The Los Angeles City Council approved a motion on May 23 by Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky, 5th District, to eliminate a 2019 rule that forced affordable and supportive housing developers to replace all parking spaces when building on city-owned parking lots. The rule has added millions of dollars to potential projects, rendering them financially infeasible, Yaroslavsky said.

“We are in a severe housing and homelessness crisis. We should be focusing our resources to build housing for people, not for cars,” Yaroslavsky added. “One of the best tools we have available to rapidly add new units of housing is to leverage land we already own. But we are tying our own hands with unnecessary bureaucracy that can add millions of dollars to the cost of these projects. In my district alone, this one rule added over $3 million to a potential housing project.”

The 2019 rule was a result of a memorandum of understanding between the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and the Housing Department, and applied to any housing project that would eliminate more than 25 spaces on a city-owned lot. The cost of replacing just one of these parking spaces is estimated to be as high as $70,000, and the rule imposed a minimum of $1.75 million in additional costs. The blanket rule didn’t account for on-the-ground circumstances that may have mitigated the need for 100% replacement parking, Yaroslavsky said. The motion does not prevent the city from requiring the replacement of parking whenever needed. However, it eliminates the automatic requirement that every space be replaced every time.

The motion also calls for a report to the council within 60 days on all LADOT-owned facilities with 25 or more parking spaces, by council district, that will no longer be subject to the parking replacement requirements. The report will also include the current status of any affordable or supportive housing developments, and the annual revenue and utilization rate of each parking facility. The goal is to ensure that the livability, mobility and commercial needs of communities are accounted for when a property is considered for housing.