Cheaper housing production in Maryland? Parking reform bills take a swing

Over the past few years, cities and counties nationwide have been doing something previously considered unthinkable in many of the same settings: repealing the “parking minimum” laws mandating how much parking any new development must have.

Faced with burgeoning housing crises and the need to find new revenue sources for transportation, communities as disparate as Buffalo and Bridgeport, Anchorage and Austin, have repealed parking requirements for large swathes of development, especially near transit.

And now Maryland is set to join their ranks in a major way in 2024. The state has seen the introduction of at least three different bills this past year to reform parking minimums in both its largest city, Baltimore, and its largest county, Montgomery.

Below we take a look at what each of these bills does and how they can help ease the state’s biggest housing and transit issues.

Turning the wheels: Montgomery’s parking policy revolution

The first parking minimums bill of the trio to be introduced was the rather prosaically titled “Zoning Text Amendment 23-10,” or “ZTA 23-10” for short, presented to the Montgomery County Council late this past November.

ZTA 23-10 eliminates parking minimums for new residential construction within certain distances from transit. For Metrorail and Purple Line stations, that distance is within a half-mile, the standard walkshed the county’s planning department already uses for Metrorail, though in the case of bus rapid transit, the bill would only apply a quarter mile out—-for either an existing or future route.

The legislation was introduced by then-incoming Council President Andrew Friedson, outgoing Council President Evan Glass (At-Large), and Councilmember Kristin Mink (District 5), all Democrats. Much like the bill itself, the question of what types of transit would be included (MARC stations are not, at least for now) and when was the subject of considerable negotiation, especially when it came to BRT.

“Bus rapid transit is a little different, we do not have true BRT right now,” Glass said, “and this zoning change will only apply when we have true BRT with dedicated bus lanes that can accommodate increased ridership.”

Despite not agreeing on every detail, the Council prioritized getting a deal done on a key issue for improving both the transit and housing situations in Montgomery County.

“Legislating is compromising,” Friedson added. “We wanted to move forward with a bill that we believe that we can get broad buy-in on, understanding that we shouldn’t focus on perfection if we can make meaningful progress. Advocacy can be philosophical, legislating has to be practical.”

ZTA 23-10 is, in a way, the result of a compromise. Early last year, Del. David Moon (HD-20) introduced HB (House Bill) 819, which would have banned the Montgomery County Council from passing or enforcing any laws imposing parking minimums for new residential construction within a quarter-mile of its Metro and Purple Line stations. But after gaining the sponsorship of the Montgomery and Prince George’s County Delegations and sailing through the House of Delegates, HB 819 stalled out in the Maryland Senate as the session ended.

But even as Moon’s bill sputtered out, Friedson and Mink agreed that its mission was an important one worth moving forward on even if the General Assembly couldn’t, so they began planning their own piece of legislation.

“We have a housing crisis and a climate crisis, and we have been trying to address both of those with many tools at our disposal over the last couple of years,” Friedson said. “But we understand that we didn’t get here by accident, we got here by policies, so we have to make choices to change the trajectory.”

So far, ZTA 23-10 has met with a positive reception from the rest of the County Council, with the eight other members of the Council signing on as co-sponsors. A large majority of the speakers present testified in favor of the bill, including Greater Greater Washington’s own Regional Policy Director, Dan Reed, who previously worked with Moon and Dels. Marc Korman (HD-16) and Vaughn Stewart (HD-19) on HB 819 and has similarly worked with Friedson, Glass, and Mink to help shape ZTA 23-10.

Charm City

And it’s not just Montgomery County drawing inspiration from Moon’s bill either. This year, Baltimore Del. Mark Edelson (HD-46) is introducing his own parking minimums legislation for transit. HB 38, directly modeled after HB 819, would prohibit Baltimore’s Mayor and City Council from “adopting or enforcing” any laws requiring the creation of off-street parking for residential development within a quarter-mile radius of certain types of Baltimore City transit.

There are a couple differences between Edelson’s legislation and his Montgomery County counterparts, though:

Firstly, unless the Red Line moves forward as a BRT project, HB 38 would only apply to rail lines, including the Metro Subway, Light Rail, Red Line (regardless of the final mode choice), or MARC stations. This reflects the difference in environments between Baltimore City and Montgomery County; the latter has been planning out a BRT system for years while Baltimore doesn’t really have BRT, and some of Montgomery County’s MARC stops are actually in relatively rural areas, something that could never be said for any of the three MARC stations within Baltimore’s city limits.

Edelson was clear about his reasons for bringing the bill.

“Given how expensive we know it is to build parking structures in this city, it can be about $15-30,000 per space, in residential buildings, those costs end up getting defrayed onto the tenant. It makes the cost of the housing so much more expensive,” Edelson said. “So taking that away and ideally putting some of that money frankly into bikeability, walkability, and easy access to transit will make those units more affordable and ideally change sort of the culture of how we build from building for cars to building for people and transit.”

The third and final rung of this trio of parking minimums legislation, “23-0468” or “Off-Street Parking-Affordable Housing,” introduced by Ryan Dorsey (D-CD3) to the Baltimore City Council in December 2023, doesn’t directly concern itself with transit. Rather, the mechanisms of Dorsey’s bill would eliminate off-street parking requirements for residential projects subject to Baltimore City’s inclusionary housing law (including conversion projects). Most of these buildings, Dorsey noted, are likely to be located along arterial roads served by multiple transit routes and contain at least some carless households.

Thanks to council legislation signed into law by Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott earlier this week, the number of residential developments subject to those parking requirements is fairly substantial, as developers are required to set aside 10% of the units on their projects as affordable.

“It’s prudent for us to do everything in our power to reduce costs for the development on the front end so that rents can be lowered in the first place,” Dorsey said. “So if we can reduce the costs of the development by making it easy and allowing for the developer to include less off-street parking, then there’s the possibility of saving a lot of money on the front end of the project that can translate into lower rents for everybody moving forward.”

Dorsey originally tried to ban parking minimums citywide in 2022 as part of an ambitious bill called the Abundant Housing Act but decided to separate that provision out and reintroduce after his original bill stalled. This time his attempt seems to be meeting with more success as seven other councilmembers, some of them not usually aligned with Dorsey, signed on to co-sponsor the bill at its introduction. Theoretically that is enough to ensure its passage.

What comes next

While none of the three parking minimum bills have passed yet, they all have fairly promising odds. ZTA 23-10 has a Planning, Housing, and Parks Committee work session tentatively scheduled for February 5, HB 38 is currently awaiting its hearing dates before the House Environment & Transportation Committee and the Baltimore City House Delegation, and 23-0468 has been assigned to the Baltimore City Council’s Economic and Community Development Committee although a hearing date has yet to be chosen. By the time that does happen, those three bills will have been joined by the “Housing Expansion and Affordability Act” from Gov. Wes Moore, which among other things, would allow taller and denser development near transit (under certain conditions).

It’s a lot of movement on two very big issues, but GGWash’s Dan Reed argued they’re policy areas Maryland is uniquely well positioned to make advances on: “…Maryland has this large and valuable transit network. There aren’t a lot of places in the US that have the kind of transit investments that we have and are continuing to make – and we need people to use it and for it to be convenient enough that people can actually make it a part of their daily lives.”

This post was updated to reflect that Montgomery County Councilmember Kristin Mink is not on the council’s Planning, Housing, and Parks Committee.