Vancouver council votes to eliminate minimum parking requirements city-wide

Vancouver city councillors have voted to eliminate minimum vehicle parking requirements for all types of land use in the city.

The unanimous decision at Wednesday's council meeting will see the city maintain its existing requirements for accessible and visitor parking spaces, while doing away with all of the other requirements currently on the books.

It's a change the city was already considering, but which has been accelerated by recent provincial legislation, according to a staff report.

The province's recently adopted laws aimed at encouraging small-scale multi-unit housing and transit-oriented development prohibit the city from setting minimum parking requirements for new buildings in designated areas.

The staff report notes that eliminating such minimums across the city "goes beyond" the provincial requirement in an effort to "simplify and accelerate the development review process."

"The city is legislatively required to update the Parking By-law to reflect this change in authority by June 30, 2024," the report reads.

"Rather than further dividing the existing 63 different minimum parking requirements and layering new geographic areas, this report recommends a major simplification to the City’s parking regulation by eliminating all minimum parking requirements for all land uses, citywide. This will advance the City’s objectives towards simplifying regulations and accelerating permit approval times, as well as transportation and climate emergency goals."

Edmonton and Toronto have already adopted similar changes in their jurisdictions, as have numerous American cities, according to the staff report.

In Vancouver, the downtown and Broadway Plan areas were already exempted from minimum parking requirements, and the report notes that developers have largely continued to build parking spaces for condo buildings, while doing away with them for rental buildings.

"In the Downtown where there have been no minimum parking requirements since 2019, strata projects continue to supply parking at about 1.15 spaces per dwelling unit, which is above the pre-2019 parking minimum," the report reads.

"Parking provided for rental projects decreased substantially from pre-2019 minimums, providing close to zero parking spaces for over 700 new dwelling units."

The report anticipates that the end of parking minimums may lead to increased demand for on-street parking "over time," and city councillors approved "allotting $685,000 of incremental new parking permit and by-law ticket revenue towards staff and equipment to manage and enforce permit areas" as part of the motion adopted Wednesday.

Could housing prices drop?

Jon Stovell, the president of Reliance Properties, calls the move "substantial."

Developing a parking spot can cost between $110,000 to $150,00 per unit, he says. The cost is typically then passed down to the buyer or tenant.

"Not everybody will get it right, some people will build too little and their projects will suffer and some people will build too much and their projects will suffer," he said. "Over time, the market forces will arrive and continually correct the amount a parking that you build and that’s going to make housing a lot cheaper."

He says the move aligns with other major North American cities and shows that Vancouver is forward-thinking.

"Parking demand has been diminishing steadily for a long time now," he said. "Developers and their customers who they are working for, should be able to decide what they need."