City Council - Planning, Development, & Transportation Committee Hearing on Docket #0809

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For the record, my name is Sharon Durkan. I'm District 8 City Councilor, and I'm Chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Planning, Development, and Transportation. Today is June 4th, and the exact time is 10.17 a.m. I apologize for starting late. I wanted to make sure my co-sponsor was able to join us. This hearing is being recorded. It is also being livestreamed at boston.gov backslash city-council-tv and broadcast on Xfinity Channel 8, RCN Channel 82, and Fios Channel 964. Written comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.plandev at boston.gov and will be made part of the public record and available to all councillors. Public testimony will be taken at the end of this hearing. Individuals will be called on in the order which they have signed up and will have two minutes to testify. If you are interested in testifying in person, please add your name to the sign-up sheet near the entrance of the chamber. If you are looking to testify virtually, please email our central staff liaison, who does an incredible job, Shane Pack, PAC,

which is shane.pac at boston.gov for the link and your name will be added to the list. Today's hearing is on docket 0809. Order for a text amendment to the Boston zoning code with respect to parking minimums for residential development. This matter was sponsored by Councilor Durkan, me, Councilor Henry Santana, and Liz Breadon, and was referred to the committee on April 15, 2026. Today, I am joined by Councilor Henry Santana. I know we will be joined by the Council President shortly. And I'm going to give a brief opening statement. We are going to start with Sarah Bronin, who is So if we could get her queued up while I give my opening statement, that would be great. Good morning. Thank you to everyone who has joined us today for this discussion. While I am the lead sponsor of this text amendment, my role today as chair is to facilitate an objective conversation.

We have the opportunity to hear from members of the public, experts, advocates, and stakeholders, and this hearing is intended to be a space for thoughtful discussion of all aspects of this proposal. This conversation has been a long time coming. Over the past year, we have heard from planners, housing experts, advocates, and residents about the role parking minimums play in housing production and affordability in Boston. What has become increasingly clear is that this is a policy lever we cannot afford to overlook. The median rent in Boston is now over $3,000 per month. The median home price exceeds $700,000. More than half of Boston renters are rent burdened. We know families and young people are being priced out of our city. This is coming on the heels of the smallest budget increase since 2010. And missing middle housing is what we need to sustain our economic vitality long term.

Parking minimums add tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars to construction costs, consume valuable land on already constrained development parcels, and prevent housing typologies our city desperately needs, including ADUs and small-scale infill developments. One concern I have heard is that this proposal will make it harder for residents to find parking. Let me be clear. This amendment does not concern off-street parking. It concerns off-street parking, not on-street parking. Off-street parking refers to parking spaces included within a development. I know our residents are often challenged to find parking or resident parking spaces spots on our streets. This has been an ongoing challenge in Boston, but it's a separate policy question and one that we should work to begin to address. This proposal does not ban parking or prevent developers from building parking. If there is a demand for parking, developers will build it. And in many cases, lenders require it as a condition of financing. MAPC's research shows that off-street parking is overbuilt in Boston.

What this amendment does is remove outdated mandates that are requiring costly parking that we may not need. The question before us is not whether this policy works. There is a mountain of evidence supporting this and experts we're going to hear from shortly. Hundreds of cities across the country and right here in the Commonwealth have eliminated parking minimums and made it easier to build housing. We need to start listening to the facts. And this is also not a fringe proposal. This amendment has earned support from stakeholders across the housing and development community. The Greater Boston Real Estate Board endorsed this proposal. And this is a quote from CEO Greg Vassell. As the Massachusetts housing crisis worsens, we remain strongly opposed to any policy that restricts housing growth. In a letter of support from NIOP Massachusetts that we received in December, the Commercial Real Estate and Development Association wrote that mandatory parking minimums are an archaic,

We received a report from the Pioneer Institute calling for the elimination of parking minimums stating that parking reform is low-hanging fruit because so many new apartment buildings have a visible oversupply of it. This policy has the potential to address disproportionate impacts our housing crisis places on low-income residents. It is an opportunity to stop requiring excess asphalt and instead create more housing and green space and make our neighborhoods more vibrant. We must acknowledge the reality of the future. Younger generations are driving less, and Boston needs the flexibility to build a more sustainable city. This amendment has been carefully drafted and thoroughly reviewed. Boston zoning code is one of the most complex in the country and the zoning code experts, attorneys, and planning department have all reviewed this proposal to ensure it will function as intended. I will read a statement from the Planning Department to that effect shortly.

We cannot continue to approach this neighborhood by neighborhood. Doing so only deepens inequities across our city and limits the impact. For this proposal to work, it must be implemented citywide. We cannot afford to continue taking a piecemeal approach while housing costs rise and nothing gets built. I have said before the real question is whether we will have the political leadership to actually get this done. Ultimately, the authority though rests with the zoning commission. As Councillors, we have the same power as any resident to position the Zoning Commission to take up this proposal. When this comes to a vote, what we are voting on is whether we support the merits of this policy. Whether we support reducing barriers to housing production and whether we support making Boston more affordable. That's the focus of this morning's conversation. I want to thank our panelists and to all the residents who are here to participate and weigh in. I'm looking forward to getting started and I want to hand it over to my Co-sponsor, Councilor Henry Santana, to give his opening remarks.

And I do want to announce that we've also been joined by Councilor Ed Flynn and Councilor Fitzgerald. Go ahead, Councilor Santana. Oh, and Councilor Enrique Pepén. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Durkan, and good morning, everyone. Really appreciate you all being here. Thank you to the public who's here on a Thursday morning. Really appreciate you all being present. Durkan for leading on this issue. To truly address housing affordability, we need to use every tool available to us and move away from policies that make it more expensive to build and live in our city. This zoning amendment is a step in that direction. Eliminating parking minimums doesn't mean eliminating parking, as you said, Chair. It just means not having a specific amount of parking requirement for new development. We've already ended the requirement for some affordable housing developments, and it's time to expand that to other new residential developments. Medium rent are now over $3,000 a month here in the City of Boston. More than half of Boston renters are cost burdened, and yet our

Current zoning codes require parking minimums adding additional cost to housing production and ending projects before they can even get a chance to begin. This amendment removes that barrier. The elimination of parking minimums will reduce the cost of housing production Making Housing More Affordable and Accessible for Boston Residents. I'm looking forward to today's conversation and I'm looking forward to hearing from our panelists, but I'll also mention I know there's been, I've received a lot of emails, both in support of this proposal and people who are opposing it and have questions about it. And I'm really glad that we can have this hearing today to just educate ourselves as colleagues and for the public. But I really love this city. I grew up in the city. I grew up in public housing. And I know so many of our residents love their neighborhoods and love the city. And what makes this city great is our people, right? And right now, we are losing too many of our people.

Too many of our most vulnerable residents are deciding to leave the city because of how unaffordable it is. And if you want to make sure that we're Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To the questions, to the conversation, and hearing from our panelists. Thank you, Chair Durkan.

Thank you to my co-sponsor, Councilor Santana. Councilor Flynn.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to the neighbors for testifying today. on two of the biggest issues we face in the city of Boston, housing and parking. In my opinion on today's discussion, we are not listening to the repeated feedback we've received for years from the development and business community on why we're not building any housing in Boston any longer, especially affordable housing. They're not investing because the city added increased affordable and environmental requirements upcoming potential of rent control on top of the already tough business environment post-pandemic inflation, high interest rates, increased construction costs and tariffs. That should be considered. Data shows that Boston's housing production decreased from 9,800 units approved in 2020 to just 850 in the first six months of 2025.

Our affordable housing crisis can't wait several years for the economy to improve. In the meantime, the demand for housing and affordable housing will only increase Supply will continue to drop. Home values and property taxes will increase. My colleagues continue to not only ignore feedback from the business community on the actual reasons why we're not building housing, but also the fact that the zoning board has historically approved over 90% of cases in modern history. Transportation Department already recommends that large-scale Article 80 projects contain .5 parking spots per unit. The City of Boston and the Council have the political opportunity and the courage to prioritize what will actually help address our housing crisis with the people that will actually do the building. Let's work together. For years, developers have not been citing parking minimums that the ZBA

and Transportation already disregard on a routine basis as the reason why they're not...

Thank you. May I? Thank you. Councilor Pepén? Thank you.

Good morning. Thank you, Madam Chair. I am here because I am very supportive of this of this hearing order of what this would do for our city. Last year I was a co-sponsor to last year's hearing order but I wanted to make sure that I continue my support for this. In my district, we've actually have had quite a bit of rezoning already, and we are about to embark on another one in a different part of my district where there have already been no parking minimums implemented in certain portions of it. and what I part of my mission with this in supporting my colleagues on this is to make sure that we are also breaking down a lot of the misbeliefs that people are attaching to no parking minimums people believe that Oh, no parking is going to come with new developments. Actually, what we've seen is that this is going to make building easier in the city of Boston.

This is going to be able to add to the toolbox that Councillor Santana said to build more affordable housing. There's a project in Rosnell Square right now by B'nai B'rith being proposed that has no parking minimums in the zoning, but however, they are still proposing a portion of parking on site for some of the residents. But understanding that there are also Other transportation modes across the area if it's either the commuter rail or the bus network leading to Forest Hills. This is a way for us to build more housing in the city of Boston and removing some of the obstacles that have made it so difficult. So that's why I'm here to support it and thank my colleagues for sponsoring this and looking for ways to support it across the city. Thank you.

Thank you. You see, I'm keeping it tight because we have a lot of public testimony. Councilor Breadon, one of our co-sponsors.

Good morning, everyone. Good to see you all. Thank you. I'm delighted to be part of this conversation today to discuss parking minimums. I think there's this misconception That no parking minimums means that there's no parking. And that's not the case. I think we are trying to get to a place where That there's a flexibility in the system in terms of zoning that in places where you need more parking you can have more parking, in places where you need less parking you can have less parking. and that we're not tied into one size fits all. For example, in Alston we've seen de facto removal of parking minimums for years now. developers still build parking when desired. At the Brighton and Alston Improvement Association community civic meeting, developers building in more heavily residential areas constantly tout the parking they're building when Even above minimums.

And on the other hand, large projects in Alston Village and Packards Corner have zero parking that is very well received by the community down there. Also for flexibility, developers can Meet the needs of residents. So I think it's one size does not fit all. And I think this is a really important conversation to have. And I'm looking forward to the discussion today. Thank you.

Thank you, Council President. Councilor Fitzgerald, you have two minutes.

Thank you, Chair Durkan. I'd much rather just get into the questions. I thank you all for being here. It's an interesting conversation to have. I've got to say at the moment, I'm not convinced, so I look here to learn today from all of you about what we think. The benefits are, and of course, I will have some questions that will challenge it, and I hope that everybody can learn a little bit more today. Thank you.

Thank you so much. And this is a little out of order, but we're going to go to Sarah Bronin, who was commissioned to draft our 2020, our I'm sorry, a 2023 report with the planning department. She is an expert and I know that you stated that eliminating parking minimums was the single most substantive change to the Boston Zoning Code that arguably do the most good for the city. So I want to hear from you and want to give you the opportunity to do a presentation to the city council And then we're going to get into opening statements from the other panelists. Professor Bronin, you have the floor.

Thank you so much Council Members, Councilman Durkman and everybody who's assembled here today. Hopefully you can see my screen and I'm just going to get started. So, just to say, you know, I. Do serve as a professor.

Sorry, we're getting there, I think, with the screen, but just want to wait for one second to see if we can get there.

Sure, it's actually, it's blank. Oh, perfect. Okay, thank you. Yes, yes, yes. Just so I can remember to say a brief word of introduction. So just to say that I do serve as a law professor. I am a licensed architect. I'm not sure if you got written testimony that I submitted. But I am, I guess, a scholar of zoning law. So I'm really excited that you were talking about zoning because it gives me a chance to talk about zoning too. But I'm also somebody who has worked in Thank you for joining us today. through zoning. So when I chaired the City of Hartford's Planning and Zoning Commission for seven years, we became one of the first cities to eliminate parking mandates citywide. I led the city through a process where we evaluated different issues.

Again, exactly like the ones you're considering today in a historic New England city. And if you look at these couple of images in the slides, The image on the left is an image that was immediately, as soon as we changed the parking mandates, redeveloped for housing without having to provide parking on site. In downtown for teachers. It's called Teachers Corners. The building on the right is a new development in a long vacant lot just north of downtown. that was again delivered without parking. And I think the point earlier that just speaks to the fact that if developers believe that parking is required, They will build it. It's really at the root of what's behind the elimination of parking mandates. I've seen in my research decades and decades of zoning stagnation

Just zoning codes being put in place 50 years ago, 70 years ago, and staying exactly the same, and not recognizing modern realities, and also out-dated, enshrining outdated planning concepts. So in Hartford, we had the experience. And if you look at the dates of these, it didn't include the day on the right, but it's from 2025, 2017, We've seen a history in Hartford of new housing being built and of buildings like the one on the left being rehabilitated for housing in large part because we eliminated parking mandates and it brought these sites back into development feasibility. So in addition to practicing in zoning as a planning and zoning commissioner, I also do research beyond just legal treatises and case law. I have a team at the National Zoning Atlas that has read about 1.2 million pages of zoning codes across the country.

So we've analyzed zoning in all of New England, except for Maine. Very difficult zoning there, I should add. We've completed analysis in 17 states and DC. We've completed a lot of New York, Texas, and so on. So everywhere that is purple on the map shows places that do have zoning. Again, New England entirely zoned, Texas, New Mexico, not so much. The gray shows where we've confirmed there is no zoning and the white shows places that we haven't gotten to yet. But my point is that I'm familiar with a lot of the different ways that cities across the country including cities of a similar size to Boston actually create a draft and articulate their zoning rules. Zoning is incredibly important. It dictates everything that is built within the jurisdiction that it manages. And it's, I think, the most consequential body of law that no one talks about except for you guys today.

So kudos again for starting the conversation. In addition to that, I have had the opportunity to be commissioned by the city to actually review the city of Boston zoning code in great detail. In January 2023, I issued a report to the City via the Boston Planning and Development Agency, now the Planning Department, where I reviewed the city's codes against other major cities codes and I have a link to that if you haven't read that it's in the written testimony that I provided but there was a lengthy report about 40 plus pages and I really tried to go through all of the issues that Boston is facing and all the ways that the code is holding Boston back, not just from some of the things that you mentioned, that various council members mentioned, but also from achieving the goals that are set forth in the city plan that the city adopted to great fanfare

A few years ago, and frankly, I think has not necessarily been totally fulfilled. So I wanted to just mention a couple of things that I drew out in that paper. and I also wanted before I started to say it's really important to recognize that none of the council members sitting here today wrote the code that I was critiquing that is an old code the way that it was drafted the byzantine nature of it is no one's fault on this panel, on this city council today. But you have a huge opportunity to fix it. And there's a lot that needs fixing in this code. So the code, I called it bloated, outdated, inconsistent, and inequitable. And that is by way of comparison to virtually every other code in the country. Just to give you an example of how it's floated, it is thousands of pages long. It has 90 chapters.

I compare that with other big cities. We just put Chicago and Philadelphia up on the zoning map, on the zoning atlas. They have less than 300 pages in their zoning code. Now, I'm sure there's problems in their codes as well, but it is not the kind of regulatory morass that you have as a baseline in your Boston zoning code. It's also really outdated, has a lot of outdated planning concepts, anachronistic terms. It's inconsistent. You see that in the document that you have, a 33-page text amendment that shows you all these different parking mandates that exist in the code. very contradictory to each other. And I also argue that it's inequitable. And it's inequitable not just because it From a process standpoint, all these intricate rules mean that only wealthy people who can hire lawyers can make their way through this code.

But it's also inequitable in its substantive outcomes. It blocks housing production, it blocks equitable development, and it undermines the city's ability to really care for all of its residents and meet their needs As Councilwoman Durkman said, I did say the single substantive change to the Boston zoning code that arguably will do the most good for the city is the elimination of minimum parking mandates. And I stand by that statement. It's three years later, which is why I'm so excited that you are doing what you are doing today. So just to put this in brief perspective with the National Zoning Atlas, just gonna show you a quick image of Boston. So here we are on the map, the legend on the left, shows you where zoning requires either primarily residential development in the light purple, mixed with residential development in the dark purple, and then in the tan non-residential development.

and then the greens are places that are protected lands and of course the blue is water and then the boundaries of Boston are these places in black. When I ask the map, so we log all kinds of things on our map at the level of the zoning district, We ask it, does the zoning code allow single-family housing, four-family housing, two-family housing, three-family housing? Are there height caps? Are there minimum lot sizes? Are there lot coverage requirements? And so on and so forth. We log to the detail parking. This slide shows you where in the city of Boston you can build housing without a parking mandate. The map is almost entirely white. If you squint, you can see some areas down in Mattapan, you can see some areas up in downtown. The city as a whole, only 547 acres of the 20,000 zoned acres in the city, 3% has the elimination of parking mandates.

and you can see that in the bottom right. Now, just looking north there, you see Cambridge and Somerville are appearing in purple. What that means is they've eliminated parking mandates. They're two of the many cities and places around the country that have eliminated them So I, of course, wholeheartedly endorse the approach you're making from a policy standpoint, from a best practices standpoint, from a modernization standpoint, and I've Of course, I encourage you to adopt what you have before you. But I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't pull back and make two suggestions based on the report that the city accepted in 2023. So just putting this on your radar screen for those who wish to take this even farther. First suggestion, I think the amendment should be expanded to non-residential uses.

I heard in one of the opening statements that a commercial association of developers endorsed this. Now, of course, some of the development that you do is residential, some is mixed use, I'm sure, and maybe some is non-residential. What is being created by this text amendment is a great thing lifting for residential uses, but it also has the potential problem of making development much harder for non-residential uses. and making development harder for mixed use buildings. So residential on top, retail on the bottom. It would be great if the amendment could be expanded to non-residential uses for the same reasons that as many will testify on the panel, this makes sense for residential uses. My second suggestion is even if you don't expand,

Please consider streamlining the remaining, I think, hundreds of pages of parking mandates by consolidating the non-residential mandates, so the remaining non-residential mandates into a single parking section. In the written testimony I provided, I just pull out a couple of paragraphs where I log This section of the code, that section of the code again, probably hundreds of pages of parking mandates for non-residential uses that really have no consistency from one neighborhood to the next. In addition to a lot of literature and research that talks about housing, sorry, parking mandates as not being justified from really any standpoint, The fact that the Boston Zoning Code is so inconsistent and has so many different parking mandates, it's bad for business, it's bad for property owners, and it's really bad for people who

I'm just going to stop there. And I really appreciate the time. Thank you for letting me share a couple of slides, and I'll put myself on mute in case there are any questions.

Thank you so much, Professor Bronin. I really appreciate all of your work and the work that you put in years ago and the work that you're back here to tell us about. So I'm grateful for and and excited to dig into the Zoning Atlas as well. So I'm gonna let our panelists go down, if you can keep it to under two minutes, just to opening, you know, just sort of to certify Where you're coming to this conversation from, and we'll start with BCAN.

Great. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, members of the committee. My name is Hasan Faruqi. I'm Executive Director of the Boston Climate Action Network. We're a membership organization, and so over the last several weeks, I've been speaking with my members about this policy. Nearly all of them have different opinions. and it makes sense because every street every neighborhood every block of our city is different and there are some places in which maybe we need parking there are many other places in which we would be just fine without it and that's why we came to support this because this allows the flexibility Every street, every block can be right-sized in terms of parking to what makes sense for it. Now, this is especially urgent because we have so many members and friends who can't afford to live in the city. and who are being pushed further and further out of the city. That means they still come into the city for all that Boston has to offer. And more often than not, they do so through cars.

Thank you very much. Large expanses of concrete. And concrete is especially important because If we can reduce the amount of space we're using for parking, especially if that parking is sitting empty, as Lizzie may say, there are great climate resilient benefits there too. Rather than having concrete that absorbs heat and radiates it out, especially as extreme heat gets worse, we can have green space that protects us from extreme heat. And rather than having concrete that makes flooding worse, especially as storm water increases, as sea levels rise, we can have green space that helps absorb that. And so this makes a lot of sense from a climate standpoint. It makes a lot of sense from a housing affordability standpoint. And it is one of the things that we need to do to help lower the cost of housing. There are many.

And this will help to lower those development costs and make sure that Boston is affordable for all of our families. So thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much. Abundant Housing Massachusetts.

Yeah, thank you, Chair Durkan, members of the committee. My name is Jesse Canson-Beninov. I'm the executive director of Abundant Housing Massachusetts. As always, I'm also here as a Boston resident in Jamaica Plain, an active member of my local neighborhood association. of the Forest Hills Neighborhood Association and a proud parent of a Boston public school student, testifying today in strong support of this policy to remove wasteful parking mandates for new residential development and allow common sense parking flexibility. Arbitrary and costly parking mandates drive up the cost of building homes in our city. That's tens of thousands of dollars and many more. This cost is passed on to families in our city already struggling to afford rent or Housing costs. For my family, even as a two-income professional household, our ability to live affordably in Boston is heavily constrained.

We want to grow our roots here, but we cannot afford to size up in our community because arbitrary, among other reasons, arbitrary parking mandates force land to be used for overbuilt parking instead of homes for families like mine and others. The status quo also keeps families apart. My out of state parents, want to move here to help care for their grandson, but even after selling their home out of state, Boston's housing costs are entirely out of reach. When they visit, they're forced to pay exorbitant, My family's struggle to afford and remain in Boston is shared by thousands of working families across the city. I have some examples, just in the interest of time, that I won't share today, but in my own neighborhood. where these parking mandates will have tangible negative impacts. Local home builders and property owners should have the flexibility to determine what parking makes sense based on their unique needs. Forcing excess parking drives up housing costs for everyone.

In fact, research has shown that just one mandated parking space can raise monthly housing costs over $200. I've talked about our polling. Strong support for this across the city, including in our neighborhoods. Thank you.

Thank you so much. And Metropolitan Area Planning Council. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Councilors. My name is Lizzie Wyant, and I am the Executive Director of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. MAPC is the regional planning agency serving the 101 cities and towns of Greater Boston, including the City of Boston. We work to create a more sustainable, equitable, collaborative, and climate resilient region. My colleague Adi Nocher testified before this council last December when you were first considering eliminating parking minimums. He leads our perfect fit parking work at MAPC and his research has inspired cities and towns across greater Boston to right-size their parking. MAPC strongly supports the ordinance before you today and we encourage you to pass it. For the past decade, our perfect fit parking work has been at the leading edge of parking reform. We use overnight parking counts to analyze off-street parking at multifamily housing sites across the region.

For the past 10 years, our research has consistently shown that parking supply far outstrips demand, that parking is overbuilt and underutilized, and that it's actually parking supply that is the biggest driver of parking demand. This happens because when we build more parking than we actually need, we encourage car ownership and more car trips. In short, the more parking that's provided, the more people will use it. These patterns hold true in every single Boston neighborhood and in every municipality that we've studied, urban and suburban alike. Our work provides the data to show that reducing or eliminating parking minimums will help reduce more housing and lower housing costs, as my colleagues have shared. Reducing parking also creates growth without congestion and pollution and improves opportunities for walkability. Cities and towns all over Greater Boston have used our research as inspiration to reform their parking requirements and advance their goals for more livable communities.

The Commonwealth has taken this position as well, with Governor Healey's Unlocking Housing Production Commission citing MAPC's work in recommending the elimination of parking minimums statewide. In 2021, this council showed leadership on this issue by unanimously removing minimum parking requirements for affordable housing developments. Last fall, the City of Salem passed an ordinance to remove parking minimum requirements for new development, very similar to the question before you today. And we're just starting work in Chelsea to address similar issues. We feel that you have taken really important steps to address parking reform and we applaud that work and the ongoing efforts from the Boston Planning Department to consider reducing parking minimums. Parking requirements continue to be a barrier to new housing developments in the city, especially for the types of smaller scale infill development that we need to address our housing crisis and meet this moment. We urge you to take this opportunity to build on your past leadership and eliminate parking minimums.

Over 100 municipalities across the country have taken this step because the data shows that our current parking policies are outdated and are arbitrary. There has never been a better moment to create more sustainable and equitable neighborhoods.

Thank you. Thank you. Better Parking for Boston.

Thank you, Councillor Durkan, and thank you to the City Council for your time today. My name is Mike DiMaio. I'm an attorney and a member of Better Parking for Boston. I drafted the zoning code amendment before you today in collaboration with several other volunteers from our group and industry experts. And I'm here to address questions that you may have about the text of the amendment. For a bit of background about me, my wife and I live in the middle unit of a five-story row house in the south end. We love our home. Our neighborhood is walkable, with many local businesses nearby. Our neighbors are friendly and helpful. And our street is quiet. But under the Southland Zoning Code, however, our building and most of the buildings on our street could not be built today because they do not fit the number of parking spaces the code requires. without making drastic changes, like turning my neighbor's home into a parking garage.

I joined Better Parking for Boston and volunteered to do this work because it's important to me that people seeking to live in our city can find and afford housing that meets their needs, just like this home meets the needs of my family. Turning to the amendment under consideration, I reviewed the full zoning code to identify any obligations related to parking minimums. As it relates to parking minimums, the zoning code has two key elements. First, there are overarching standards set forth in Article 23, which apply to all areas of the city by default. And second, there are neighborhood civic articles, most of which are nearly identical, but have slight variations neighborhood to neighborhood. These neighborhood civic obligations supersede the default Article 23 language where applied. Correspondingly, what you will see in the draft amendment are changes to the default provisions in Article 23, followed by neighborhood civic changes. For those neighborhood level changes, there are two sections.

First is, most of the time, a table that replaces the current park minimum standards with removing them, and then second, Revisions to the parking standards, which are merely intended to keep the status quo after removing this minimum obligation. I'm happy to discuss any questions you may have about the draft today or following today's hearing is helpful. Thank you.

Thank you so much, and the BU Urbanist.

Good morning, everyone. It's an honor to be here, and thank you for taking the time to Be here and listen to my own experience as a young person in the city. So I'm a recent graduate of Boston University, and I've been a community member and living in Austin-Brighton since I moved here for school in 2023. And I also founded the Urbanism Club at Boston University, which I started as a way to get BU students more involved and engaged in their community, whether that is in advocating for better transportation, for more housing, for to make our university more sustainable or in volunteering and direct action to make our community a better place, such as our project to build a parklet on Comm Ave on BU's campus. Parking rooms don't reflect the needs of today's renters and young adults. Young people are not buying cars and driving in Boston.

And part of it is that we can't afford to buy cars but the other part is that we don't really want to drive in the city. It's slow, it's inefficient, it's expensive, and it's killing the environment and it's dangerous. Parking minimums are reinforcing a transportation system that does not work for us and does not work for the planet. If our young people cannot afford to buy cars, don't want to buy cars, and most importantly, can't afford to live here, then we shouldn't be asking them to continue to shoulder the high cost of requiring parking in new developments. Are we building a more affordable, equitable, and livable future or do we want to continue to reinforce an unaffordable and exclusionary presence? Thank you.

Thank you, Jerry. And we've been joined by Councilor Brian Worrell. I did give everyone two minutes for an opening statement. OK, perfect. Okay, so thank you all for being here. I want to give all of my colleagues six minutes to ask questions. And just remember that Professor Bronin is on the screen to the left, so if you have any questions about Her commissioned report for the planning department. I'm grateful that she's here. So I'll go in order of arrival, starting with our co-sponsors. First, we'll start with Councilor Henry Santana. Oh, do you want me to start? Okay. Happy to start. Okay. So, for... Professor Sarah Bronin, can you speak to the beginning of why these minimums were conceived?

And just curious sort of some more of the history of what you found in zoning codes across the country. about, you know, sort of like the difference between where we are today and where we were as a country when these minimums were conceived in the 60s?

Sure, yeah. In looking at codes around the country, it does seem like the biggest wave of adoption of parking mandates happened in the 1950s and 1960s. which may make sense given that the rise of the automobile, the rise of suburbia really was occurring around then. The problem was is that cities like Boston, Hartford, Buffalo, Baltimore, all of these places adopted parking mandates in their zoning codes Even though they were built in a compact way, they had significant public transit, they had a lot of historic buildings that were in fact torn down because of parking mandates as people tried to reuse their buildings and couldn't. unless they demolished part of their building or bought the building next door and torn it down.

So over time, people have really looked at these and seen the negative effects that again, others have spoken to. So you see places like Austin, Baltimore, Denver, Portland, San Francisco, completely eliminating parking mandates. And that is the wave and that is not just for residential uses, but for non-residential uses as well. That is the current best practice. For whatever reason, I guess there's a famous saying from Donald Shoup, who is a UCLA professor who recently passed away and wrote a book I cited in My testimony, the high cost of free parking. And he said, where did parking mandates come from in the first place? No one knows. That's what he says. No one knows. But nonetheless, they were adopted. So again, with the rise of the automobile. But we're not in that time now, and you heard testimony, especially about our young people who don't want that, people who choose to live in a city like Boston.

They want alternative means of transportation and parking mandates rob them of that.

Thank you. And speaking to my experience, I was before a group called Boston Villages, which used to be called Beacon Hill Villages, which is, I don't know whose phone is going off, but if you could, it's a little distracting. I'm just gonna wait until that's... Okay, thank you. and it was surprising to me to have residents that were all over 50 say that we needed to eliminate parking minimums. I think it's really important that we realize that there is sort of a cross-section of folks who are either not choosing to drive or have decided not to drive anymore. And so for Jerry, why do you think it's important to have young people in this conversation?

Well, I think young people are the future of the city and we care a lot about the future of the city. I've worked as a community organizer in Alston Brighton and In my four years at Boston University and I have consistently found that young people are passionate about making this place or the city a better place to live for everyone. As soon as I hear people like refer to people like myself as like transients or I even heard a public meeting last week that like we're invading neighborhoods and I want to counter that. We're advocates and we're visionaries and we want to build a better world and a better future. So to that point, I would like to invite, if you haven't spoken to a student group or young people and invited them to, let's say, community meetings, maybe invite them out to coffee. Invite me out to coffee if you want to speak to a young person who wants who wants a better future and has ideas about how we can make that happen, speak to us.

We're members of the community just like your immediate neighbors are. And I mean, some of us students might even be your immediate neighbors. So when you do speak to them, I think you'll find that a lot of us don't drive, and we want to live in a walkable, affordable, bikeable communities. and I think that perspective is extremely valuable because it is the future.

Thank you. And to Hassan, I wanted to ask particularly about what impact you think this proposal would have on environmental justice communities. I do have neighborhood profiles that the BPDA planning department creates for every neighborhood and there's definitely a diversity of how people get around in the city and I was surprised by my neighborhoods just how many people walk to work and how many people That's their primary mode of transportation and their commutes. Can you talk a little bit about sort of the climate resiliency aspect to this and sort of what impact it might have?

Absolutely. I mean we see that the effects of climate change are here and really there are two pieces that I want to touch on. The first is extreme heat and we know that Boston, like any city, is going to have a lot of heat because we have lots of concrete everywhere and that's going to absorb the heat. But we also know, thanks to work from the Climate Ready Boston team under Mayor Walsh, Some neighborhoods stay hotter and stay hotter for longer. And those are the neighborhoods that have less in the way of green space and tree canopy. Those are our environmental justice communities by and large. Places like Chinatown, parts of the South End where I live. but it's also places like Roxbury and Dorchester. And we know that there are a lot of things we can do to help mitigate that, right? The tree canopy is a piece of it. The other piece is on flooding and we know that stormwater

loves to run off of parking lots into our basements, into our buildings. Having green infrastructure on the grounds prevents that and that's where this allows the flexibility because there are many places where community members and developers agree that actually we can do more in the way of green space. And that's not currently always possible on some of these really small parcels, but this would allow that to happen.

Thank you. So we'll go to our co-sponsors first, starting with Councilor Henry Santana.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our panelists again. I'm going to start off with Professor Brodin. You talked in your presentation about different cities and many more across the country that have implemented parking minimums. And I think you went over some of the impacts, but I mean, can you just go more into specifics of some I think more measurable impacts that we've seen in similar city sizes like Boston when parking minimums are eliminated.

Sure, so as we saw in Hartford, more housing becomes feasible for the first time because Parking mandates actually allow land to be devoted to housing rather than parking mandates. Certainly, we've seen studies that have shown that As parking mandates are eliminated, the local tax base increases. In a place like Boston where Bostonians are just as likely to use public transportation or walk or bike as they are to drive, Eliminating parking mandates seems to be very feasible. You do have all of these different types of Transportation. And to the point that was raised earlier, parking mandates actually create parking and that induces driving. So one of my former colleagues at UConn, Norman Garrick,

studied this and again showed that where you have parking, people are more likely to drive. And then finally, the idea that parking mandates make a city less green, that they do pave over the city, they make it hotter in a place like Boston where green space is at a premium. We're landscaping where trees are at a premium. Parking mandates have a measurable impact that prevents that because you're forced as a property owner to pave over your lot. instead of doing something different like landscape it. So whether it's that economic impact, the transportation impacts, the environmental impacts, You do see, again, lots of studies and some of them I do cite in my written testimony for those who want to take a little bit deeper. And of course the cost of housing. I mean, that's the main thing for me.

Thank you. I think for anyone here, maybe just two of you with the time remaining that I have, I think you look at the hearing order, right? It's an order for a text amendment. To the Boston Zoning Code with respect to parking minimums for residential development. And I think people also see eliminating parking minimums. You're a resident, you live in your neighborhood, you're seeing, like, I'm hearing, like, I can't find parking when I get home. from work. I can't find parking when I'm shopping or whatever may be the case. What do you say to residents who have real concerns about about this proposal, right? That the parking for them is going to be affected. Have we seen in other cities that parking has been affected in our neighborhoods? I just want to have more information on what can I say to those residents?

Well, I think there, as Professor Bronin just alluded to, the issue is probably how we're looking at it. The reality is when we overbuild parking, we're actually then incentivizing more people to drive and to park, competing, creating competition There's a whole body of research that shows that in low or no parking developments, when they are built, people tend to have fewer cars. So the reality is that as our needs for more homes in the city grows, if we are overbuilding parking along with homes, we're going to see more cars. And that's more competition for parking. against existing residents.

And to that point, I mean, I appreciate that, Jesse. You know, when you were talking about some of the developments even we're seeing even in our neighborhoods, right? In this case, let's say there's no parking being built. But residents are saying to me, well, regardless, right, let's say there's going to be 100 units here being built, and maybe there's going to be five cars out of those 100 units that are going to be using cars, right? So very, very small percentage. Regardless, those five people are going to now rely on street parking, right? Does that affect that neighborhood?

Well, again, I think it's really important to say that this doesn't mean no parking will get built. I remember sitting in this chamber two years ago When you all sponsored a delegation of Austin, Texas city councilors who visited, certainly Austin and Boston have some differences, but there are some similarities growing cities. They're going a lot faster, booming tech business. Many hundreds of thousands of students. So some comparable elements there. And what the Boston, it's rather the Austin City Councilor said sitting right here was that after they eliminated parking minimums in Austin, they were still seeing about 75% of the parking built that was built prior to the elimination. So if prior to the elimination of parking 100, Parking spaces were being built in 100 unit development in Austin, 75 are still being built. And so, you know, it's not to say that will be exactly our example or experience here in Boston, but this doesn't mean no parking gets built. I appreciate that.

I mean, I support this proposal, and I understand the need of having more housing here in the city of Boston. As I mentioned in my opening statement, I just want to be able to also go back to these residents. I think there's a lot of education that needs to happen, and I'm really glad that that's being provided through this hearing. Thank you, Chair Durkan.

Thank you, Councilor Santana. Councilor Breadon, and we've been joined by Councilor Louieune.

Thank you Madam Chair. I'd like to ask Dr. Brodin to speak somewhat to the non-residential uses. I know In our conversation with lab developers in the last, well, things have slowed down a lot, They were advocating for two spaces per 100,000 square feet, and he says, you can't be serious. Are you not expecting that local folks are going to work in your facility? How do we manage that? And also thinking about mixed-use buildings. I think our zoning code actually moved away from Allowing retail in the ground floor of residential buildings is an archaic remnant of our zoning code. Could you speak to those issues?

Sure. On the lab issue, there's a hot competition for talent across the country when you think about, I think you're talking about high-tech labs, biotech, that kind of thing, computer computing. and all of that. I really believe that in this particular instance, The private sector will build buildings and will furnish them with the amenities that they believe they will need to attract the talent. So if you think about, you mentioned the possibility of a two parking space minimum for 1,000 square feet of lab space, I think, that is almost the same amount of development that would be required as for the lab space itself. So each parking space, let's call it nine by 18, nine by 20, that's 180 square feet, times two, that's 360 square feet, plus the drive aisle.

You're pushing into, because cars have to get out, So that's maybe double that. You're really pushing up to 1000 square feet of parking. that you are asking a developer of the lab, property owner, to create in addition to the lab itself. And by doing that, if they presumably would have to build a structured parking garage, not only would the city make that building harder to Thank you for joining us. can go to San Francisco or Austin and build the same building with no parking mandates. Where do you think they might go if the cost of the building itself is a constraining factor?

I think, Professor, we did actually convince them, and working with the planning department, we did manage to convince them that we could get away with much less. I think the premise was that they were anticipating that their workforce were going to come from a distance rather than having a locally based workforce. And it brings me to the other issue about, you know, I'm in support of doing away with parking minimums, but I also think the other part of the zoning conversation is to make sure that we have neighborhoods that have amenities locally available Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Blue bikes or some transit infrastructure that will offset the impact of less parking. Have you any thoughts on those sort of concepts?

Sure, and I think daycares are a great use and the City Council's addressed parking when it comes to daycares, but there are so many things that residents might need, even if not retail amenities that are non-residential uses. So I do think this idea of maybe at a minimum extending the parking mandate, elimination of parking mandates, two buildings that have residential and non-residential uses, extending that to the non-residential uses in those buildings. You also... Oh, gosh, I lost my train of thought there. But again, the cities that I mentioned earlier have done both. They've eliminated it on both sides, kind of seeing that that is that. Just makes sense, because again, for all the same reasons that you want to eliminate residential mandates, they're really similar.

and what I learned in 2023 was that small businesses in Boston really struggle with development costs and they might even close or they might not expand because doing so would trigger Zoning Compliance, or they might close because they can't grow in the city, they might move out. So hearing stories about that, you know, again, to me kind of reinforces whatever the business is, whatever the commercial use is, We should trust that those individuals running those businesses will want to do what's best for their businesses and will provide parking, among many other things, of course, that they would need to provide.

You also mentioned if there was no expansion to at least streamline the code, what do you think is the most effective way to, if we didn't go to parking minimums, full-blown parking minimums, what was the best way to streamline the code?

Well, I mean, you can pick any use. Let's say retail uses. In some parts of the code, the retail use in this neighborhood, so there's 90 chapters, a bunch of them are neighborhood-specific chapters. I'm sure you've You've probably read the whole code at this point, but let's just use retail as an example. There might be different kinds of sub-retail uses. There might be three parking spaces for a thousand in one neighborhood. There might be two parking spaces for a thousand square feet in another neighborhood. Basically, leveling the playing field, particularly for small businesses, maybe for some uses like labs and high-tech facilities that you want to attract, especially when you're competing against other places, at least consolidating those into one place so that a small business who's operating in one neighborhood and wants to move to a different neighborhood It kind of has at least some consistency in the types of development costs that they will have to incur and they will have less impetus to have to hire a lawyer to navigate Wait, is it this? Is it that?

There's a bunch of overlays in the Boston Zoning Code. I'm about to come out with a paper that says cities should get rid of overlay districts Not because I'm lazy and I don't want our National Zoning Atlas team to have to keep dealing with overlays, but because they just add regulatory confusion. In my written testimony, I pull out from that report I wrote just a number of citations where overlays change, add, do weird things relating to parking. So I would say Just taking all the uses, seeing how they play out in the code, and even if you don't eliminate them, go with the average, go with the least onerous, and make that a citywide rule.

Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you. Councillor Flynn.

We are not listening to the repeated feedback we've received for years from the development and business community on why we're not building housing in Boston. Businesses and developers are not investing in Boston because of added affordable and environmental requirements, rent control, is a possibility on top of the already tough business environment, high interest rates, taxes, increased construction costs and tariffs. District two that I represent has built more affordable housing than any district in the city, probably over the last 15 years. I have more public housing than any district in the city of Boston as well.

With the MBTA needing over $30 billion in repairs and school buses routinely running late, working families in Chinatown, Bay Village, Southend, South Boston, they rely on a car. to meet their needs. When we don't include parking in new buildings, those cars end up on the streets, contributing to our existing parking crisis. Councilor Santana knows because there was a development at 49 D Street that you were highlighting, you were referencing. 70 units proposal, zero parking spaces. And you joined me against the proposal. because residents needed parking. Families need parking. There is nothing wrong with working families needing a car to meet their responsibilities for employment that our seniors

Persons with disabilities often use their vehicle to make appointments. Young families need to take their children to an after-school program. In my neighborhood of South Boston, at one time there were 28 I advocated for a BTD audit and we removed nearly 8,000 permits. while the city does not control post-pandemic inflation A high interest rate environment for several years now, rising construction costs, as I mentioned, and tariffs. Municipal governments should focus on what we can control, the local requirements we added. All options must be on the table to increase supply

That's why I have repeatedly advocated for the city and filed legislation this year on a temporary rollback of our increased affordable unit and environmental requirements in the next five years. I filed a text amendment that would require on-site affordable housing in planned downtown Boston. But removing parking in a new development will not address the housing crisis. It will only lead to more cars in the street. Worsen our existing parking crisis. Negatively impact the quality of life. I also know that the director of the BPDA is against this proposal. I heard him say it recently. I think the chair asked him if he supports this, if he supports this plan, and he came out and said no, he doesn't support it. I think the chair wanted him to kind of retract that statement, but he didn't.

The City Council will soon vote on this proposal and probably rubber stamp it, try to get it through. But we do have a responsibility to those that do need a car. They can't be viewed as the enemy because I see them, I see these young families and I see them taking their kids. They need a car to go to the after school program. Sometimes a single mother needs to drive her daughter to a dancing recital or take her son to a sporting event. or take an elderly person, an elderly family member to a doctor's appointment. We can't all use Uber and Lyft to do that. Some families, they do need automobiles, and they shouldn't be punished because of that. That's what makes Boston great, is you have the ability to decide if that's what you need, if you need an automobile.

in your neighborhood, but to really cut out the opportunity for working families, struggling parents, and try to tell them that they can't have a car in the city is disingenuous. Because when we need a vehicle, we have access to a vehicle because we have the funds. But when someone that doesn't have the funds needs a vehicle, it's very difficult for them to get to where they're going to support their family. We can't penalize and punish working class families in this city. They've helped build Boston. Now we want to change the rules on them and not welcome them back to Boston make it difficult for them to raise families. I don't think that's fair. And I don't think the chair of the planning department thinks it's fair either.

because he was clear to us several weeks ago that he's not in favor of this. He knows it will hurt development. It will hurt families. My time is almost up. My question is to the chair. Is there anyone that is testifying on the panel that's against your proposal?

Well, I think you've just done that. So I think, do you have any questions for the panel?

So the answer is no.

Thank you. We're going to go to Councilor Fitzgerald.

Thank you very much, Chair. I did get here before Ed, so he took some of my thunder there. But I was going to ask first if there is another panel because I believe there's not. So we know we have a one-sided panel at the moment, so I will try my best.

Sorry, I'll just pause your time because I do want to respond to that. The proposal being presented before the Planning, Development, and Transportation Committee today is a 35-page amendment to the Boston Zoning Code Touching both the base code, Article 23, and all of the neighborhood articles. And so we were unable to find experts against this proposal. because there is a mountain and a body of research. And so these are the experts that can speak to this. We have received testimony that is provided to the committee against this proposal from resident organizations. and that should be in the folder. So I will yield back my time and I know I've gotten this question before, but there was not an organization

We have pretty broad consensus in this. This particular proposal has some strange bedfellows. There's a lot of different organizations and a lot of different constituencies that are supportive of this. So I'll yield back your time. Go ahead, Fitzgerald.

Thank you, Chair. And all I'll say is it doesn't have to be experts from an organization. It could have been working class families, people who live in neighborhoods, people affected. Jerry, you seem like a great kid. You moved here two and a half years ago, right? If we're going to call him an expert in this, and I'm sure you are, I'm just saying there are people we could have found. However, that being said, I've never owned a car.

I'm sorry, respectfully, that is inappropriate to come for a member of the panel.

I'm just talking—

Can you pause my time if we're going to do this? Yeah, go ahead. I'll let you go. Go ahead.

Thank you. So, never owned a car, right, up until I was about 40 years old. So, taking the T, walking, and good friends and family. That's how people always ask, how'd you get around, right? And I still believe that. So I apologize if that was insulting to you. All I meant was in looking for action. And I do apologize because I do believe you're a good kid. I was in your shoes once and I did exactly what you did. You didn't need a car to get around in this city. I will ask, though, not only that, I just want to know who here on the panel lives in the city of Boston. Jesse, I heard you. I know you as well. Who lives in the city of Boston and has young children on this panel? Okay, so Jesse's the only one. All right, so one person is raising a family in this city with these going forward. So just maybe I can focus to you, but open to everybody here at the moment. Who makes the call on how many actual spots would get built on any given development? Who is the decision maker?

We call it market forces will decide, but ultimately someone has to make that call. Who is that?

You mean in the case of if this passes?

In a development going forward, who decides what the number of spots will be?

Ultimately, a developer who is trying to build homes. in a particular neighborhood of Boston will make an assessment based on the likelihood of renting or selling those units in that given neighborhood. If there is a neighborhood that is further from public transit, I would expect that developer would make the decision to include a high percentage of parking given that they will have a hard time renting or selling those homes to anyone in that neighborhood if it were disconnected from public transit. Yes, the answer to your question is the developer proposing the project would be. Of course, we have a whole process in the city that includes reviews, design reviews, etc., With the planning department, so there's great feedback from them as well.

Right, but as it works now, any development that goes forward, the development does propose how many spots they think, and typically the planning department right now comes back and says, lower the amount of parking spots you have. So you could say right now parking minimums are sort of, I mean, they're asking people to build with only, you know, 26 units with three parking spots, right? So to me, the call comes from the planning department, ultimately. It's not the developer. It's the planning department who holds the cards and who can decide how much. Would that be fair to say, you think? Currently, you're saying? Yes. Currently, yes. And if we were to get rid of parking minimums, then who makes the call to decide what the final number might be?

A builder of homes who's trying to rent or build homes in that neighborhood, recognizing that there's certainly parts of your district councilor where doing a zero parking development would not make any sense, and they would not be able to rent or sell that

But if the planning department were to say we only want X amount of spots for you to provide, Does the developer get to overrule that, or does the planning department say, no, we want you to do that, or we are not approving this project? Can you repeat that? You're saying the developer decides, right? And you say they put it forward. But if the planning department as such, if we get rid of parking minimums, and someone has to decide how many parking spots are going to happen at a development, The planning department has the authority over the developer. You're saying the developer decides. I don't think he decides. He proposes. The planning department decides. So that's how it is now. That's how it will continue to be if we did a parking ban, correct? If we got rid of the minimum.

Can I just jump in and make a clarification?

I'm sorry, Jesse. Because I do have questions for you, Professor, as well.

Go ahead. So just to make a quick clarification, this proposal from my reading doesn't impose a maximum amount of parking spaces. So many cities who eliminate minimums, they don't eliminate the possibility that the developer will provide parking. Those cities also include parking maximums, which actually would limit on the top end the amount of parking that can be built. This proposal doesn't have a maximum. Hartford, for example, as a maximum across every parking use. And that is really to curb excessive parking. This parking proposal doesn't do that. And so what Jesse's trying to convey is that the individual developers would decide under this proposal how much parking they would build. And as long as their proposal is consistent with The design standards and everything else, they would be elected to do that with no maximum.

There's a difference between decision-making and proposal. I think that's what I'm trying to get at. The developer proposes. Somebody has to decide. And at the end, I want to know who that decision-making power lies with.

Under the status quo, because of the arbitrary parking mandates we have across the city, which research from MAPC and others have shown much of it goes underutilized and unused. In order to build less parking today, we require a variance on top of many other variances, certainly just to build a standard triple decker, three decker in the city of Boston. And so under the status quo, yes, it is the BPDA board and ultimately the ZBA that sign off on it, but we are adding and many more. We have to pay tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the type of to the time and opportunity cost of going through a very extensive process to debate this

often a small group of neighbors through the BPA board and the ZBA process that could add for each underutilized or unused parking space, 10 to hundreds of thousands of dollars to the development cost which increases the cost of homes in the city, meaning an average of approximately $200 more in rent per month for residents of the city. So yes, You're right that this is a change to the status quo that would put some of the decision-making, a lot of the decision-making power in home builders in our city, recognizing that home builders still need to be able to rent or sell those homes in those neighborhoods. They need to be attractive, and if a neighborhood is disconnected from transit,

Fitzgerald.

So we're going to go to Councilor Pepén yet next. I do want to just read a couple of things into the record. So there is a difference between Article 80 projects and small projects. For Article 80 projects, the Planning Department has already instituted parking maximums. And so right now, what we're talking about and where this proposal will have the most impact is for small projects. and so on. Northeastern is currently in the process of building a 1,000-bed dorm, which the city required zero parking to build, but when someone wants to legalize a I personally feel like, and this is my personal opinion as the person putting forward this proposal, and so forth.

I think that is an equitable that someone who would want to legalize a unit in their home would have a way different process than Northeastern building in a For those that are testifying today, if you are someone who has a family that does support this proposal, it sounds like my colleagues would like to know that you have a family in order to Pepen, you have the floor.

Thank you Madam Chair. And I just want to start off by, again, thanking the panelists for being here. If there's any animosity that you feel, it's not personal. Don't take it personal. We appreciate your testimonies here today. I have three kids. I have one car. and I get very frustrated when the landlords don't park in their driveways. They're very long driveways and they park on the street. So I think there's other things that we need to fix in the city of Boston as well. I have a question. I think this is more towards the chair if you could get some information from the planning department. There is already areas in the city of Boston that has PATS rezoning with no parking minimums. Is this correct?

I'll just clarify that I know that that has been a talking point that the planning department, I'll pause your time. This has been a talking point that the planning department has made. is that when they go through the neighborhood zoning, that they'll eliminate parking minimums alongside that. That hasn't been proven because in planned Charlestown, I think it was six units or under was zeroed out. So it wasn't a total abolishment of the parking minimums and those for residential development. I think for Plan Charlestown it was six, and for Plan East Boston it was another number, but it wasn't... You know, it was only sort of small time if you were doing small units. So I'll give you back your time.

Okay, thank you for that clarification. So I know that other municipalities in areas across the country have been named already. that have passed this. I'm curious because I'm also working on the side on parking structures and creating creative solutions to parking problems. Have those cities and municipalities across the country kind of like, Yes, they got rid of the parking minimums, but they've also created other parking solutions. Do you have examples of that, especially in commercial areas? I mean, I represent a district with three very strong local main streets corners. and obviously the concern is how are we going to be able to build more and be able to continue to bring in residents to shop in our local shops. Obviously we have some municipal lots, but I'm just thinking about creative ways to kind of Take away that feeling of we won't be able to shop here anymore. That would be good for...

Yeah, there's actually a lot of different approaches to thinking creatively about parking all across the country. Some of it is actually about incentivizing folks to park in other places and creating good walkable connections between those. We also in general don't price parking according to how much it's actually the land value of how much it's actually worth. So some communities have also taken innovative approaches to actually pricing parking, not necessarily for residents, but for people who are coming to that place to visit and shop and act as tourists. Salem has actually done some very innovative work around the parking structures that they created kind of on the ring of their downtown so that like people are still actually very, it's very easy to access like downtown Salem and shop and walk but then they've incentivized parking for that sort of like outer ring.

and created innovative financing mechanisms to actually collect dollars that are then reinvested in the city to create more walkable usable ways to get around and we are seeing that that's happening all over the country. That there's much more innovative ways to think about not just how we're right-sizing parking, the question before us here, but actually thinking about how we're distributing parking as a

I'm so glad that you bring that up because even without this being implemented we already have a lot of parking issues, a lot of parking concerns if it's about Enforcement of parking, people abusing the time limits to the spots that are available. We don't have a residential parking program right now that's active. There's so much more that we have to be doing in order to address the parking issues because obviously that is why I believe many families do have concerns with this proposal because it's like the experience right now isn't great. Where we're trying to head towards is a place where not only are we going to be able to have more solutions to the parking concerns that we have, but this is very connected to the housing conversation. And I've already seen it firsthand where there's been proposals in my district where the zoning does require a certain amount of parking spots.

Like a duplex in Reedville requires four parking spots in that specific zoning. With something like this, it could just be two parking spots, just an example. And I think that that is why we need to look at this approach holistically with not just the parking minimums, with everything else as well as part of the conversation. I think Councilor Santana said it's a part of the toolbox, but I think that maybe we could do a parking policy briefing work in session someday with these panelists, but also bring in the other areas of the transportation department and other focus areas because this is just one piece of what we, not only as counselors, but as residents are experiencing.

I'll just say, Councillor, we've done a lot of work on this and kind of looking at some of our sister planning agencies and major metros across the country. So to the extent that we can be helpful, we'd be glad to be.

That'd be great. That's why I've been supportive of this because I know that there's a bigger outlying picture. It's not just about ending parking minimums. There's so much more behind this that I know that. We can get to. But that's really it for me in regards to questions. I just wanted to put that out there. And I want this to be an extended conversation. Even if this gets passed, if it doesn't, I think we still have to talk about parking in general in the city of Boston.

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Councilor Pepén. So next, we're going to go to Councilor Louijeune. Oh, sorry. Worrell, sorry.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you to the panel for being here. I applaud all of the ways that the council and many other experts are looking to increase housing in our neighborhoods or in the city. But I do believe a lot of these creative ways on jumpstarting construction should be based Neighborhood by neighborhood. Not every neighborhood is the same in terms of amenities, walkability, et cetera. Downtown, we're connected by so many different trains lines. There's other parts of the city that does not have rapid transit. There's also just way more parking out here already compared to what's in the neighborhoods. So I think that we have to take a look at it neighborhood by neighborhood.

I do not agree with a citywide blanket zoning reform on eliminating the parking mandates. because we already have through the zoning boards of appeals that relief and those conversations happen quite frequently in these neighborhood conversations where That trade-off between affordability, housing units, they see the benefit of it, right? So I think that I would love to just kind of get an idea, right? Is it I can't even imagine that we're building one-to-one parking. I would probably think that we're more on that 75% that you brought up. So it's like, is this even needed? because we're already not providing the parking that is in the zoning board of release. I understand that we want to streamline things, but it's like at what cost, right?

Like how much money are we saving at that cost when we're You know, just having a conversation on how much more parking spaces we have. So this brings me to two points. Right now, the parking minimum is tied to the affordability. If we take this away, there's nothing in this law that then says that we have to provide lower rents. There's nothing that says that it's not tied to affordable housing if we were to strip this away now. Now we're applying it to everybody. opposed to those that are providing affordable housing. And the other question is, I know that there are other cities here in the state of Massachusetts that have similar or even higher parking minimums but lower rents and lower housing. So I know that you could probably find some cities, but there are some other cities that have same and also lower cost of housing.

So how do you speak to that?

Actually, I wanted to speak actually to the first point that you made about sort of the data point around some of the parking vacancy in the city of Boston, because I actually think it's important. So we did our parking. Perfect Fit Parking Study. We studied 55 multifamily sites in Boston.

What parts of Boston?

All over the city. I have like a long... My team can share with you. I think we probably even have some copies here. We have like multiple... Data things with numbers on them.

And I only have 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

I'll be quicker. Sorry, sorry. But basically, we found that nearly 3 in 10 parking spots at those sites were vacant overnight. So we do actually have some data that shows that we are overbuilding, and we have that data. In every neighborhood that we looked at, that was the case. It was about an average of 3 in 10 spots were vacant.

And I love data, but I think that there's always more to the story, right?

We can give you more data.

Is it again? Yeah, but I'm saying there's always more to the story, right? Like, it's some of those people working overnight, right? Like, we don't know what the case is.

We go multiple times. The way we do it and...

But I do have another question. I don't want to cut you off. Just because I only have two minutes left. And then the way that I like to create any legislation is having all stakeholders at the table. I want to talk to the city. I want to talk to the experts. I want to talk to the community members to see that can we all get on board on creating a law that works for everybody. When you were creating this legislation, this text amendment, how many different civic associations, people within different neighborhoods did you have conversations within? Can you share with who?

So I'm a member of Better Parking for Boston. Our group has stakeholders across a variety of constituencies, folks that are developers, folks that are a variety of advocates. but the text of the amendment itself.

Can I ask my question a little bit more specifically then? Did you reach out to any like neighborhood group or neighborhood or civic organization or NDC within District 4.

So I did not because the text of this document is like... Citywide? The text of the document is eliminating parking minimums. My job was to draft a document that achieves the goal of removing park minimums. That is what this document does. Whether you as a councilor and the rest of the council thinks that this is

Yeah, I got 15 seconds. My last question is around I know we're saying that parking is one of the biggest barriers to providing affordable housing. How do you equate, can you provide the different like the other policies in terms of like a dollar amount and show that this is the biggest barrier, that parking minimums is the biggest barrier. Have you ever done that analysis?

I think there's a variety of factors in our rather extensive and cumbersome permitting process that drive up the cost. I don't disagree with some of the comments Flynn made about other areas that are impacting our ability to produce the abundance of homes, the variety of price points and sizes that Boston residents need. I think he had a good point in that there are a number of factors that the city of Boston controls. We don't control interest rates or tariffs or the cost of labor, things like that. Things like the timeline for permitting, the zoning restriction that make you need to get 9, 10, 15, 20 variances just to build a three-decker. in the City of Boston. All of these contribute together to the cost. I don't know of a specific study that looks at the exact price point of every input into the development process in Boston.

but needless to say, it is at least $10,000 to build a surface parking space here in the city of Boston that can equate to an average Increase in rent of $200 per month. And then can I ask the last question?

Yeah, sure.

The text amendment includes parking for hotels. Why for hotels?

Yeah, so the goal was to eliminate anything that is residential. And it is a squishy question of whether something is or is not residential. and then in the draft deemed hotels not to be a residential use. As Professor Broner has said, it would be great to see minimums removed for all uses. The goal of this draft was to remove park minimums for residential uses and hotels we did not see as a residential use. If you would like to remove park minimums for hotels as well, I think we'd be open to that conversation as well.

Thank you. Yeah, and I just think that those are the visitors, right? I mean, they're not coming here with a car, right? So it was just kind of interesting to see that that wasn't Eliminated. Thank you.

Can I also just, because I think, I agree with you, Councilor Worrell, on that point, on the first point that the neighborhoods are very different. and right now my understanding is that we have this neighborhood by neighborhood approach but and this was a lot of the discussion that we had with our members but we also felt like actually that was itself not sufficient because if you're trying to build new housing say right on top of Ashmont Station versus if you're moving just a little bit further into Dorchester and St. Mark's. Those are very different transit access situations that require then different levels of parking. And right now, my understanding is the code does not make that kind of distinction. And so this would allow that kind of flexibility Block by Block, Street by Street.

Yeah, and I guess what I'm saying is like I think that what I've seen through my four years on the council is that neighborhoods, you know, they want to negotiate that through the civic meeting and they end up I think that's also reflective Dorchester having some of the highest new construction permits in the city of Boston and I mean if we are having trouble building housing elsewhere right we should targeted our Zoning plans and our policies to make sure that we are jump-starting those areas. But we are doing very well in construction and building in Dorchester. And maybe we could be doing better elsewhere.

Thank you, Councilor Worrell. I want to make sure we give, because Professor Bronin's report does touch on some of the themes that were, so Professor Bronin.

Sure, I think this is a really important conversation and I just want to reflect back on, by the way, I do have three children and I have never had more than one car during the entirety of their I'm with those who share that. But I wanted to just relay because one of the questions was, how do you develop a policy like this? In Hartford, which is one of the lowest income cities in the country with a population that is 85% Black and Latino, including myself, we held more than 75 meetings with every single neighborhood association Every small business association with young people with environmental justice advocates. And it was actually based on their feedback and their buy-in with our parking proposal that we eliminated parking mandates in one night and unanimously.

And the root of it was that we felt it was an equity issue, truly. And there's a couple of reasons for this. And I think they go back to some of the comments We heard a little bit earlier about whether low-income people are penalized by this type of policy. and I would say that low-income people are being more penalized now financially because they are forced to live in housing developments that are more expensive than they should be because somebody arbitrarily told them that they had to build, the developer had to build parking. Those parking costs are not eaten by the developer. They are passed on to residents whether they have a car or not. We also know in Hartford and in Boston, that there are plenty of places right now, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of housing units that come with parking.

So there is no penalty to people who want to come and live in Boston with their car. In fact, they have every option in the world almost to bring their car to the city. We're not taking those parking spots away with this proposal. We didn't do it in Hartford. There's parking all over Hartford that already existed and will continue to exist. The purpose of a text amendment like this is to say going forward, the new housing that is built, where housing is built at all, will not have The parking tax that is imposed on new residents by virtue of the fact that those costs are being passed on. I actually think it's the reverse. I think low-income residents are more penalized by the current policy financially and otherwise than the change.

Thank you, Professor Bronin, and thank you, Councilor Worrell. We're going to go to Councilor Louijeune. You have six minutes.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for being here. And my apologies for not being here while I was awake. I currently do not own a car. I share a car with my mother and my sisters. I live somewhat close to each other and even my sisters with kids. Share cars. So there's a lot of car sharing in my family. I have a question really about the 75% because I oscillate between does it make sense to incentivize folks to do less parking and how we can do that, or whether a citywide approach is the best approach. and I think someone was mentioning the 75% and I think that's important to clarify what the 75% is.

My understanding of what was stated is that in other cities that enacted a similar reform, you still saw 75% of the parking being built compared to what was being built prior. Is that the right data? Yes.

I was specifically, Councillor, quoting data that we heard from those Austin Councillors who visited two years ago in their testimony here.

And are there other examples outside of Austin where you've seen that? And do we have like a longitudinal view? So I can see how like maybe... In the first year out, for example, of removing a citywide mandate for parking, perhaps you still see a high percentage of parking, but maybe over time, It decreases. Does anybody sort of have that longitudinal view?

That may be better either for MAPC or for Professor Bronin.

Yeah, I mean, I think partly because this is just on new construction, it will take To see sort of a change will take a long time, but I think the point about Austin is also relevant to the data point I was raising with the counselor earlier about if three in ten spots are already vacant overnight, so we already understand that there's an overbuild of parking, that that actually would make sense, that as we're trying to right-size the parking, and we're actually taking this data-driven approach to it, that you would actually see developers making proposals that are coming in closer to that 75% of what they would have proposed under a previous regime would now be proposed and then built.

And you're saying that the data that you have You're just giving this example, but it's funny because the minute you said right size, I thought about right size. Is that what this you think is achieving? Right sizing and why?

The reason I think for us that it feels like right-sizing the question around parking, it's actually directly related to the point that Sarah was making just a minute ago, is that right now, if three in ten spots are vacant, Your residents, our neighbors, are already paying for them. But we're not using that land in any good way. It's just sitting there paved overnight. as like a concrete surface that's not being used for anything. And so if we actually right size, if we meet the moment of like, this is the actual amount of parking that we need for the residents, our neighbors, our communities that we have, We can get higher and better uses of that land, invest in affordable housing, invest it in more green spaces, which is what we need.

Thank you. Going back to my sisters, I have a sister who will, like, before we go anywhere, always, she's like, is there parking? She wants to know whether she will find a parking spot, um, wherever she's going. And I think that is the concern that is being elevated by community members, civic leaders, is that oftentimes you reduce the amount of parking that exists on site, there becomes more of a crunched for street parking. How do we handle that? What is the response to that?

I mean, I'll say I don't live in Boston now, but I have. And I have two children. And they go to recitals and all kinds of sports events all over the place. And I ask the same question your sister asks. Is there going to be a place where we can park if we can't take transit there? And I think that you can honestly respond to your residents and say, yes, there will be parking. Because a lot of this, this conversation that we're having today is about residential parking. But some of these issues are directly related to the other pieces that Councilor Pepén was raising around how do we think about parking and land use in a broader scale across the city. All of those questions are connected and you're totally right to be thinking about them together. But I think that based on The research that we have done, the research that my colleagues have done, you could tell your residents that, yes, even if we move in this direction and meet the right size of parking that we actually need across the city in new development, there's still going to be parking.

And can I add, Councilor?

Yeah, but I only got 45 more seconds and I got more questions. All right, you go ahead. Quickly, okay. I wanted to highlight something that Councilor Santana said because I think that's something that's really important. He and I have actually talked about this, is that when people hear eliminating parking minimums, they hear eliminating parking. Period. And so, where I think I disagree a little bit is that we have done the work of education to explain that that's not what's happening. Personally don't always feel like this is the area where the education is happening or should happen. What are you all doing to do that work of education? Have you thought about messaging around what it would look like?

We really, I mean, messaging is key. We try to avoid the complicated language of eliminating parking minimums. To be honest, we like to talk about increasing parking flexibility, decreasing the amount of asphalt required for new housing. When we have framed it like that, as I've talked to this council ad nauseam, about polling that we've done across the city. 550 residents conducted in English and Spanish and a variety of housing issues. We see when asking folks in every neighborhood of the city about increasing flexibility for parking and new developments, 70% of Boston residents explicitly support allowing flexibility on paved parking, new housing developments, including 67% of residents in Dorchester, 67% of residents in the combination of Hyde Park, Mattapan, and Roxbury, 65% of JP, Roslindale, and West Roxbury residents, portions of Councilor Flynn's district, We got 80%.

So parking flexibility and recognizing the impact it has on our ability to create the homes, the affordable homes that Boston residents need is something that statistically valid research has shown is something that residents in every single neighborhood of the city support.

And how did you define parking flexibility? That's just my last.

I can get you. I don't have the exact language right in front of me. I can get it to you all.

Thank you. I have more questions, but I'll yield to the chair.

Thank you. We have a lot of public testimony, and I know we've already lost some people who have now emailed me their public testimony. I do want to read. Something from the planning department, because I know that they're not present at this hearing. Okay, this is from the planning department. The Planning Department staff reviewed the zoning proposal order for a text amendment to the Boston Zoning Code with respect to parking minimums for new residential development. Submitted to the Council on April 13, 2026. Our review found that this proposal is technically sound and does not require any specific changes to allow the City to fulfill our obligations as regulators. Following the June 17, 2026 Zoning Commission, some minor changes to the numbering of amendments may be required to reflect changes to the existing text by other amendments addressing Chinatown and signage.

The Planning Department has been working to update the parking requirements through various rezoning initiatives centering community conversations and engagement. So that is from the planning department. And I think that what they're saying is after the next zoning meeting, we may have to change some of the numbering of the amendment if this were to pass. So I want to thank our panelists for being here. I'm really grateful for all of you and your expertise. I do think it's really hard to fit the amount of information that we need to fit. and many more. This is our first hearing on a proposal like this one in this We did have a hearing in December which I encourage folks who care about this issue to

to go watch that hearing because we definitely went more in depth on the merits of the proposal and now we're talking about the zoning amendment. So thank you, Professor Bronin. Thank you to our panelists who are here in person. We're going to move to public testimony because I have a couple of pages of public testimony. And I'm grateful to those who I think we have A couple dozen folks who have already submitted public testimony, which is part of the record. So our panel is relieved. Thank you so much. Um, and could I get a list from central staff on who's online? Thank you. Um, so first we're going to go in person, um, and I'll just give everyone a chance to, I'll just read the list. Neil, um, Marath, Mattapan.

Ryan Roach or Resin Roach. Sorry, I think it's Resin Roach. Fred Watts, so if people want to get in line. And you can use either microphone. So Neil, are you Neil?

Yes ma'am.

Okay you have two minutes. Sorry I'm one second let me figure this out. Okay you have two minutes.

Hello, good morning. I'm Neil, a tenant in Mattapan, a neighborhood that, according to the 2023 planned Mattapan report, has been a place of opportunity for housing access for underprivileged groups for decades. I am an observer of this. My housing and accessory dwelling unit within a single-family home was possible for the homeowner to include without concern for off-street parking. In the current ordinance, ADUs are the only residential use in Mattapan neighborhood with a space per dwelling unit minimum of zero. and the Greater Mattapan Neighborhood District is the only one in which ADUs have any specified minimum. In most other neighborhood districts, minimums are currently counted by unit count, which makes my kind of housing impractical for current homeowners to invest in creating. Removal of parking minimums on residential uses removes a barrier to entry for homeowners to individually choose to make an economically beneficial decision for themselves. As the amendment draft explains, it also, of course, decreases the barrier to creating market rate housing for developers of all scales.

I want to speak to the point of this amendment supporting the existence of a variety of housing types, not just walkable neighborhoods young people like myself seem to exclusively praise. I have slightly differing needs from what is assumed for young people with higher hearing sensitivity. While I do love exploring dense environments and being part of the community that these places naturally create, I can't exactly stand living in the middle of one. I'm living affordably in a quiet, tight-knit residential neighborhood with people who are not my parents and still living car-free quite comfortably. This kind of housing is very hard to find in the rest of the country and, in my opinion, is one existing strength of the City of Boston. For other neurodivergent people with needs differing from mine, a diversity in available housing stock can be a serious lifeline for our quality of life. I urge the council to support this amendment in accordance with the city's goals of cost of living, city budget, and environmental sustainability. Thank you. I'll take my time.

Thank you so much. And that was perfect timing. Rezin Roach? Ryan Roach? Thank you.

Yeah, hi, thank you. My name is Ryan. I've lived in Dorchester for a little over 10 years, but I've been in Boston for about 20 now. I have a car, but I walk, bike, and take the TU whenever it's possible. And I'm in favor of eliminating all parking minimums across the city. In my neighborhood, St. Mark's, Walking around, we have... Like a way higher percentage of the homes have private driveways than most other places in the city I've seen. For some reason, they all choose not to park in them and then they all show up to every meeting about every development and pretend there's a parking crisis. and really 85% of these houses have a driveway that they're choosing not to use and I think it's really unfair that they're allowed to use our zoning rules to grind development to a halt over these parking concerns that really aren't valid in a lot of neighborhoods. And just because it's Dorchester doesn't mean that it's tight for parking everywhere. The other reason I'm against it is safety.

The police and the transit department don't enforce any traffic or parking rules at all. As a pedestrian, I am regularly almost hit by people who refuse to stop at stop signs, who are parked in crosswalks while they're dropping their kids off at school, picking up takeout, doing laundry for two hours, mandating increased car density, Be tied to increase housing density seems like it's coming at a direct expense of my safety as a pedestrian when none of these parking rules and none of these traffic rules are being enforced at all. is just adding more reckless drivers and then prioritizing the convenience of their parking over my safety as a pedestrian trying to get around my neighborhood. So thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Ryan. Okay, Fred Watts. And everybody's doing great on time. Great job.

Thank you, Councilor.

Oh, can you turn that mic on?

I can just use that one.

Thank you, Councilor.

I'm Fred Watts, and I'm in favor of this proposal. In spite of the well-reasoned, holistic arguments you've heard today, I'm sure the council has heard from many constituents opposing this change. Maybe you worry that the silent majority of constituents who don't give testimony feel the same way. Let me share a story. In January, I attended a meeting of the Lower Mills Neighborhood Civic Group. By demographic, one of the most car-centric, settled parts of the city, and I too have a home and a car. Councilor Fitzgerald was there, and so was a staffer for Councilor Worrell named Timothy. if they need to second this story. There was a proposal at that meeting for a home to be sold to a developer who would change a single home into a four unit building with three parking spots. and immediately in this crowd of let's say 60 people on this chilly January evening, maybe 10 of them began fiercely opposing the idea that there was a discrepancy between four units and three parking spots.

They argued the point for maybe 10 minutes. And there were maybe one or two people in this crowd who supported it on the simple principle of More housing is good, and this didn't seem like that big of a sacrifice. I was one of the two. and at the end you'd expect given the discrepancy of the loud opposition to the small pocket of supporters that the measure would fail. But they finally put it to a vote and this demographic who again, are the sort of people who will go to a lower mills neighborhood civic meeting on a weekday in January. Passed. I think the majority was like... Six to four or seven to three, just at a wild guess. So what I'm offering is that I think while there might be a stereotype of opposition to parking, a very settled mindset,

Once they see opportunities for their neighbors and potential neighbors that at the cost of maybe one or two parking spots in their entire zip code, I think a lot of Bostonians will err on the side of generosity. Thank you.

Thank you. Eli Weiner? I think it's been great. Everyone's been saying their neighborhoods, if everyone wants to keep that up.

Hi, I'm Eli. I live in Roslindale. I am a father. I have lived in five different apartments in the last eight years. And every time I'm looking for a place to live, It's always a question of trade-offs. Like, am I doing laundry at the laundromat, or down in my basement with the coin-op, or do I have an in-unit washer-dryer? The same thing pretty much applies to parking. In that same time period, I've had no cars. I've had one car. I've had two cars. One car again. I've parked on the street. I've parked off street. and you know this just comes down to choices that are available to me to make and sometimes I don't care and a lot of times I don't care about having an off-street parking space for a car That's not the most important consideration for me when trying to figure out where I'm going to live. The most important consideration generally is how much it costs.

And I'm willing to compromise on things like walking down three flights of stairs to do laundry, Parking, with competitive street parking, things like that. I'm okay with that. So that overarching concern of affordability is the most important to me and that's why I support eliminating parking minimums because The research, all the information available is completely clear. This couldn't be any more clear, I don't think, that this is a win for housing affordability. So thank you.

Thank you so much, Eli. Cullen Dahmer, and then Tammy Espinola, Connie Forbes, and Vivian Gerard, just to be ready. And I just want to thank everyone. I know that it's like a crazy morning to be here at 10 AM on a Thursday. So thank you.

Yeah, hi, my name is Cullen Dimer. I'm a renter in Alston. I'm here to testify in support of the zoning amendment to remove the residential parking mandate citywide. So I have moved to Brighton in 2017 specifically because I found an apartment I could live in be within walking distance of the then new commuter rail station at Boston Landing. I knew that I didn't want the headache and the expense that comes with owning a car in the city. And almost 10 years later, it remains one of the best decisions I've ever made. My wife and I are looking to buy in the neighborhood. We'd love to put down roots and stay here long term. And we've noticed a consistent trend in the available housing, which is that homes without parking that we found are far more affordable than those with a space or two included. Our current zoning code mandates the construction of these expensive spots for new residential housing, whether the future residents are going to move in there and need them or not. That cost gets passed directly to home buyers and renters like us.

So as a city, we've made some incredible investments in public transportation and micromobility all over Boston. But if we continue to mandate that every new home come with those parking spaces, we're actively working against those investments. We need to update the zoning code so that the efforts to secure our new commuter rail stations, our protected bike lanes, and our frequent bus routes are not wasted. The amendment doesn't ban parking. It only eliminates the rigid, outdated, one size fits all mandates in our neighborhoods. and eliminating it will actually let our built environment adapt in real time to what the people of Boston actually need. In Alston Brighton, nearly half of our residents, Half of our households don't own a car. And so if a developer thinks parking would attract tenants, they'll build it, but we shouldn't have to require it by law. Thank you, Councillors. I urge you all to support this very important amendment.

Thank you so much. Tammy Espinola. And then Connie Forbes, Vivian Gerard, Nate Stell. Oh, go ahead.

Hi, my name is Connie Forres. I'm a longtime Roxbury resident, 60-plus years. And I will tell you that this decision that you've made to put a general Citywide policy in place disturbs me. I live in one of the most densely packed and stacked parts of Boston. And right now, residents who've lived there for a number of years are finding these new developments are going in and they're proposing to build with minimal parking. And what we're finding is residents who've parked on the street are finding that there are people who are in these new residential buildings where they minimize the parking are now coming home and finding no parking spaces. This is important because our community is based on multi-generational needs. We have families. We have senior citizens. We have people who are disabled. And if you can imagine coming home to an area that you don't have your own parking space. You have to park on the street. You have groceries and a child in your car. What do you do? Take the groceries in first? Take the child in first? It doesn't make sense. So when you're starting to talk about the, oh, it's only going to be off-street parking, I think that's a mis... Misconception.

This is going to be off-street parking that you're proposing for these residential buildings that are being built, but it's also double-edged. It's also going to affect people will not park in the parking spaces because, number one, A lot of the different community that have built these parking places do not allow visitors, overnight visitors, or family visiting. They can't park in those spaces. So three out of 10 may not be an accurate number. So I think that we should start looking at the real world versus a virtual world, which is based on data, and look at human beings. Because it's concerning to me, because again, We have residents who've been here for many years who are now not able to even stay in the community because they have new buildings going up that are forcing them out. And residents... who need cars are being told they don't deserve to have a car. And that's the message the city is sending, that these people who are coming in who don't have parking spaces in the buildings that are being proposed, We're now forcing our residents to take up the slack for those people who aren't parking in their buildings. So, thank you.

Thank you so much. Okay, Vivian Gerard, Nate Stell. Andrew Murray,

Good morning. My name is Vivian Jor, and my wife and I, we are Dorchester residents, small developer, and property managers. This parking mandate removal has the potential to make housing much more affordable citywide. I'll give some examples as a developer and Dorchester resident. One of them is a proposal by the non-profit developer VietAid at 190 Baldwin Street in Dorchester, near where I live. Earlier this year, VAT told us that adding eight underground parking spaces would increase the development cost by about $1 million. That happens to be $150,000 per unit. and there's a pretty typical price tag in my experience.

The mayor's office of housing said that would be too expensive, that the city would not provide financial support if the project was going to be this expensive. and personally I wouldn't support it either as I don't like to see my tax money getting spent on parking because this project is almost entirely taxpayer funded in one form or another. Another project that my wife and I developed recently where we built some of the most affordable housing in the city with no taxpayer money in this case. and we were only able to do this after we obtained a variance for the parking requirement. There was no way we could have made it work otherwise, but just getting that variance in itself created uncertainty for the project. It cost us time, cost us money, and it made our building more expensive.

We promote our affordable apartment as car-free living where people are not eligible to get a street parking permit. And we have had no problem whatsoever finding resident, local residents who live without a car. and we have a very long wait list of card-free applicants.

Thank you so much. Nate Stell.

Hi. My name's Nate Stell. I live in Roslindale. I've got three kids, a small business, and I co-founded Better Parking for Boston, which advocates for greater parking flexibility and doing a better job of managing our street parking. So I have two questions for the councilors who oppose this amendment. The first is, what makes Boston so unique that we can't do what 111 other cities in the US have already done? Some folks have mentioned this. Somerville, Denver, San Francisco, San Jose, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Toledo. They've all already done this, and they're not looking back. So what is different about us, truly? The second question is, could you please make a positive case for why these mandates are good? Can you explain why it makes sense in Dorchester and Jamaica Plain to require An apartment to build one and a half parking spaces, but a single family home only to provide one parking space. That seems weird because everyone here knows that homeowners typically own more cars than renters.

What's going on there? And also tell us, why is six the magic number of parking spaces required to build a triple-decker in Hyde Park or Rossendale? Six. I could go on, but I think we've made our case, several have made our case here, that these rules are arbitrary at best and deliberately exclusionary at worst. So I'd love to hear your case for why these actually constitute a thoughtful, well-crafted policy. With this amendment, there is a real opportunity to do something that works. And it's probably the best shot that the Council has had in years to improve affordability at the cost of zero taxpayer dollars. So if you're not going to support this, I genuinely would like to know what you are proposing to do instead to lower the cost of housing for your constituents. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Nate, and thank you for all your work. Andrew Murray. and then Aman Shakardas, sorry if I got that wrong, Darren Spence, and Eric Corot.

All right, my name is Andrew. I live in Roslindale, and I'm here today to speak in support of eliminating residential parking minimums. After I graduated from Northeastern, I chose to stay in Boston. I didn't own a car and I couldn't have afforded one on top of my rent. Fortunately, I didn't need one. Living near transit allowed me to build a career, establish roots, and make Boston my home. Today my wife and I own a home in Roslindale, and we're expecting our first child any day now. I still get around on public transit and by biking, and I really look forward to taking my son to daycare every day on the T. I know some people worry that the new housing is only for the transient population, but many of the people moving to Boston today are the homeowners, parents, volunteers, and community leaders Tomorrow, I know this because I was one of them, parking minimums treat every household as if it owns a car, yet about 35% of Boston households don't even own one vehicle. Those residents shouldn't be forced to pay higher housing costs so parking can be built for cars that they don't have. Rosendale Square shows that there is another way.

Our recent rezoning eliminated parking requirements in key areas around the square. Parking hasn't disappeared. Instead, projects are simply proposing providing parking based on the actual demand rather than a blanket mandate. Opponents call this proposal a one size fits all. I would argue the complete opposite. The real one size fits all policy is requiring every project in every neighborhood to provide the same predetermined amount of parking regardless of You know, whatever the individual needs of a family may be and whether they're going to use that parking or not. This proposal doesn't ban parking, it just simply allows flexibility and I urge the council to support it.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Aman Shakardas?

Perfect pronunciation. Good morning, council members. My name is Amant Jengerdas, and I'm here on behalf of Livable Streets Alliance, an organization representing thousands of Bostonian who want a better and a more equitable transportation system. Transportation outcomes and land use policies are closely linked, which is why our organization enthusiastically supports the elimination of parking minimums in order to free up space to provide More desperately needed housing and shared public space in Boston. I, like many members of Middle Liverpool Streets, choose not to own a car or use one to commute around. I walk, use the bus, train, and bike, whatever is easiest, cheapest, and oftentimes the fastest, during peak commuting hours. I'm speaking for thousands of Bostonians who have already made this choice and do not use, need, or want the expensive parking spaces that current regulations force developers to provide. So let us not waste precious space in our city.

Boston's cost of living is at a breaking point that is forcing people out, and by mandating parking, we are effectively adding a car tax to the cost of the building housing that ultimately increases rent or mortgage costs for residents. Additionally, we should not be incentivizing or worse requiring the massive financial burden of car ownership for low and middle income households that are already struggling to stay in the city. Every square foot required by a car is space stolen from a potential home, small business, or park. By removing these outdated parking minimums, we tell developers, instead of using your monies for parking spaces, build some more homes for Bostonians. By removing these mandates, we make it cheaper to build affordable housing and let residents live closer to work. Our demographics and habits are shifting here in Boston. Residents want more ways to get around, like walking, biking, and they want reliable buses and trains that get them there without having to worry about finding parking and paying for it. The car is no longer the main character and transportation story in Boston.

We see lots in lower-income neighborhoods that sit empty or are used for cheap, unmanaged overnight storage, telling us that we don't have a lack of parking. We have a lack of vision of how to efficiently and effectively use our land. So let's update that vision to reflect Boston's choices. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Okay, Darren Spence, Erica Rowe, Elvira Mora, and Ryan Bebb. Okay, that's the order.

Hi, I'm Darren Spence. I'm here today as the Founder and Executive Director of the Youth Affordable Housing Coalition, a fellow at Abundant Housing Massachusetts, and also a UMass Boston student. I would very much like to echo the strong support of removing parking minimums. In the Youth Affordable Housing Coalition, we have a small group of passionate researchers in various academic stages and areas that complete research topics on a broad range of topics regarding the housing crisis. One of our researchers named Isaac Rolnick from Tufts University created an exemplary research report addressing parking minimums. I believe the best way to convey the necessity of removing this regulation is to directly cite that research. Allow me to quote a report on streamlining housing regulations and permitting from a Youth Affordable Housing Coalition researcher. There is a broad academic consensus that parking minimums are unnecessary and redundant, upholding a false notion every housing unit must have a car and therefore needs parking.

This regulation actively increases construction costs, which are then pushed onto the consumer while also capping construction. Of course, this assumption is nonsensical. Many people do not have and or do not want a car, yet they still must pay the cost for an empty spot. It should come as little surprise then that in the recent Metropolitan Area Planning Council survey of communities west of Boston, 40% of the parking spaces sat vacant overnight. Likewise, when Salem investigated its now-implemented parking reform, they found that for multifamily housing, 38% of parking spaces were vacant. Beyond increasing costs of housing, parking requirements actively privilege cars over sustainable mobility while the world is facing a climate crisis. In effect, they create their own problem. If it is assumed that everyone needs a car, public transportation and biking infrastructure is then discouraged and therefore residents need a car to access their community.

In economic terms, a parking minimum free world is not a world without parking. Rather, it is a world where parking is determined by market instead of effectively subsidized by the government. People will still want parking, but now the supply will be able to accurately match the demand. In the face of overwhelming evidence, many cities have begun to reform their parking minimums. For example, Salem recently scrapped parking minimums for residential buildings.

Thank you so much. Sorry, you're just at time.

Okay, I apologize. Thank you for your time.

No, no, of course. Eric Herot.

Hi, my name is Eric Herot. I am a resident of Jamaica Plain. When I first moved to Boston, well, actually I should say when I first moved out of my parents' house since I was raised here, about 20 years ago, I did not own a car like so many other people. And for the vast majority of that 20 years until I was about 40 years old, I still didn't own a car. And during that entire time, I was really grateful to be able to find places that I could afford, all of which incidentally did not have off-street parking. When we were finally ready to have a kid, We went out and looked for places with enough bedrooms, so two, and we looked for a place that, we did not actively seek a place that had a parking space, but it turned out that that was what was available to us at the time. But we're really grateful to be able to find those affordable places that we could live at the time in our lives when that was what we could afford.

You know, we don't... Just as we don't want to force people without kids to pay for bedrooms that they don't need, we also shouldn't be forcing people without a car or who do not yet have a car to pay for parking spaces they don't need. That's really all I have to say about the issue. I'll cede my time. Thanks.

Thank you so much. Elvira Mora?

Hi, good afternoon, Chair, Councilors, and everyone else who stuck around. My name is Elvira Mora. I'm a community organizer, and I'm fortunate enough to be a lifelong daughter of Boston. I am here today to implore you to consider parking flexibility. I come from an immigrant working class family. My late father worked at the Hilton by the Logan Airport. He relied on the T every single day to get from Rossendale to East Boston. My mom is now retired after serving as a BPS teacher for over 30 years. She relied on a car to pick up snacks, and other items that she paid out of pocket to be able to educate her students. I currently am still able to reside in the triple decker that raised me with an attached ADU that welcomed my brother after he came back from college in Providence. and I also have a driveway attached that can fit two cars. I'm a five minute walk from a commuter rail station and three bus lines service my street.

I own a car myself, so I'm not going to sit here and tell you that owning a car or using a car is the enemy. This is also not an initiative presented by the City of Boston. This is just smart policy that other cities have already enacted nationwide. cities without a robust transit system like we do. The tea is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but imagine if we were able to fill those gaps and focused on our people. I am grateful to have not been priced out of my neighborhood. I have seen the growth of our main streets. There's a restaurant there that still is happily inhabited by a lot of different consumers and customers. This was a destination location once before. It is now no longer. Residents are able to walk by. Use it, cherish it, and have it be a part of their daily lives. There is still parking. I actively find a space if I use a car.

I haven't had a license until I was legally enough to drink. There was no reason for me to rely on a bus. We have the tools to mitigate our housing crisis. Let's use them. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Elvira. Okay, Ryan Bev. and then Dylan Kelting, Allison Geary, Kate Phelps and Jared Richardson is the order.

Good afternoon, Chair and Councillors. I just want to introduce myself, Ryan Bebb. I'm a previous resident of the East Boston neighborhood. I also run the Massachusetts UMB account on Twitter. It's a platform that I started because I realized there wasn't enough data and information being shared amongst people. Having more parking flexibility is one of those things that the data just repeatedly backs up is good for homeowners and for people that drive cars. Boston was founded as a European city, basically. Still basically is. We still have more transit than much of the country does. We have more walkable neighborhoods than much of the country. We have more of an ability to bike than much of the country. So one of our competitive advantages as a city is leaning into this place being walkable and transit-oriented.

And every time I hear that there is like this push for the government to mandate how many parking spaces someplace should have. It just sounds like we are trying to step away from that and take a more Los Angeles approach than a Boston approach. And I hear a handful of people saying that one of their concerns is, oh, well, if I can't get to this neighborhood, By the T, that I need a car. And I'd sort of flip that back to them and say, well, why are we not making those long-term investments? And even in Councilor Flynn's neighborhoods where he was saying that a lot of people in South Boston, the South End, need cars because they can't get to certain places. Well, in the case of the South End, they used to have the Orange Line going through deeper into the South End. That was later moved slightly further northwest to better accommodate various infrastructure projects that were happening at the time. So I think there's just a larger conversation to be had about various things that can be done.

Eliminating parking minimums is one of them. Single-stay residential housing. Shrieking sizes of ridiculously sized elevators that we have, legalizing brownstones again, legalizing row houses, and many other things. But I just want to voice that many people that are my age In their late 20s and also thinking about having kids, they want to stay here. They want to find places that are affordable.

Thank you. Dylan Kelting, Allison Geary, Kate Phelps, Jared Richardson. Go ahead.

Hello, dear councillors. My name is Daylon. I live in 21 Revere Street in Beacon Hill, and I'm here to support removing parking minimums. Let me just say that times are changing, right? Since the 1980s, it's been pretty politically beneficial to be more careful, to not rock the boat, not push for change. That's been pretty rewarded, yeah? But that's very reminiscent of another time in American history, the 1880s through the 1920s, the Gilded Age, where it was about not rocking the boat, protecting wealth, things like that. But in the 1920s, we saw a change. We saw people wake up. We saw people realize that the policies of yesterday did not benefit the people of today. And I think we are seeing a similar change today in 2020s.

The same movement that happened in the 1920s today in the 2020s. People are waking up. People are realizing that the policies of yesterday do not benefit the people of today. And so in this environment, I ask you, dear counselors, are you going to continue supporting a policy that is over 70 years old and has not proven to benefit anyone, let alone the people of today. or are you going to push for more, for better, for the residents of today? And the residents of today are waking up and they can see what you do or do not do today. Thank you.

Thank you, Dalen. Allison Greery, Kate Phelps, and then Jared Richardson.

Hello, my name is Allison. I'm a homeowner in Beacon Hill. So I was gonna originally say something else for this, but some of the comments about young families made me Pretty deeply angry. I am a 27-year-old woman, and the closest people to me in the world right now are all having children or thinking about it. and they live all over. In my neighborhood, the problem, their number one problem is that if you have a stroller, you have to walk in the street because the sidewalks are inaccessible. If you live in Dorchester, their number one problem is not parking, but housing affordability. They can't stay in the city because on two teacher salaries, they cannot afford it. They drive around everywhere, they find parking is fine. For my friends who bike, the biggest problem is that there's such an inconsistent placement of bike lanes in the city.

and I think we really should be allowing and viewing all of these different styles of family as valid and as important and allowing The way we build to flex to meet those different approaches. Because there isn't one form of family living in Boston. Yeah, I think it's upsetting when our government forces one approach to that in our policy. Thank you.

Thank you so much and nice to meet you. Okay, Kate Phelps. I'm like some extra special thank yous to my constituents for being here. Go ahead, Kate.

My name is Kate Phelps. I live in Highland Park in Roxbury. And I'm not surprised, although I'm disappointed, that the City Council is considering a kind of zoning perspective which wants Streamlining. And I remember reading Cronin's paper about rezoning Boston when it was commissioned by Mayor Wu. and was frankly horrified by what it spoke to in my community. So like Councilor Worrell, I think there needs to be a neighborhood approach I live not far from Nubian Square and we have probably just short of a thousand new units that have been built and are proposed to be built just in a mile and a half square.

Restricting parking does not prevent people from bringing their cars. In the name of being near a transportation hub, they're calling the bus depot in Nubian Square a transportation hub. The buses can't get out of Nubian Square. It's hard to get to any place on time and many residents who've been living there for years as I have already have their cars and are watching new neighbors coming in with more. I'm sensitive to the allegation or suggestion that this might bring more flexibility, but flexibility for whom? Already the Cronin approach says get rid of Article 80. Stop the neighborhoods having any say about these things. And in my neighborhood,

It means we can't control how many housing units are going up. It doesn't affect affordability because what is being built is not affordable for the people of Roxbury in the main. and it doesn't keep the place green. They're cutting down trees to build more housing. So at what point does the City Council ever consider the Boston residents who already live here?

Thank you, Kate. And we should chat after. I would love to chat with you. Jared Richardson.

Good afternoon, Chair Durkan and Councillors. My name is Jared. I'm a Winchester resident. However, both my parents work at Boston University and my sister lives in Alston. I'm here to speak about the importance of eliminating partner minimums, especially for those of us in the disability community, to which I'm a member of. According to disability advocate Megan Lee, who actually founded UC Access Now, whenever we talk about parking reform, It's always discussed as disabled people need a place to park their cars. However, not everyone can afford a car, and disabled people make a lot less money, which is true.

And the reason I bring this up is because one in four Americans have a disability, whether that's physical, neurological, and that affects our every day and For many of us, we need special accommodations such as accessible parking spots. And to be clear, this would not remove any accessible spots because that is mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act, which I'm very pleased to hear celebrated its 36th birthday. And so in addition to that, the other problem also comes that with more parking, there's a greater heel-on effect, which affects disabled people

In larger numbers, especially in a neighborhood like Alston, where there's so much parking and buildings that are not fully insulated. And I urge you to pass this.

Thank you so much. Nice to meet you. Okay, so we're going to go to Sebastian Belafonte. Good to see you, Sebastian. I'm hoping you're dropping some history on us.

Yeah, so hi, my name is Sebastian Rolfanti. I'm the executive director at the West End Museum. We're the only urban planning museum in the United States or the Americas at large. and we track development citywide as well as globally. Parking minimums are a really interesting animal in that world. in that they are opposed both by community advocates and pro-growth interests, most commonly represented by Harvard economist Ed Glazer. Those two groups don't get along that often and it is really This is really a unique thing. This is sort of universally opposed by people on both sides of the aisle. As Dr. Bronin noted, Boston created its parking minimums in the mid-1950s. That was done as part of envisioning the quote-unquote new Boston that doomed working-class residents of

and neighborhoods like the West End and Washington Park. In the West End's case, Charles River Park, parking minimums encouraged low density, high rise communities. That suburb in the city, as it was called at the time, has had lasting and largely intractable issues, most notably because of its sort of dual high density building and low density Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Limited units of housing preventing many displaced Westenders from exercising their right to return. I currently live in the West End in workforce housing that sits on top of two largely unused floors of parking.

Functionally, that could have been 26 to 52 subsidized units. that were lost instead they just kind of provide parking for TD Garden events and I will note that that In the West End, in the middle of downtown, we have never once in the past 70 years filled all of our parking spaces, not for any event at any time. And it just seems like there might be too many.

Oh, thank you, Sebastian. Okay. Ben Coderre. Okay. Ben Coderre, James Cordero, Angela Williams-Mitchell. and Hayden Seeger. And then I think we have some folks online. I'm going to double check who's online, and then we'll be closing the hearing. So, Ben?

Hi, thank you. My name is Ben Coderre. As some of the Councillors mentioned earlier, I too agree that the city scale is not the right scale to address parking reform. It's too arbitrary. Boston is a proudly diverse city, and there's no one right-size-fits-all solution. As you pointed out, neighborhoods as well are very diverse internally. And so I'm not sure that a neighborhood scale solution to parking is a good idea either. I think that each individual unit and each individual street block has such unique characteristics to it that parking cannot be broadly defined for any one of them and must be determined by any individual project, which is exactly what this reform This is repealing broad scale, arbitrary government intervention and promoting unique and plot specific investments.

Additionally, to the councilor who asked supporters of this reform who live in Boston with children, I do not. And if the city refuses to address housing costs through zoning reform, I never will. That's something very unfortunate for me. I love Boston. I've lived here for five years when I was here for school. I've briefly left to go to Amherst to study urban planning, and I'm here for the summer working for the MBTA. I think Boston is a wonderful city, and I would love to raise families here. but at the moment it's too expensive for me to even envision that. I think that removing this arbitrary parking mandate is a great step towards achieving an affordable and thriving Boston. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Okay, James Cordero. Angela Williams-Mitchell and Hayden Seeger.

Thank you, and thank you to the Councillors and everyone present for making this hearing happen and all the work you do, as always. So I'm James Cordero. I'm a resident of Dorchester, lived in Dorchester for the past five years, hoping to be there in the next 65 years. So I'm here because I'm also a teacher in the public schools. I actually took the day off because some of you might remember I was here at the budget testimony testifying about the BPS schools. Last week, we were losing 400 student-facing positions. and I know that if we had the money, you all would give us the money, but the city has a huge revenue issue and there's a connection to that. Before I elaborate on that though, I will say that educators in Boston are toxic. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm in traffic all the time, and it makes it hard for me to get her to childcare, so if we're building way more parking than we need to,

That's going to make more cars get on the road, and that's going to take time away from her and her family. And that's the most precious thing to her. So there are plenty of families who support this issue. Now, on the revenue piece, we're not building a lot of new housing, as you all are aware, and that impacts our budget, not just this one year, but it'll impact it 10 years down the line. The example is the Seaport, which was built over about two decades and now, according to the Globe, accounts for about $350 million in revenue. So every unit of housing that we're not building because we built an unused parking space, it's shortchanging our Boston public school students. It's shortchanging the staff they'll have, the services they'll have, not just this year but 10 years down the line and we know that we have goals to make our schools strong and make our schools the best schools in the state so we need to have the funding available to do that which is why I urge you to to allow for parking flexibility

At the end of the day, cars don't attend schools, kids do, and we need to give those schools funding. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Angela Williams-Mitchell, thank you for being here.

Hello. Good afternoon, I think. Yes, that time of day. Good afternoon. Why Boston needs cumulative neighborhood impact study? Greetings to each city council and everyone present in the chamber and online. My name is Angela Williams Mitchell. I'm a Roxborough resident. and Executive Director of the Boston Jobs Coalition, soon to be Blueprint for Justice and Community. I want to begin by being very clear. I am not here to oppose housing production. Boston needs housing and affordable housing. Boston needs thoughtful growth. My concern is not any one policy standing alone. My concern is the city moving forward with multiple major policy changes at the same time while asking residents to trust that everything will work together as intended.

Today we are discussing Docket 0809 to propose text amendments to the zoning code introduced by Councilor Sharon Durkan, Henry Santana, and supported with several other councillors. AIMING TO ELIMINATE RESIDENTIAL PARKING MINIMUM CITYWIDE. AT THE SAME TIME THE CITY IS ADVANCING SQUARES AND STREETS, ZONING CHANGES AND BROADER Each proposal may have been studied individually. My question, whether anyone has studied what happened when these policies operate together? We are in a cumulative analysis showing the combined impact on working families, seniors, renters, homeowners,

Small Businesses, Shoppers, Curb Access, Parking Demand, Traffic Circulation, Neighborhood Business District, and Displaced Pressures. Residents are repeatedly told that studies exist. I do not doubt that they are. However, studying policies separate is not the same as studying them combined. A medication may be safe by itself. Another medication may also be safe by itself. Yet every doctor knows that before Prescribing them together, you must study the interaction of what side effects they may create. Why should public policy be held to a lower standard?

Thank you so much.

I am asking the council to pause long enough to answer a fundamental question. Before these proposed changes move forward, Please have us study neighborhood by neighborhood. Thank you so much.

Hayden Seeger.

Hello. I'm Hayden. I'm a resident of Back Bay. Just to piggyback off that, there actually is a study out of Denver, or out of Colorado, that does that exact thing, so you can just look it up. Anyways. On one hand, it's a very complicated debate we're having here, right? On one side, we have evidence, data, research studies, maps and models, statistical analysis, We've got some advanced degrees in there. And on the other hand, we have Someone took away my parking space next to my apartment. I don't know. To me, it seems like a very clear cut answer. There is mountains of evidence. I've read the evidence, but that's it.

Fitzgerald did this kind of like I don't know, public stunt about asking people if they had kids in the city. And it was supposed to prove that Wow, you don't know what it's like to have kids or something like that? In my opinion, it proved the exact opposite. It's like, yeah, no one has kids here because no one can afford to have kids. I think Ben talked about that point a little bit. To me, like, I don't know, Sarah Bronin's cost is something like $500 an hour or something like this. She did this whole study pro bono to the city. We should listen to the study. Of course, I'm preaching to the choir here. I don't know. That's all I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you, Hayden. Okay, we've got some folks online. Okay, so I'm going to start with Kobe Frangillo. Grace Fletcher is on deck. And Lincoln Alex McVay is in the hole.

Yeah, hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Beautiful. Afternoon. My name's Coby Fringillo. I'm a new resident of Brighton. I moved to Boston without a car because I wanted to live in a place where I could walk, bike, and take transit. Boston should want more residents like me. I generate less traffic, less noise, less road wear, fewer emissions. I don't need a parking space. I've heard some argue that parking should be addressed neighborhood by neighborhood. I agree that neighborhoods are different. That's exactly why City Hall shouldn't impose a one-size-fits-all parking mandate across the city. If a neighborhood truly needs more parking, developers can build it because residents will demand it. The question isn't whether parking can be built, it's whether the city should require it everywhere. What strikes me about this debate is how much people treat parking minimums as if they're the natural state of things. They're not. They're a government mandate.

If parking minerals didn't exist, I don't think that anyone would be proposing them today. We would recognize them as a costly requirement that raises housing costs and forces people like me to pay for parking that we don't use. Nobody's banning parking. We're simply allowing housing and parking to be determined by the needs of residents rather than one size fits all mandates. Urge you to support. Thanks.

Thank you so much. Okay, we're gonna go to Grace Fletcher, then Lincoln, Alex McVey, and then Rick Yoder.

Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity. My name is Grace Fletcher. I am a resident of Brighton, and I'm here to testify in favor of this amendment as well. While the cost of living continues to become unsustainable for more and more people in Boston, and especially young people like me, The last thing that we need is wasteful requirements that drive up the cost of housing development and exacerbate the housing crisis that we're experiencing. There is clearly sufficient research and data to show that parking minimums produce excess parking that exceeds true demand. and the same valuable real estate could be used in more productive ways that are serving community needs like additional green space, retail, or public transportation.

So adopting this amendment is just one easy step that the city can take to show its commitment to creating less car-centric and more walkable neighborhoods and to unlock more housing development to keep people in the community for the long term. Thank you.

Thank you, Grace. Lincoln, Alex McVey, and then Rick Yoder, and then Jonathan Cohn.

Hello, councillors. My name is Alex. I'm a resident of Brighton in District 9, and I've lived in various neighborhoods across the city. I've lived with a car. I've lived without a car. I've lived in apartments with and without off-street parking. This background informs my comments. People want to live in Boston. That is not up for debate. People want to rent, eat, shop, play, spend their lives, and spend their money in every corner of this city. But each year, that's more difficult. The difficulty of living in this city is exemplified in the housing crisis that drives our neighbors out on the streets, the crisis that drives our neighbors, young and old, to leave this city in which they desperately want to live, to leave the city in favor of cheaper suburbs and cities across the country. Among the many drivers of this crisis is the lack of new housing construction itself largely driven by the irrationally difficult parking minimums. I could reiterate the material harms of these minimums or repeat data from the MAPC that hundreds or thousands of these spaces are empty.

I will note even out my window right now I look at vacant parking spaces which could be you know could be more units of housing could be ADUs or could be community green spaces. The numerous material harms are critical to understand, but instead I would like to more visually remind the Councillors here today and the Councillors who will have access to this testimony of the strangulation that parking minimums invite on our city. In 2023, the Boston Planning and Development Agency approved 69 development projects providing 7,346 housing units but requiring 8,053 parking spaces. With mandatory parking minimums, we are inviting thousands of cars into our already choked city. 8,000 cars. Do the councillors who oppose this proposition, such as Flynn and Fitzgerald, do you understand the scale of this number? Perhaps you've driven on I-93 recently. Perhaps you've been stuck in traffic on the highway.

Inviting 8,000 more cars into our city through parking minimums is enough to back up all four lanes of I-93 from Neponset to I-90 in bumper to bumper traffic. The next time you get stuck in bumper to bumper traffic trying to get down to Dorchester, remember who to thank. Minimum parking requirements. By maintaining parking minimums, we are suffocating our future.

I know you couldn't hear the bell, so.

Oh, apologies. I support this amendment. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Rick Yoder, Jonathan Cohn, and then Luann O'Connor. And then, sorry, if you are planning to testify and you did not hear your name, please just make sure that you sign up. Okay, thank you. Rick, go ahead.

Yes, thank you. My name is Rick Yoder. I'm a co-chair of the Mont Hope Canterbury neighborhood in Eastern Rosendale. It's part of District 4 right along the American Legion. I submitted a letter. I hope the councilors will read it. I wanted to make some five points here on today's testimony. One is that I've referred to this many times, that our zoning code is way, way too long. It's longer than the Bible or something. It's not really. Each neighborhood has its own chapter. So if you're going to build in Roslindale, you go to the Roslindale chapter, immediately Now can ignore, you know, three quarters of the rest of the zone. There are some general rules you have to check up. You don't have to be a lawyer. I've used it. I've read it. So have my friends. It's not that cumbersome.

The second, just to clarify something, if a developer chooses not to put in parking, And I can see there's an argument that to be able to afford to build, that's what he has to do. I don't know if that's right, but I understand the argument. He's not going to lower the rents. He's going to charge market what the market rate is. That's just the way it is. You'd have to build in a law that says you'd have to lower it to some way, but it's not going to happen on its own. Also, give me some specific examples. In my neighborhood, we have a 30-unit proposal with three parking places, and the developer says, well, that's what the planning department tells me I have to do. were a mile and a third from the nearest traffic hub at Forest Hills.

The 14 bus, which runs in front of this proposed project, runs every 45 to 60 minutes, five and a half days a week. and, you know, what are people supposed to do? There's no parking on American Legion or on Canterbury Street in that section where it's going to be a proposal list. I'll give you a specific example.

Rick, I just wanted to let you know it's time. I just, it's hard for you to hear the bell.

Okay, thank you for your time.

Thank you so much, Rick. Thanks for being here. Jonathan Cohn.

Hi, my name is Jonathan Cohn. I'm a resident of the South Bend. I want to thank Chair Durkan for leading today's hearing and all of the counselors in attendance. Greetings from the Boston comment room sitting right now. I'm happy to see that the Council is considering amending the Boston Zoning Code to remove minimum parking requirements for new residential development. I can say I've never lived in a building in Boston that has dedicated parking spaces and that was an attraction for me for the buildings that I moved to. The city made a great step a few years ago when the council voted to eliminate parking minimums for affordable housing, and we should build on that progress. Addressing Boston's housing crisis will require increasing our housing supply and ensuring affordability and ensuring the affordability of that supply requires not only subsidies, creative financing, and clear requirements, but also reforms to the zoning code to take away unnecessary barriers. Parking minimums are one of such arbitrary unnecessary barriers that push up the cost of final projects.

They reinforce the car culture that harms the city's ability to reach our sustainability goals, and they push up the cost of projects in ways that harm our ability to reach our affordability goals at the same time. Eliminating parking minimums is not the same, let's be clear, as eliminating parking. It just means that the number of parking spaces per building should be responsive to the situation and location of the building and not a universal mandate. It means that we're building smarter, which is exactly what we need to do. Thank you all for taking the time this afternoon.

Thank you so much, Jonathan. Luann O'Connor?

Good afternoon. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, great, thank you. I'm here on this hearing to oppose. The removal of the parking minimums. And the reason being is that I don't think that the process itself has been played out. On the last meeting that you had, Councilor, it was very one-way, one-sided, as is today's meeting as well. So it's being steered in a particular direction to suit the Mayor's agenda. So with that being said, there is something called resident permit parking stickers. Councilor Flynn, before he was spoken to rudely, alluded to this. And what he said was that in South Boston, there were like 10,000 resident permit parking spots and 29,000 Permits being issued.

So when you are proposing a developer to choose whether or not they want to do parking, that's like putting the fox into the henhouse. All the time. And what that's doing is you're not mandating that if you move into one of these buildings that you cannot get a resident permit parking sticker. So therefore, that doesn't mean that people aren't going to have cars. Of course they are. particularly when we're trying to get young families into the city of Austin. They're going to need their cars. Those of you who have children, most of you have cars. And with that, it's just not going to work because where are they going to park? They're going to park in the street parking. So already I will share with you Thank you for joining us.

If you move into this building, you cannot have a resident permit parking sticker to park on our streets. Grab a blue bike or something like that. The MBTA, as you know, is not up to par. I myself would not get on the train or a bus at this point in time. It's dangerous and it's dirty. Thank you so much. Wait one second. I just want you to come across and come into the neighborhoods and go neighborhood by neighborhood because that's what needs to happen, Sharon.

Thank you. Lou Anne, what neighborhood are you in?

I am from South Boston City Point Neighborhood Association. And there are many others that somebody had said 80% of Councilor Flynn's territory supports this. That would probably be I know those particular associations. That is not City Point proper. It is not South Boston proper. And I just want to make one quick thing and then I will leave you. Councilor Santana, you gained a lot of respect in South Boston. When you stuck up for the community regarding 49 to 51 D Street, 70 plus units with no parking and you stuck with our community and opposed that, I would like for you to Remind yourself the reasons why because what is being put forward is basically the same thing. So thank you.

Thank you so much, Luanne. So I just want to, I know we've, this is our second hearing. I just want to set the table for us all. And I appreciate all the feedback we're getting from community. So and also that those that are. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Okay, one last person. I don't know who they are, but... Oh, Pam. Hey, Pam. Okay, Pam, you have the floor. Okay. Pam, I think you're muted.

Okay, here we go. Ready? Can you hear me now?

Thank you so much.

Thank you, and sorry for being muted there. Good afternoon, everybody, and I just want to say thank you. This has been a very informative meeting. My name is Pam Beal, and I am a resident and small business owner in the city, and I'm here today to speak in favor of this amendment to the zoning code to remove parking minimum requirements for new residential developments. As has been stated already, this change would allow for the flexibility to build the right amount of parking for each project and that is what I have found in my years of public engagement. is that honest discussions at the moment of planning with the community is the best time for a developer and the community to figure out these kinds of issues and work your way through this Issue, and many others. And honestly, it's the best way to have real conversations about what's needed at the time. You can do a development five years ago, and now you'd look at it and do it differently.

To me, if you are actually negotiating at the time with the developer and you have the flexibility to work through this and every other issue at that moment, you are going to end up with the best developments you possibly can for each and every community. So I'm in favor of this and I thank you for all the work you're doing and I look forward to learning more and doing more and hoping to make a better public process through all of this. So thank you again.

Thank you so much, Pam. So I want to thank all of my colleagues for being here. I also want to, I know that 10 a.m. on a Thursday is not a great time for community groups to be able to weigh in. But I want to thank every single person who came here and spent the time to be here with us this morning. So I do want to read a list of organizations that we have either garnered support or opposition. Just so that we have sort of an idea of what we've received. And this is definitely not exhaustive, but I think it's important. So we've received support letters from Walk Up Roslindale, Metro Area Planning Council, Better Parking for Boston, Abundant Housing Massachusetts, NIOP Massachusetts, the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, the Pioneer Institute, Fenway Forward, Livable Streets Alliance, Youth Affordable Housing Coalition, and the Kenmore Square Business Association. And then we received opposition from

Greater Mattapan Neighborhood Council, Audubon Circle Neighborhood Association, a group of District 5 advocates, Cedar Grove Civic Association, Community Alliance of Mission Hill, and I just added City Point Neighborhood Association. Obviously this is not exhaustive but I just want to give us all an you know because I know counselors can see what we've received, but not everyone who's watching can. I understand, I think, I understand some of the feedback that We're moving fast on this. And I just want to share that I think my first hearing order on this issue was over two years ago at this point. We have had one hearing in December, which was not about this zoning amendment. We offered the zoning amendment in April.

and so we're having this hearing here today my plan is to keep this docket in committee at this time and the other plan is for us to have a working session particularly we received the feedback that I read into the record from the planning department that they may have zoning amendments that will impact the numbering of this amendment so there may be tactical edits that we need to make to the amendment though They did testify that this amendment is technically sound. And I want to thank Better Parking for Boston, specifically I thank Nate Stell and Mike DiMaio for their support and work on the amendment as drafted. And I do want to respond to any potential criticism about whether neighborhood groups are involved with the drafting. So it did require and so forth. We had about six attorneys looking over the amendment to make sure that it was technically sound.

Those are people that previously worked for the So there's been a lot of work and process work that went into the drafting. And so I think today, I think the successful and many more. The critical part about what we received today from the planning department is that they do believe that the amendment is technically sound. I definitely think We do need to make sure that the status quo is already represented by the current laws on the books. and what we are proposing today really is an amendment to the status quo and so I think that the argument that you know the panel that was provided today is bucking up against the status quo, which I think the status quo is represented by the current laws on the books.

I want to make sure I thank specifically Professor Bronin for her time both in creating the report in 2023 but also spending time with us here today along with our other panelists. Obviously this will stay in committee at this time and we continue to have work that we need to do to ensure that numbering and but I do want to share a little bit about process. For starters, any amendment to the zoning code that comes out of the City Council is merely a petition to the Zoning Commission. So the true authority to change the law I have defended one amendment in front of the Zoning Commission, the Bullfinch Triangle Zoning Amendment, to make housing an allowed use. At that meeting, I

The lead proponent will come up with a list of slides and actually petition and the zoning commission. We are not there yet. I'm not planning to immediately bring this for a vote. and there will still be time to discuss. So I do look forward to a working session on this matter. I do want to say the confines of my proposed amendment will stay citywide. So and I think I believe that it should be voted on as a citywide amendment because that is the intent of the of the Proponent, which is me, and my colleagues, Councilor Santana and Breadon. So I will allow for my colleagues that are left To give brief one-minute closing statements, starting with Councilor Santana.

Thank you, Madam. Excuse me. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank the panelists that were with us here today. I especially just want to thank all the residents, regardless of If you're supporting or questioning or opposing the proposal I truly appreciate you all coming again as the chair mentioned on the Thursday morning down to City Hall and all the perspectives really allow us to You know, at least for me as an ILR City Councilor, just making sure that we're intentional about what we're doing here. So, again, just really appreciate you all being here. I know what I will say is that I know groups know that My office and myself are always open to conversations, private meetings, coffee with residents to make sure that we're just educating folks on what's happening here, the intent here. and always trying to make things better.

So again, just thank you all for being here and look forward to the rest of the process.

Okay, we're going to go to Councilor Breadon and then Councilor Worrell.

I just want to thank you Madam Chair and thank you Councillor Santana for co-leading this initiative. I want to thank all the folks who came in and testified, as Councillor Santana said, whether you're supportive. You have more questions or you're opposed, I think this is a very, very important conversation. And I look forward to continuing this process. So we're not there yet, so we're looking forward to further working sessions. I'm glad this is remaining in committee because we need to get it right. And I appreciate your diligence on this, Councillor Durkan.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you to everyone who came in to lend their voice in the conversation. Thanks to the panelists. I want to just say, like any zoning, any tax amendment going forward, I'm going to advocate to exempt District 4 based off of the community groups and the residents that have reached out to me. I believe a good portion of that list in opposition wanted was in opposition to this text amendment. I also do believe when you're stripping the no parking incentive away from affordable housing, you will create less affordable housing here in the city of Boston, which will be the fastest way to drive out certain communities. The other thing that really was concerning to me was that this policy was created without community input which I feel can create the biggest harm when you're creating policy without

All the stakeholders at the table and you put it forward, I think you are looking at your ways that maybe wasn't intended to create harm to communities that were not at the table. So again, going to continue to advocate to exempt District 4, to do a neighborhood by neighborhood approach, and I just want the council to be cautious of right now the affordability and no parking minimum is tied together. We will be stripping that away in this text amendment. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Orrell. A number of your residents did testify in support today. and I do have many emails from them but I do understand your opposition to this proposal and I do want to share that with the current IDP that is on the books 20% of all housing will be affordable. So more housing equals more affordable housing. But it's hard. I will have to go line by line out of this hearing to correct the record on a number of things because it is really important that we understand the difference between Article 80, ZBA and sort of where the actual levers are and I think that's all things we can discuss within a working session as well but it's I I want to say that I purposefully read into the record the groups that support and are in opposition of this proposal.

I do think we need to have a conversation, but there is a lot of support for this proposal in the city of Boston, and it's in all of our inboxes right now. So Boston is not a monolith and neither is any district or any neighborhood. We've received both sides from almost every neighborhood and every and every district through both the December hearing and this hearing. So with that, I am grateful to everyone for spending time with us today. And I'm just trying to find our, Okay, so this is docket 0809. It's going to remain in committee. We're going to head towards a working session at some point. But at this time, I would like to adjourn the hearing on 0809.