New law eliminates parking mandates, reduces housing costs
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(COLORADO) Governor Polis signed a bill into law on Friday, May 10, making housing in Colorado more affordable and eliminating parking mandates that drive up the cost of building new housing.
HB24-1304 prohibits a county or municipality from enacting or enforcing minimum parking requirements for most multifamily residential properties within a metropolitan planning organization that are within a quarter mile of a transit stop or station. The final act says that the bill will take effect after June 30, 2025.
“Minimum parking mandates drive up costs by forcing every builder to provide more spaces than the market demands. They can add hundreds of dollars to monthly rents and make many smaller-scale developments completely impossible,” said Colorado Springs Representative Stephanie Vigil. “These mandates, which are being challenged all over the country, have created to an abundance of asphalt, a shortage of housing and transportation choices, and higher greenhouse gas emissions. We have quite literally paved paradise to put up a parking lot. Our new law scales back this onerous regulation, allowing builders to right size parking supply based on the context and unique characteristics of every project.”
Parking minimums increase home prices and rents by requiring developers to use valuable space for cars that may not be fully utilized. In 2020, each new structured parking space in Denver cost $25,000 each.
The bill still allows local government to impose a parking minimum of up to one space per unit on proposed housing developments with more than 20 units. To impose it, developments must show the parking requirement is needed to avoid negative impact.
Under the bill, counties and municipalities are not allowed to lower protections for people with disabilities and it does not prevent local governments from enacting or enforcing a maximum parking requirement or a specific number of spaces for temporary loading purposes.
By the end of 2024, the bill requires the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) and other state agencies to publish materials and best practices for optimal parking supply and management policies.
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