Unaffordable parking: off-street mandates.

• Author: Smith, Stephen
• Position: Citings - Brief article

WHY IS THE rent so damn high in New York City? One reason may be mandatory parking requirements for developers.

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In the January 2011 issue of the journal Housing Policy Debate, three scholars at the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, a research center at New York University, found that developers tend to build only the bare minimum of off-street parking allowed by the zoning code and sometimes go out of their way to get permission to build less. That suggests that the mandatory minimums require more parking--and at approximately $21,000 per New York parking space, more expense--than tenants demand. As a result, housing is less plentiful and more expensive.

The new research may help settle an old question. Donald Shoup, an economist and professor of urban planning at UCLA, has argued for years that minimum parking requirements in cities and towns across the United States are hindering the creation of affordable housing and artificially increasing Americans' dependence on cars. Virtually every city in the United States nonetheless requires...