Ruben Garza stands in a 193-space parking lot on a sunny Saturday morning surrounded by people sipping iced coffees, riding bicycles, creating sidewalk art and giving away a diverse selection of plants. A cluster of Carnegie Vanguard High School students is performing a version of Hamlet they advertised as “Shakespeare in the Parking Lot.”
The purpose of the “Park(ing) Day” gathering at The Plant in Houston’s East End was to show what can be done with land when it isn’t solely designated for vehicles.
“It could be housing — actual affordable housing — or a park or a transit station,” Garza says. “Instead, we’ve paved it and called it policy.”
Garza, a labor and employment attorney, is a member of Strong Towns Houston, a chapter of a national movement that advocates for safe streets, affordable housing and the elimination of parking mandates. He and representatives from Air Alliance Houston, Friends of Columbia Tap, LINK Houston, Friends of the Boulevard and A Tale of Two Bridges formed the Houston Parking Reform Coalition in August.
The group hopes to persuade the Houston City Council to do away with minimum parking mandates for new development.
Houston City Council Members Sallie Alcorn, Mario Castillo, Joe Panzarella and Alejandra Salinas have expressed interest in bringing up the topic through a Proposition A resolution, which allows three or more members to put an item on an agenda without the mayor’s approval.
“What if we designed our streets for people, not just cars?” said Castillo, who spoke at the Park(ing) Day event. “I was proud to speak about what’s possible when we rethink how we use our public spaces: more businesses, better places to gather with less wasted space and improved quality of life.”
Panzarella campaigned on parking reform during his special election earlier this year, saying the requirement of 14 parking spaces per 1,000 square feet for bars is one of the highest ratios in the country and lacks a sound statistical basis. The councilman, who was elected in May, has suggested eliminating parking minimums, expanding off-street metered parking and creating more parking benefit districts, where fees are charged for parking and the dollars go back into the neighborhood for improvements like sidewalks.
Garza says he’s spoken to every council member or one of their staffers, and the only reservation has come from “the more conservative council members who have said they want to see what the mayor is thinking.”
“The administration can see the vision. It’s just, where do we meet in the middle? I don’t know if the mayor wants to go citywide, all uses, but there may be an expansion of the existing exemption map or targeting specific land uses,” Garza says.
Mayor John Whitmire’s Director of Intergovernmental Relations Joshua Sanders confirmed that he’s met with Garza and said, “At this time, nothing has been presented to the Administration.” Garza says he’s cautiously optimistic that parking reform could come up later this month. If that doesn’t happen, it will probably be delayed until early 2027.
Currently, the developer of an apartment complex or big box retailer is required to designate a minimum number of parking spaces based on the number of units for residential multifamily and square footage for commercial development. The city council voted to remove parking minimums for the central business district in 1989 and expanded the exempt area to East Downtown and Midtown in 2019.
“I would normally be OK with some of these ratios if they had any logic behind them,” Garza says. “They don’t.”
Business owners want people to patronize their establishments — or live there — so it’s unreasonable to think they wouldn’t build any parking at all, but the coalition believes it should be up to them to decide how many spaces they need.
Garza says the cost to build an above-ground parking garage is about $52,000 per space, and those costs are passed on to the consumer, so renters are charged an average of $200 to $500 a month for parking, even if they don’t have a car.
Parking reform isn’t a proposal to eliminate any existing spaces, Garza says, but he wouldn’t mind a more walkable community with an emphasis on light rail and on-street parking spaces. In Austin and Dallas, where parking reform measures have been implemented, concerns were raised that if a business doesn’t have adequate parking, vehicles will spill over into neighborhoods and create hazards for emergency vehicles.
Garza pointed out that the Park(ing) Day event was held at a Second Ward shopping center. Because The Plant is in a transit-oriented development, the area is exempt from having to build parking lots but developers did it anyway.
“Spillover may be an issue but that speaks more to parking management than parking supply,” Garza says. “The converse of that is, if you keep the minimum parking requirements, those businesses and homes will never be built in the first place. That’s just going to be vacant and empty land that pays nothing in taxes and contributes to blight.”
Cars park along the streets in many residential neighborhoods because there are no meters, enforcement or a “robust regulation system,” Garza said. If residents don’t like it, they can file for a parking benefit district.
The Houston Parking Reform Coalition claims that Houston has more than 5,000 acres worth $3.6 billion “sitting idle under surface parking lots.”
“There are a lot of things I care about and, funny enough, parking has a tie to all of it,” Garza says. “Parking lots increase surface area temperatures. The materials used to create parking lots are really bad for stormwater and runoff issues. They contribute to toxic waste in our rivers. Parking lots also pay very little in taxes.”
Garza points out that the Greater Heights neighborhood has 205 acres of designated parking. East End has 169 acres and Downtown has 168 acres that Garza claims could be used for something more useful for residents.
Evelyn Spike, a member of the Montrose neighborhood’s Friends of the Boulevard, made a “community quilt” modeled after the Walmart parking lot on Yale, where there are more than 700 spaces, most of which she says sit vacant all day. Spike encouraged those who stopped by her booth at Park(ing) Day to add stickers of trees, homes and parks to show how the space could be better used.
“We want to get parking mandates removed so if you want to build affordable housing, you don’t have to build as many parking spots,” Spike says. “That brings down the cost of building housing. It brings down the rent, and they can build denser housing on a smaller plot. Less parking, more housing.”
Spike says her sister lives in a 20-unit apartment complex where all the one-bedroom units are $800 per month and there are 10 available parking spaces. “If they were to build that today, they would need 40 parking spots unless they got a variance from the city,” Spike said. “We have housing now that’s affordable that works great and we need to build more of it.”
Garza says that arbitrary parking minimums exist across the country because one city did it and another copied the policy until it spread, without much thought given to future planning and associated costs. In recent years, however, more than 100 cities nationwide have eliminated minimum parking requirements. Garza says he’s hopeful that now is the time for Houston to revisit the issue.
“We have energy and we have momentum,” he says. “We’ve seen the City of Houston take a step back from transportation policy and safer streets. That’s the prerogative of the current administration as much as we wish it wasn’t. We’ve also seen some interest and momentum on parking reform. If we can work with the city on this issue, we’re good with that.”
