Boston Considers Eliminating Parking Minimums to Boost Housing Production

• Boston City Councilors Sharon Durkan and Henry Santana introduced a 35-page zoning amendment in April to eliminate parking minimums for all new residential construction across the city's 23 neighborhoods.
• New housing unit approvals fell from 9,800 in 2020 to 2,389 in 2024, per the Boston Globe.
• Cambridge abolished parking minimums in 2022; affordable housing developers there exercise the waiver nearly 100% of the time. Somerville followed unanimously in December 2024.
• The proposal remains in committee and must clear the Zoning Board of Appeals before it takes effect.

Boston's Housing Production Has Collapsed. One Reform Could Help.

Boston approved 9,800 housing units in 2020. By 2024, that number was 2,389. Construction starts tell the same story: 4,406 in 2022, down to roughly 2,200 by 2024.

The city knows it has a problem. Now two of its councilors are betting that a 35-page rewrite of Boston's parking rules is a meaningful piece of the fix.

On Thursday, the Boston City Council held a public hearing on a proposal by Councilors Sharon Durkan and Henry Santana to strip parking minimums from all new residential projects across the city's 23 neighborhoods. The amendment, introduced in April, would also rewrite the base zoning code to consolidate parking mandates that are currently scattered across hundreds of pages.

"What makes this city great is our people, and right now we are losing too many of them," Santana said at the hearing.

The Proof Is Next Door

Boston wouldn't be experimenting. It would be catching up.

Cambridge abolished parking minimums in October 2022, becoming the first city in Massachusetts to do so. The result: affordable housing developers exercise the parking waiver nearly 100% of the time. City staff projects the reform will yield 3,590 net new units by 2040.

Somerville eliminated its remaining minimums unanimously in December 2024. Salem followed in 2025, citing housing production goals directly.

George Washington University law professor Sara Bronin, a zoning law expert who testified at Thursday's hearing, called Boston's existing code "bloated, outdated, inconsistent, and inequitable," and said reforming parking requirements would be the "single best substantive change" the city could make. She recommended going further, extending the reform to nonresidential projects and consolidating the parking mandates into a single section.

Nationally, over 1,400 municipalities have altered or eliminated parking minimums in recent years as cities from Buffalo to Minneapolis have tried to unlock housing supply.

The Pushback: Equity and a Longer List of Problems

Not everyone in the council chamber was sold.

Councilor Brian Worrell argued that without minimums, developers would build no parking in neighborhoods with limited transit, compounding the inequality between car-dependent parts of the city and those closer to the T. "Not every neighborhood is the same in terms of amenities and walkability," he said.

Councilor Ed Flynn went further, arguing that parking minimums aren't the actual bottleneck. He pointed to inclusionary development requirements, rent control, and sustainability mandates as the more entrenched barriers and noted that the ZBA already approves roughly 90% of parking variance requests, with many projects landing at just 0.5 spots per unit. "We are not listening to the repeated feedback we've received for years from the development and business community on why we are not building housing in the city of Boston," Flynn said.

His subtext: parking minimums are an easy target, but fixing them alone won't move the pipeline.

Councilor Liz Breadon, who represents Allston, offered something closer to a proof point. She said Allston has operated under a de facto parking minimum removal for some time, giving developers flexibility without banning parking outright. "I think there's a misconception that no parking minimums means no parking," she said.

What's Next

The proposal stays in committee. Before any zoning amendment can take effect, it must go before the Zoning Board of Appeals, which hasn't received it yet. The hearing on Thursday was an early-stage reading of the room, not a vote.

Mayor Michelle Wu has separately explored tax breaks for developers to stimulate housing production, a measure she ultimately pulled back on. Parking reform represents a lower-cost lever, one that doesn't require new public spending and has worked in two of Boston's closest neighbors.

The development community will be watching whether Boston is willing to match what Cambridge and Somerville have already done, or keep requiring parking that, by the ZBA's own track record, barely gets built anyway.