Eliminate Unnecessary Parking Mandates

HB382 will help address New Hampshire’s housing deficit by removing barriers to development.

Parking mandates limit the rights of property owners to determine how best to use their land, often resulting in more expensive development costs at a time when stimulating the housing market is critical to ensuring everyone can afford a home. Reforming parking mandates means a property owner can assess their need for parking, and determine how many spots should be built, where they should go, and what (if anything) should be charged for using that space—without interference from government.

Many state and city governments are considering or already have removed parking mandates to allow property owners to choose for themselves whether to build parking. This policy change has been shown to significantly increase the feasibility of building more homes, and to reduce the costs of building homes by removing unnecessary restrictions.

By removing parking mandates, we will:

  • Allow more homes to be built. Parking spots compete with homes on the same piece of land, limiting the potential for additional homes. A recent study shows that removing parking mandates can make 40-70% more homes feasible.  

  • Reduce the cost of developing new homes. Each parking spot mandated costs between $17,000 and $35,000 depending on the complexity of a structure, and can take up as much space as a studio apartment. 

  • Make homes more affordable by unbundling the cost of parking. Parking can add up to 17% to a tenant’s monthly rent - regardless of their car ownership. 

  • Allow more adaptive reuse. Older buildings that preceded parking mandates can make great apartment homes walkable to jobs and amenities, but current residential parking mandates mean they cannot be used for housing.

  • Protect our open spaces, farm, and forest land. Parking mandates often render infill housing financially or physically infeasible, pushing new development onto the urban fringe, inevitably paving over cherished farm and forestland. In addition, parking built within cities and towns paves over permeable surfaces, removes trees, and open spaces.

By removing parking mandates, we will allow a builder or property owner can make a smart, informed choice about the future use of the site, and the proximity of the site to walking paths, transit, and other amenities like grocery stores, jobs, and parks. Many new homes can be built close to commercial corridors, transit lines, and urban centers, creating more livable, walkable communities. Removing parking mandates allows property owners to build parking at a scale and level that is needed based on the future residents needs, rather than a limit imposed by the government.  

Case Study: Buffalo, NY

In 2017, Buffalo, NY became the first major American city to end parking mandates citywide. In its first two years, the results were:

  • Aggregate parking spaces among single-use projects still exceeded the earlier minimum requirements, as many projects still provided far more parking than required.

  • 47% of major developments included fewer parking spaces than previously permissible, suggesting earlier minimum parking requirements were excessive for the needs of some projects.

  • Mixed-use developments introduced 53% fewer parking spaces than would have been required by earlier minimum requirements as developers readily took advantage of the newfound possibility to include less off-street parking.

  • Newly legal projects created 2x as many homes & business spaces as developments that met the old parking requirements.