Paul Bass / Thomas Breen photos
Newly approved commissioners Anika Singh Lemar and Alexandra Daum: Parking minimums thwart housing.
What’s one surefire way to increase the city’s housing supply, boost the local tax base, and incentivize the development of more affordable housing?
According to two newly confirmed city commissioners, the answer lies in part in reforming — or even scrapping entirely — the city zoning code’s minimum parking requirements.
On Monday night, the Board of Alders unanimously voted to confirm the two women, Anika Singh Lemar and Alexandra Daum, to serve on land-use boards: Lemar to the city’s new Affordable Housing Commission, Daum on the Board of Zoning Appeals.
The virtual meeting took place online via the Zoom videoconferencing app. See below for a full list of commission and board appointees approved by the alders Monday night.
The two previously answered questions about their philosophies during interviews with the Aldermanic Affairs Committee, which vetted their nominations. In those interviews, they both targeted the building bogeyman that is local parking mandates as a hindrance to addressing the city’s affordable-housing crunch.
Thomas Breen photo
A surface parking lot at Sherman and Chapel, formerly home to a four-family house.
Lemar is an associate professor at Yale Law School who helms the school’s Community and Economic Development clinic. Daum is a local landlord and, as of March, a deputy commissioner and chief investment officer with the state Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD).
During their respective Aug. 24 interviews, both then-nominees were asked by Downtown/Yale Alder Eli Sabin about which areas of the city’s current zoning code are ripe for reform in order to help the city meet its housing needs.
The two newly confirmed commissioners technically have different responsibilities in their new roles: The BZA focuses on approving or denying zoning relief requests from local property owners looking to build. The new Affordable Housing Commission has been tasked by the alders with researching and advocating for more and better affordable housing in the city.
But both took the city’s minimum parking requirements to task.
They said those mandates in the current zoning law cause valuable potential living space to be taken up by square footage reserved for cars. And they said those sections of the zoning law often add unnecessary and prohibitively expensive hurdles for small-time landlords and deep-pocketed developers alike that are looking to build or expand housing in the city.
“We shouldn’t punish property owners and make them create a parking spot that isn’t an asset for their tenant,” Daum said.
She noted that RM‑1 Low-Middle Density zones and RM‑2 High-Middle Density zones both require as-of-right housing projects to have one parking space per dwelling unit, regardless of how close a building may be to a bus stop or train station.
She also said that many residents, especially younger ones who live close to the city center, do not necessarily have cars or want cars, preferring instead to live in dense, walkable, transit-accessible residences.
“I’m not going to say that all parking is evil, or that all cars are evil,” Daum said. “I do think it’s an example of where we need to be a bit more thoughtful about the modern context that we’re in.”
Lemar made a similar argument — but from a slightly different perspective, focused instead on how parking minimums exacerbate the city’s affordable housing crunch.
In addition to creating revolving loan funds for small-scale landlords and allowing accessory dwelling units (ADUs) as of right in city zoning law, the city should decrease parking requirements to let landlords build in their own backyards, Lemar said. Currently, property owners have to set aside a certain amount of space for off-street parking. Getting rid of parking minimums frees up that space for new housing.
Lemar mentioned a recent panel she participated in alongside the head of Seattle’s Habitat for Humanity. Because Seattle city government made it easier for property owners to build more units on smaller lots, she said, Habitat was able to buy a single-family house and convert it into six cottages — in part thanks to less onerous parking requirements per unit.
“That’s the kind of thinking I think we need to do to address the housing crisis in New Haven,” Lemar said.
The City Plan Department and the alders are not currently reviewing any specific, officially-introduced proposals to reform parking zoning mandates citywide, though city planners have begun to chip away at such requirements through initiatives like the Commercial Gateway Corridor rezoning project (see more below.)
In her interview before the Aldermanic Affairs Committee, Lemar said the Affordable Housing Commission could play a role in promoting local zoning changes like reduced parking minimums in their overall advocacy for affordable housing. That largely depends on what the new commission decides its primary mission will be, she said. “Does it want to do stuff that New Haven can do on its own [like zoning changes]? Or does it want to come up with an agenda New Haven can advocate for at the state?”
Daum, meanwhile, is set to join a body that spends a good portion of every meeting dealing with special exception requests from builders, large and small alike, looking for permission to have less parking than necessary on their respective, developed properties.
From Hartford To San Diego To … New Haven?
Zoom
Monday night’s full Board of Alders virtual meeting.
Arguments against parking minimums aren’t new among affordable housing advocates and proponents of dense, New Urbanist development that prioritizes walkability and public transportation access over on-site storage of cars.
In 2013, a panel of regional housing developers pleaded with the city to get rid of its minimum parking requirements entirely in order to entice real estate investment and new housing construction.
In 2019, the city’s Affordable Housing Task Force included in its final report recommendations that the city eliminate parking requirements for new housing developments, impose maximum parking caps accompanied by violation fees, and convert city-owned parking lots into affordable housing where appropriate.
Earlier this year, the city’s zoning director and City Plan Commissioners lamented how the city’s current “outdated zoning” laws encouraged a developer to replace a corner lot that used to hold a four-family home with a surface parking lot instead.
And in recent months, getting rid of minimum parking has become one of the rallying cries of Desegregate Connecticut, a group of land use experts from across the state working to reform zoning codes with an eye towards racial justice and undoing systemic inequality perpetuated by zoning law.
Reducing excessive parking requirements is number four on a 10-point list of ideas put forward by the group to increase housing supply, increase housing diversity, and improve land-use processes. The group is helmed by Hartford attorney and former chair of the Hartford Planning & Zoning Commission Sara Bronin, who helped lead Hartford to outright eliminate all parking minimums citywide in 2017.
Relaxing parking minimums is also one of the recommendations included in a 38-page report called, “Preventing Displacement: Three Approaches to Protect New Haven Residents,” which was drafted by Lemar’s Yale Law School clinic and presented to the city in May. (Lemar’s students adapted some of the recommendations included in this report into three op-eds for the Independent, which can be read here, here and here.)
That section of the report calls on the city to reform parking minimums to facilitate new construction.
“Parking minimums are a burdensome and unnecessary requirement both for families who wish to add a new unit to their homes and for developers that wish to build SROs, subsidized apartments, and even standard market-rate units,” the report reads. “Indeed, developers have explicitly stated that parking requirements make them less likely to invest in New Haven.” The report states that a single space in a parking structure costs around $34,000 above-ground and $24,000 below-ground on average to build.
The report cites Hartford’s program to entirely phase out parking minimums over the course of two years as successfully attracting investment to neglected downtown properties without causing significant public pushback or parking shortages. It also praises the city’s Commercial Gateway District zone, now in effect on Whalley Avenue, for testing out what the lack of a parking minimum might look like in New Haven zoning law.
Alternately, the report reads, the city could follow the lead pioneered by San Diego and later adopted statewide in California to eliminate parking requirements for developments near public transit. California allows new ADU construction without off-street parking, the report states, so long as the property is within half a mile of public transit.
In addition to approving Lemar’s appointment to the Affordable Housing Commission and Daum’s appointment to the Board of Zoning Appeals Monday, the alders also voted in support of confirming the following appointees. To watch a video recording of the full Aug. 4 Aldermanic Affairs Committee hearing, click here and enter the passcode .Q79q#12
Mohit Agrawal, reappointed to the Financial Review and Audit Commission
Edna Logan, appointed to the Board of Library Directors
Luz Catarina-Colville, appointed to the Affordable Housing Commission
Alberta Witherspoon, appointed to the Affordable Housing Commission
David Hartman, appointed to the Board of Fire Commissioners
Michael Martinez, appointed to the Board of Zoning Appeals
More Housing for who.Again Snake oil and Three Card Monte being sold by sell out Judas Goat BOA.