem, an apartment building in Upper Manhattan that will house the National Black Theater, documents requesting a parking waiver indicated the narrowness of the location would have required two levels of underground parking to accommodate the necessary spaces. Constructing those parking areas would have added additional costs and resulted in a “disruption” of the street.
Housing Cut in Half
About half of the projected units of housing potentially buildable under City of Yes could be at risk of not moving forward depending on where the parking requirements remain in place, according to Marcel Negret, director of land use at the Regional Plan Association. That’s because the role of parking minimums affects other aspects of the City of Yes proposal.
For instance, the proposal’s “town center” plan would allow two to four stories of apartments atop businesses like laundromats and grocery stores on commercial strips. But if the Council lifts parking mandates only in places near subways — and requires parking elsewhere — then low-slung stores further away would not be good candidates for development.
Similarly, measures to allow homeowners to construct “accessory dwelling units” — turning their attics or garages into housing — would be less feasible if homeowners had to also figure out how to add an additional parking space to their properties.
“If you're requiring parking requirements, you’re essentially killing, or making it very difficult and unlikely for, any of the town center to work outside of the TOD [transit] zone,” Negret said. “Very few of those ADUs that are projected…will probably be able to materialize.”
Assuming the Council subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises passes the City of Yes housing proposal Thursday, the full Council is expected to take a final vote in early December.
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