Bellingham City Council poised to waive parking-space minimums for new housing projects
Bellingham officials are poised to hit the pause button on parking requirements for both commercial and residential construction citywide, a move aimed at providing more housing in hopes that increased supply will help lower rents, especially for middle-income residents.
A public hearing is planned for Monday night on an interim measure that would free developers for one year from having to provide off-street places to store cars at new houses, apartment buildings and shopping centers.
“I think this interim ordinance represents a huge step forward to address the housing crisis and also a number of core challenges that we face as a city. We under-built for years and as a renter, on the first of every month, I personally pay a very real consequence of those decisions,” Councilman Jace Cotton said when his colleagues discussed the ordinance Dec. 16 and voted 6-1 to approve it on first and second readings.
Monday’s meeting begins at 7 p.m. A public hearing on the matter is part of the agenda. After the hearing council members are scheduled to take a third and final vote on the interim ordinance, which would become law in 15 days and last for one year.
The City Council meets at City Hall, 210 Lottie St. Those who want to attend are asked to arrive early because the city is starting a security check before council meetings.
Councilwoman Lisa Anderson, who voted against the measure in December, unsuccessfully urged her colleagues to tie parking reforms to an affordability mandate, as Seattle and Portland have done.
“I don’t think it has to be a lose-lose situation. I do think of this as a missed opportunity,” Anderson said.
New way of thinking
Elimination of minimum parking requirements is part of a new way of thinking among urban planners and politicians nationwide, an effort to jump-start housing construction and create a stronger feeling of community in cities and neighborhoods by coaxing residents out of their cars and emphasizing travel by bus, bike and on foot.
“Parking minimums can reduce land supply that could otherwise be devoted to housing and can be in excess of true parking demand,” said Blake Lyon, director of the the city’s Planning and Community Development Department.
Innovative urban planning philosophy rejects the idea of minimum parking requirements in favor of allowing residential and commercial developers to offer the amount of parking that they believe is needed for their individual projects, Lyon told council members during a presentation and committee discussion on Dec. 16.
“Nationwide, just a reminder, we have six parking spaces available per vehicle in this country. We have an overabundance of parking,” he said.
In his presentation, Lyon quoted officials at Strong Towns, a nonprofit organization that advocates for “a radically new way of thinking about the way we build our world,” from roads to housing to neighborhoods and urban centers.
The average cost to build a parking space in Washington is $24,600, Lyon told the City Council in memo for Monday’s public hearing.
Currently, the city requires a minimum of two off-street parking spaces for each new house. Parking for apartment complexes is based on the number of bedrooms in each unit, and commercial parking requirements are based on square footage, according to Bellingham Municipal Code.
Mayor seeks quick action
City Council members have been kicking the tires around the idea of reducing or eliminating minimum parking requirements for several months.
But the ordinance now under consideration gained traction when Mayor Kim Lund issued an executive order in November, urging the council to act quickly in hopes of jump-starting the local housing construction market.
Some 50 cities around the nation have taken similar action, Lyon told the council.
Council President Hollie Huthman said she became involved in local politics several years ago because her friends couldn’t afford the rising rents of the past decade.
“People who were contributing creativity, working in the nonprofit field, starting brand-new businesses, those people were moving away and we were losing that. The amount of available and affordable housing is directly related to how many people live unhoused in our community,” Huthman said.
Average rent in Bellingham ranges from about $1,400 a month to about $1,900 a month, according to Zumper, Zillow, Redfin, Apartments.com and Rent.com. Ten years ago, median rent in Bellingham was about $1,000 monthly, according to the Department of Numbers, which aggregates U.S. census data.
In 2021, the United Way found that nearly half of Bellingham residents live in poverty or are among the working poor who struggle to pay for a roof over their heads.
The proposed ordinance is a “really smart policy shift,” Cotton said.
“Obviously, I am the first to insist that supply alone is not a perfect panacea for every problem in our housing market. But I also know that if we don’t rapidly increase supply, there is no hope that this community can be a place that’s affordable for working people in the decades to come,” he said.
This story was originally published January 12, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
