Experts now estimate that Mayor Adams’s landmark City of Yes rezoning plan will generate 50 percent fewer new units if the City Council modifies the plan to eliminate mandatory parking within half a mile of subway stations instead of everywhere citywide.
Consider the likelihood that a homeowner will convert an existing freestanding garage into two units of housing if she then has to tear up the little leftover patio for two parking spaces.
“It’s an obvious impossibility to impose that parking requirement [on accessory dwelling units] and imposing that requirement was a way of preventing the additions,” said Howard Slatkin, the Executive Director of the Citizens Housing & Planning Council, and a former Planning Department official.
“It’s impossible to disentangle [parking and housing], because over the years, parking requirements have been used as a way to prevent the addition of housing. It’s hard for me to say which one is any individual’s top concern. Whether or not it’s their core motivation to prevent housing, [people who want to keep mandates] obviously are not troubled by it,” said Slatkin.
“Is there something between eliminating all parking requirements and leaving things the way they are? Yeah, but it’s a very delicate matter,” said Slatkin. “Leaving in place parking requirements can really negate everything else in the proposal if it’s not done in a very thoughtful way.”
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