Campaign To Eliminate Parking Mandates Coming to Florida Legislature
(Source: Unsplash/Michael Fousert.)
Fast-growing Florida is struggling to add housing as quickly as it’s adding new residents, and much new construction is still in the form of greenfield, suburban-style complexes. Transit Alliance Miami, a transit and mobility advocacy group, hopes to change that trajectory with draft legislation that would repeal all parking minimums in the state.
The text of the proposal, which fits on one page, seeks to simplify and preempt all local restrictions:
(1) No county shall adopt or enforce any ordinance, regulation, or policy that establishes minimum parking requirements for any property within its jurisdiction.
(2) Any existing ordinance, regulation, or policy that establishes minimum parking requirements for any property within the jurisdiction of a local government shall have no legal effect.
It also stipulates that property owners have the right to include parking as they see fit in response to market forces.
Mark Merwitzer, policy manager of Transit Alliance Miami, says his organization will be circulating the draft legislation at the upcoming Florida legislative session, which starts January 9. Its Paved Paradise website lays out the case for reform, including the fact that almost 45% of Florida households have one or zero cars, while most cities mandate 1.5–2 parking spaces per unit. His group hopes this move would enable mixed-income housing development near existing public transportation.
Merwitzer observes that parking is an issue that unites diverse constituencies. While his organization advocates for transit-oriented development, he says the resolution will gain support from individual property-rights advocates, plus Florida’s building industry, which is hampered in adding housing supply by parking mandates.
Nelson Stabile, president of the Builders Association of South Florida, says the cost of parking requirements is particularly acute in cities like Miami, where each space can add as much as $30,000 to a construction project. “If you're in an urban setting, and you have to build structured parking, it becomes cost prohibitive,” says Stabile, “and that just adds on to the cost of housing.”
Stabile notes that Florida developers are currently facing significant headwinds with rising construction costs, interest rates, and the increasing cost of insurance, especially in coastal areas. Builders also face a patchwork of different local rules and standards, and in some cases, “jurisdictions sort of abuse [parking requirements], they use them as a way to really prevent development from taking place.”
Stabile says a statewide approach would help provide clarity and hopes lawmakers will consider further action on housing: “We have to look at every option and cost reductions to be able to provide attainable housing for our communities, and reducing the cost of parking is certainly one alternative that could make projects viable.”
Circulating the draft legislation is just the first step of what Merwitzer expects will be a multi-year process. But with an affordability crisis—cities such as Tampa and Miami are among the most rent burdened in the U.S.—he thinks conditions are ripe to find support in the Florida legislature.
He’s also encouraged by statewide legislation enacted last year, the Live Local Act, that preempted some municipal zoning requirements. That showed a willingness to “take action against local governments when it's harming our businesses and harming our communities. [Parking minimums] should be another issue that they preempt.”
Merwitzer hopes this effort will mirror successful zoning reform in Montana, where groups of various political leanings coalesced around legislation intended to spur housing starts in existing city boundaries. “No matter what your political persuasion is, this is something that just makes sense,” says Merwitzer.
Ben Abramson is a Staff Writer at Strong Towns. In his career as a travel journalist with The Washington Post and USA TODAY, Ben has visited many destinations that show how Americans were once world-class at building appealing, prosperous places at a human scale. He has also seen the worst of the suburban development pattern, and joined Strong Towns because of its unique way of framing the problems we can all see and intuit, and focusing on local, achievable solutions. A native of Washington, DC, Ben lives in Venice, Florida; summers in Atlantic Canada; and loves hiking, biking, kayaking, and beachcombing.